Skype's web-based version is now available worldwide

You no longer have to live in one of a few fortunate countries to make a Skype call while checking your Outlook.com email: As of today, Skype for Outlook.com is available worldwide .

. All you need now is to download a browser plugin and link your Skype account. The global release comes alongside improved software support, too. PC users can now participate in HD video chats, while Mac users get a Safari plugin. If you're heavily invested in Microsoft's internet services, everything you need to get started is at the source link.

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Jitterbit Releases Version 3.0 Of Its Open Source Data Integration Platform

Jitterbit , a open source data and application integration company, has launched the 3.0 release of its product.

, a open source data and application integration company, has launched the 3.0 release of its product. The new release includes the debut of the ‘MX’ Enterprise version of Jitterbit, which the company says is designed for especially large enterprise customers. MX joins the normal Enterprise version (which should be suitable for most businesses), as well as the Jitterbit Community product, which is available for free but doesn’t come with support.

In layman’s terms, Jitterbit helps applications and systems that wouldn’t normally be able to ‘talk’ to each other do just that, and it also helps automate some of the more tedious processes involved in data management, like transferring data between applications. Users map out which fields in various applications are linked, and then Jitterbit automatically handles the synchronization regardless of which protocol is being used.

The new version adds support for use by multiple users and across multiple servers simultaneously. It also includes a plug-in manager, which allows users to leverage the library of plugins that have been built by the community (examples include plugins that add encryption schemes or can scrape data from webpages). Finally, the company says that the application has significant performance boosts, as well as added support for JDBC-based systems and HTTP Endpoints.

Jitterbit launchedits 2.0 release back in August 2008, introducing a drag-and-drop interface and a new business model that charges customers for a “rock-solid” version of the product that includes support (anyone is free to try out the ‘bleeding edge’ version on their own for free, but Jitterbit won’t provide support for it). Since then things have been going quite well for the company: Director of Online Marketing Daniel Oxenburgh says Jitterbit is currently on track to double the new customers it will acquire this year versus last year. Notable clients include NASA and Continental Airlines.

Competitors to Jitterbit include SnapLogicand Talend, which raised$12 million earlier this year.

Information provided by CrunchBase

Obama In Tennessee To Promote Free Community College

President Obama speaks at a Ford assembly plant on Wednesday in Wayne, Mich., about the resurgent automotive and manufacturing sector.

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toggle caption Carolyn Kaster/AP

President Obama speaks at a Ford assembly plant on Wednesday in Wayne, Mich., about the resurgent automotive and manufacturing sector.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

President Obama is in Tennessee previewing some of the big issues he'll talk about in his State of the Union address later this month. Friday, he'll speak in Knoxville, focusing on education and an idea that is gathering steam in some states: making community college tuition-free.

In the emerging debate over this idea, there are skeptics and there are true believers.

"This is a fundamental systematic change. It's bold and exactly what we need right now," says Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Last year she co-authored a study titled "Securing America's future with a free two-year college option." It outlines precisely what President Obama is talking about today at Pellissippi State Community College.

"Tennessee is the leader in this," Goldrick-Rab says. "Mississippi has looked at it, Oregon is considering it, but Tennessee is the only [state] that has accomplished it."

Tennessee residents, regardless of income, can attend community college and not have to pay tuition. The program is funded with state lottery funds to the tune of $1,000 a year per student and President Obama wants to see more states do the same.

But some have their doubts.

"For the president to say we're going to make [community college] free all over the country, it's not clear how the federal government would do that," says Sandy Baum, an author and educator who has spent much of her career studying trends in college costs.

Baum is a skeptic: First of all, she says, the federal government has no say in how much tuition community colleges charge. Second, community colleges in most states are pretty affordable and already free for low-income students.

She's concerned about making it free for people who can afford to go.

"It's not that there's something wrong with it being free," Baum says. "It's that it's wrong to allocate our scarce funds when you have a lot of low-income students who are struggling to pay their living costs."

True, says Goldrick-Rab. But she argues that the $8,000 a year that full-time community college students pay, on average, for tuition and costs is out of reach for lots of middle-income students as well.

"And the middle class feels this all the time," Goldrick-Rab says. "They can't get a Pell Grant despite not having the money of their own [to pay for college]."

Goldrick-Rab says providing free community college to middle-income families would get broad political support. She says the $50 billion to $60 billion the federal government is already spending on Pell Grants and other need-based aid every year would help subsidize tuition-free plans throughout the country.

"But that's not what we're talking about here," counters Baum. "We're talking about reallocating funds."

She continues: "Proposals that just push the money around and give more of it to more affluent students going to community colleges, are really not going to solve our problems, even if they sound good."

In some ways, the debate over this issue that Obama is trying to kick-start is not unlike the one he started over universal preschool: People recognize the benefits, but disagree on the details and the money.

Code In Twitter Music’s Placeholder Page Shows Web Interface, Track Purchasing, Charts And Service Integrations

Since we have nothing much to go on other than a static landing page for Twitter #music, some folks did further inspection within the CSS on the login page , and certain features and integrations became apparent.

We’ve reached out to Twitter to confirm what we’ve seen, and we’ll update our story once we hear back.

Until then, here’s what can be taken from the styling code itself, picked up on by desginer Youssef Sarhan:

– Both web interface and separate downloadable app
– Pull in Tracks from iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and Rdio
– YouTube and Vevo integration
– We Are Hunted’s charts feature
– Turn playing tracks on/off
– Track purchasing
– Tweet a track

.iconmusic-spotify-connect-btn{background-position:-4431px -0px;height:32px;width:179px}

.iconmusic-player-source-rdio{background-position:-2801px -0px;height:19px;width:30px}

.iconmusic-player-source-itunes{background-position:-2751px -0px;height:19px;width:30px}

.iconmusic-player-source-soundcloud{background-position:- 2851px -0px;height:14px;width:92px}

.iconmusic-player-source-vevo{background-position:-2963px -0px;height:9px;width:53px}

.youtube-vid player{position:absolute;padding:10px;height:200px}

While this is in no way a finalized “feature set” for the Twitter #Music app, it is more information than we had before and confirmation of what we’ve seen others testing out on Twitter, which are basically embedded music players in Twitter Cards. And of course, since this is a Twitter-owned page, so the code speaks for itself.

Here’s a look at what the player will look like, again referenced in the CSS for the page:

These are some random graphical elements that point to what services will be included as well:

In addition to all of this, it looks like Twitter will be bringing in bios of musicians, perhaps from their Twitter profiles. All of this integration makes complete sense and perhaps the selling of music will be controlled by the artist themselves. If you’re listening to a track that someone shared from Spotify and want to purchase it immediately, it doesn’t matter which service Twitter hooks into, there’s a good chance that you’re going to follow through with your purchase. This could mean big bucks for Twitter as it marches towards going public, perhaps as early as next year.

This all gives us more of a sense of what the #Music service itself might look like, even though we have no screenshots to prove it. Much in the way that Twitter set up “hashtag pages” for brands such as NASCAR, Twitter is taking all of the data that it’s currently collecting and just showing it off in a different, more consumable way. If #Music becomes a full-featured service that artists can use to sell music, there’s a whole host of distribution metrics that Twitter is sitting on, which also means big bucks.

Apple just sold 75 million iPhones and brought in $75 billion

The numbers: Apple’s first quarter was its biggest ever by far, and marked accelerating growth.

was its biggest ever by far, and marked accelerating growth. Its $74.6 billion in revenue was a new record, representing 30% growth over last year. Its $18 billion in profit was also a new record. And its 74.5 million iPhone shipments beat last year’s record by almost 50%.

Most important: Apple says growth will continue this quarter. Its $53.5 billion forecast for March quarter revenue is close to Wall Street’s consensus. Shares traded up 5% in after-hours trading.

The takeaway: The iPhone is an amazing force—and Apple is increasingly relying on it for growth. iPhone sales represented 69% of Apple’s overall revenue last quarter, a new record. And the iPhone’s year-over-year revenue growth, in dollars, was more than the company’s overall growth. “This volume is hard to comprehend,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said on the company’s earnings call.

Simply put, Apple is crushing it, both in its sales and its operations. For Apple to produce 75 million iPhones in a quarter is impressive in itself—never mind selling that many. (Now let’s see how smoothly another logistical challenge goes: The Apple Watch launch.)

What’s interesting: Apple reorganized its geographical revenue reporting this quarter so that its retail stores were integrated into their regions instead of listed as a separate segment. This gives a brief look into how well the Apple retail empire is performing around the world.

In short: It’s biggest in the Americas, as you might expect, but also important in Greater China. In the previous (September) quarter, including retail within the Americas region added $3.5 billion in sales, for a total of $19.75 billion. In China, it added about half a billion dollars, bringing its total to $6.3 billion. This most recent quarter—the Christmas period—of course, blew them both away: Sales in the Americas region, including retail, reached $30.6 billion, while China passed $16.1 billion.

Groupon Sells 46% Of Korea’s Ticket Monster To KKR Consortium For $360M

The long-running question mark over Groupon’s ownership of Ticket Monster has been resolved.

has been resolved. Today the company announcedthat it is selling a controlling stake in the Korean online shopping platform to a consortium that includes Anchor Equity Partners, KKR and TMON management. The group is taking a 46% of the company for $360 million, valuing Ticket Monster at $782 million, assuming a full vesting of management’s 13% stake. Subject to the closing of the TMON stake, Groupon will also initiate a $300 million share repurchase program.

Groupon says it will continue to retain a fully diluted 41% minority stake in the company that it originally announced it would acquire in November 2013from LivingSocial for $260 million (with the transaction closing in January 2014). The transaction is expected to close in Q2 of this year, the company says.

A filingwith the SEC also notes that the transaction will need approval from the Korean Fair Trade Commission (the “KFTC”). If the deal is not completed by July 31, 2015, it could be subject to a 60-day extension if KFTC approval has not been received.

Groupon says the gain on the sale is expected to be “between $195 million and $205 million on a pre-tax basis and will be recorded at the close of the transaction.” But apart from that, there seems to be wider strategic logic behind the sale.

For Groupon, the sale of the stake is part of its plan to focus on the parts of its business that have been integrated on to a common platform, which today largely means its U.S. and European businesses, thus winding down an operational role in businesses that are too far flung, even will it continues to retain an investment interest.

“As the Korean market developed, it became obvious that TMON would benefit from additional resources and local expertise in its drive to be the leading social commerce company in Korea,” said Groupon CEO Eric Lefkofsky in a statement. “We look forward to watching TMON’s success as a continued large shareholder in the company.” Indeed, the Korean business had been operating at a loss — in 2014, an adjusted EBITDA loss of $8.9 million

From what we have heard, Groupon is also taking a similar approach in India with its operations there, with sources telling us in March that Groupon sold a $20 million stake in the business, which will continue to be operated and grown by current management. There are also reportsthat Groupon may sell its Breadcrumb point-of-sale business, in what would be a further reigning in of the bigger e-commerce business.

The management’s 13% is a consideration that will vest over time, Groupon tells me, and is based on performance.

“We are extremely excited to work with such world-class partners. KKR and Anchor not only bring global experience in the retail and technology sectors, but they are also experienced local partners with strong business expertise in South Korea,” said Ticket Monster CEO Dan Shin, who is part of the management team in the consortium. “We are thrilled to be working with distinguished partners who share our vision for growth and offer significant pools of capital in support of TMON’s initiatives. With their help and investment, this company will have greater opportunities to attract new customers and expand into new businesses.”

Although Ticket Monster, as its name implies, focused on events when it first launched, today it is a multi-purpose e-commerce platform selling goods, travel services and more. Its mainstay is a mobile business, with its app downloaded more than 9 million times. Some 70% of its revenues come from mobile. It posted$1.3 billion of gross billings in 2014, with revenues just shy of $150 million.

With the sale, Groupon is also adjusting its Q1 and full-year earnings, which are due to be announced on May 5.

Groupon says that Ticket Monster will be treated as a discontinued operation for purposes of financial reporting, effective in the first quarter of 2015.

Because of this and changes in foreign exchange rates, Groupon says it expects Q1 revenues to be between $720 million and $770 million, compared to a previous range of $790 million – $840 million. Groupon says it expects adjusted EBITDA between $58 million and $78 million (old range: $45m-$65m), and non-GAAP earnings per share (from continuing operations) between $0.01 and $0.03 (old range: $0.00-$0.02).

For the full year, Groupon continues to expect adjusted EBITDA of greater than $315 million.

The share repurchase program is on top of the $300 million share repurchase program Groupon is already working through, which has $83 million authorized repurchases remaining as of March 31.

Apple’s first-quarter earnings in charts

Apple reported its first-quarter results today.

its first-quarter results today. As expected, growth slowed to a halt, thanks in part to foreign currency fluctuations. First-quarter sales reached $75.9 billion, up 2% year-over-year, and the company now has $216 billion in its cash pile.

More importantly, its forecast for the March quarter was below Wall Street’s expectations, but perhaps not as bad as it could have been. Apple is indeed predicting its first quarterly revenue decline in more than a decade; it expects second-quarter sales between $50 billion and $53 billion, versus $58 billion a year ago. But the rest of the year should be better. Shares fell 2% in after-hours trading.

We live-charted Apple’s results as they were reported. Live updates follow.

4:02pm: Apple shares closed today at $99.99, up 0.6% on the day. Shares are down about 16% since Apple last reported results in late October, 2015.

4:32pm: Apple’s release is out. Overall, the company reported $75.9 billion in revenue, representing 1.7% year-over-year growth, slightly less than expected.

4:38pm: The big one: Apple’s forecast for March quarter sales was lower than expected. The company predicts it will generate $50 billion to $53 billion in sales this quarter, or a midpoint of $51.5 billion. Analyst consensus for the March quarter was $55.6 billion. This suggests Apple will indeed post its first year-over-year revenue decline in more than a decade this quarter. A year ago, Apple reported $58 billion in March quarter revenue.

4:40pm: Even still, Apple’s stock price in early after-hours trading is pretty flat. Perhaps this is an indication that investors were already ready for this sort of news—and possibly that they think Apple is being conservative about its guidance. It has, indeed, beat the high end of its guidance most of the quarters over the past two years. (Except this past quarter.)

4:43pm: iPhone sales set a new record, barely, at 74.8 million. The iPhone business represented 68% of Apple’s overall sales, down a hair from last year’s December quarter, when it was 69%.

4:46pm: Apple’s China business continues to grow, though at a slower rate. Greater China generated $18.4 billion in sales last quarter, or about 24% of Apple’s total. China sales grew 14% year-over-year, a deceleration from 99% in the September quarter and 70% during the December 2015 quarter.

4:51pm: What about the Apple Watch? Apple once again didn’t reveal sales in its earnings release. But you can see its effect. Sales in its “Other Products” category—which includes the Apple Watch, the iPod, and the Apple TV—grew to $4.35 billion, up 62% year-over-year and up 43% from the September quarter.

4:55pm: Remember the iPad? Apple’s tablet business continues to shrink. Sales reached 16.1 million, which isn’t an awful number. But that represented a 25% year-over-year decline in unit sales, its worst percentage decline yet.

4:58pm: The iPad Pro launched during the December quarter, and might have had a tiny effect on the iPad’s average selling price, which increased about $7 during the quarter to $439.40. The iPhone’s average selling price, meanwhile, made a bigger jump, up $20 to $690.50.

5:03pm: Apple has provided a “supplemental material” presentation(pdf) for the first time in recent memory. In it: This chart highlighting Apple’s “currency index,” showing how its non-US dollar revenue has declined in value since 2014.

Apple: The strong US dollar is a major bummer, breh. $AAPL pic.twitter.com/CawmViIQbI

— Matt Phillips (@MatthewPhillips) January 26, 2016

Apple says revenue would have reached $80.8 billion in constant currency, representing 8% growth.

5:06pm: What about the Mac? Apple’s classic PC business shipped 5.3 million units during the quarter, down 4% year-over-year. Still, the Mac continues to outperform the greater PC industry, which declined 10.6% during the quarter, per IDC.

5:10pm: Here’s the overall big picture. Not much movement this quarter, though the iPad business jumped back out in front of the Mac in revenue.

5:12pm: On the company’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook noted the company’s cash pile is now about $216 billion.

5:16pm: Apple is touting that it has an installed base of 1 billion: “iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod touch, Apple TV, and Apple Watch devices that have been engaged with our services within the past 90 days.” About 75% of iOS users are now using iOS 9, by the way.

5:31pm: Apple set a new profit record, reporting $18.36 billion in net income.

The first four Android apps for Chrome OS are here

Google promised that Android apps would eventually make their way to Chrome OS , and, well, here they are - the search giant announced that the first batch has just gone live in the Chrome Web Store.

- the search giant announced that the first batch has just gone live in the Chrome Web Store. We knew that Vine and Evernote were on the short list of Android apps to make the leap, but there's no sign of Flipboard yet. Instead, we also got startup Duolingo's excellent language learning app and something called Sight Words, a tool to help little ones identify and recognize words (aww). Four apps may not seem like much to get worked up over, (especially since Duolingo and Evernote work just fine in a web browser) but it's just a start. Google says it'll work on getting more developers to use its App Runtime for Chrome "over the coming months," so don't go expecting a full-on Android invasion of Chrome OS any time soon.

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Investment Giant KKR Leads Rare $15M Early Stage Round For Fundraising Platform Artivest

In what may be one of its first investments in a Series A round, the investment firm KKR has pulled from its $98.6 billion in assets under management to lead a $15 million investment in fundraising platform Artivest .

The deal is part of a broader push from the private-equity firm to invest more actively in startup technology companies. To date, KKR has backed companies including Magic Leap, FanDuel, Ping Identity, Arago, ClickTale, Next Issue Media, and The Hut Group.

In the past, KKR invested primarily from a joint-venture fund it had set up with the venture investor Accel Partners, called Accel-KKR, but now the firm is also doing investments from its $13 billion balance sheet (a pool of capital larger than the top five largest current venture funds combined).

“Our balance sheet [investing] is very opportunistic,” said KKR CIO Ed Brandman. “I don’t think this is going to be a significant portion of the balance sheet [but] it can be meaningful. Over time [investments] could be hundreds of millions of dollars.”

With Artivest, there was a clear strategic benefit for KKR’s involvement. The company has created a technology and investment structure that allows accredited investors and the registered investment advisers that manage their money to invest in the private equity funds and hedge funds that had previously been the purview for ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

The problem for private-equity firms and hedge funds is that they don’t have the capacity to manage a relationship with thousands of individual investors — the documentation alone would be a nightmare.

Artivest solves this problem by creating investment funds that it manages, pooling the assets of the individual investors into a single, special-purpose vehicle that will invest in a private-equity or hedge fund.

It’s a variation on the marketplace theme that has enabled companies like AgFunder, CircleUp, AngelList, OurCrowd and others to take a page from the private investment playbook and create investment opportunities for qualified investors to act as their own micro-venture capital and private-equity shops.

A solicitation from Artivest works like this. The firm reaches out to top-tier private-equity firms (including KKR with whom the company worked on raising capital for a fund) and gets all of the relevant information about a fund. That information is then synopsized on a secure web page where investment advisers and individuals on the platform can visit to evaluate the opportunity.

If the investors are persuaded by the thesis, they can commit capital to a fund managed by Artivest that will then commit a large pool of capital to the private-equity firm.

Artivest makes money through placement fees with the funds it backs and management fees for the special funds it manages for its wealthy clients.

Its vision for expanding the pool of investible capital was persuasive enough for Peter Thiel, Nyca Partners, Anthemis Group and FinTech Collective to invest in a seed round for the company. And all of the investors are continuing to participate in the company’s $15 million Series A round.

A combination of factors are driving high-net-worth individuals into the arms of relatively illiquid private-equity and hedge fund investments (called alternative investment strategies), according to Artivest’s chief executive, James Waldinger.

“We have a near zero interest rate environment and unsteady markets. [Investors] are looking at alternatives as something that’s uncorrelated to public markets, as well as an area where they’ve seen tremendous returns,” Waldinger said.

The amount of money that the filthy rich around the world are looking to commit to alternatives is staggering. Roughly $2.7 trillion in new commitments could come from investors looking to invest in funds managed by private equity firms and hedge funds.

$2.7 trillion is an almost unfathomably large amount of money, but KKR’s Brandman, who will be taking a seat on the Artivest board, says that the industry can absorb all of that cash.

“You’re seeing larger pools of capital being raised for energy and real estate,” Brandman says. And opportunities abound for new investments in infrastructure, healthcare and in emerging economies in places like Africa and Southeast Asia, according to Brandman.

It’s also important to note, according to Brandman, that these investment opportunities are still not for everyone who may want to invest in a private-equity fund (lord knows I would if I could).

“These are people with $5 million in assets,” said Brandman. “Private equity is long-dated capital and… we’re not looking to bring the level down so dramatically that everyone who invests in an online brokerage platform can invest in a private-equity fund.”

Waldinger, a former hedge fund manager at Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital, agrees. “We’re disrupting the high costs, and friction and moving pieces that make it hard for the wider fund world to scale to this high-net-worth retail audience.”

Add-on lets your Chromebook run Linux in a window

You can already run a conventional operating system like Linux on your Chromebook if you're the determined sort, but it's not really convenient... not unless you like hopping between virtual terminals, anyway.

if you're the determined sort, but it's not really convenient... not unless you like hopping between virtual terminals, anyway. However, there's now a relatively simple way to juggle between Chrome OS and Linux. If you grab a tweaked versionof David Schneider's Crouton extensionand type in a terminal command, you can now run a version of Linux (so far, Debian and Ubuntu) in a window. You won't have to drop that Hangouts chat just to finish some work in OpenOffice, in other words. While you'll still have to be comfortable with installing Linux in the first place, this could easily turn your cheap web surfing machine into more of a power user's tool.

[Image credit: François Beaufort, Google+]

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Chrome OS lets you lock lost or stolen computers

Losing a gadget sucks, but having to change all your passwords to make sure no thief gets to your bank accounts is much worse for some people.

Losing a gadget sucks, but having to change all your passwords to make sure no thief gets to your bank accounts is much worse for some people. That's why it's awesome that Chrome OS devices can now be locked when stolen or lost -- if they're Enterprise/Business or Education computers, that is. Google has introduced the feature as an update to the admin console, and according toGoogle employee François Beaufort, there's no way to do it for personal devices yet. That's unfortunate, but seeing as Chromebooks are doing especially wellin the education sector, we're not entirely surprised. Those who do use a school/work-issued Chromebook only have to ask their IT admin to lock it remotely from the web-based control system. After that, people who switch the device on will only see a lock screen with the company's or school's address and phone number, in an attempt to guilt them into finding the rightful owner.

When Danish Cows See Fresh Spring Pasture, They Jump For Joy

Source: Sidsel Overgaard for NPR
"They're running a little late," chides an elderly gentleman, tapping his watch at 12:02 p.m. He's come to this farm near the Danish city of Ikast, along with about 1,500 others, to celebrate what has become something of a national holiday in Denmark.

"They're running a little late," chides an elderly gentleman, tapping his watch at 12:02 p.m. He's come to this farm near the Danish city of Ikast, along with about 1,500 others, to celebrate what has become something of a national holiday in Denmark. It's the Sunday in mid-April when thousands of organic dairy cows at 75 farms across the country are released into the green fields of spring. At exactly noon. Eh hem.

Ah, but here they come!

Cows, despite their tendency to lumber, become almost sprightly when treated to a change of scenery. They leap, they kick, they tussle, they bellow with joy. Danes, who're also emerging from the long, dark winter, are nothing if not empathetic.

With children cheering from their parents' shoulders, the first wave of cows come galloping into the sun. They shoot down a driveway lined with onlookers and go bouncing — literally — into the nearest field. As a Canadian cow expert toldThe Salt's Maria Godoy in 2014, cows tend to get an extra spring or leap in their step "whenever something new or unexpected happens."

In the pasture, the frolicking and playful head-butting continues for a good 20 minutes before the whole bovine party settles into munching. And the Danes wander off to the food tent to do the same.

The idea of turning this age-old "dancing cow" phenomenon into a spectator sport arose about a decade ago when the folks at Organic Denmarkwere searching for a way to make the concept of organic more visual.

Near the Danish city of Ikast, some 1,500 spectators gathered on April 19 to celebrate what has become something of a national holiday at organic dairy farms around Denmark. Courtesy of Organic Denmark hide caption

toggle caption Courtesy of Organic Denmark

Near the Danish city of Ikast, some 1,500 spectators gathered on April 19 to celebrate what has become something of a national holiday at organic dairy farms around Denmark.

Courtesy of Organic Denmark

"The rules say that organic cows have to be let out to pasture from April to November," says Birgitte Nygaard, who organizes the event in Ikast. That's not true of conventional dairy cows, the vast majority of whom never go outside. "The first time you see the excitement of the [organically raised] cows, how they truly dance around out in the fields, there can be no doubt for anyone that this is where they belong."

In 2005, Økodag , or "Organic Day," attracted about 10,000 visitors. This year, a record 247,000 people lined the fields, according to Organic Denmark. (Dairy cows in the U.K.and the Netherlandshave been caught dancing on camera as well, but those countries don't celebrate it to the extent that Denmark does.)

And, though it's hard to prove, Nygaard is convinced there's a direct correlation between the event's popularity and the success of Denmark's organic industry in general.

According to a recent reportby Denmark's Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, 8 percent of the food sold here is now organic. That's the highest percentage in the world.

And when you look just at milk, says Mads Helms, vice chairman of Organic Denmark, the figure is closer to 30 percent.

Take Trine Skovlund, who's visiting from the nearest city. With a baby strapped to her chest, she looks out over a swarm of children climbing a jungle gym made of hay bales. She's been coming to Økodag for a few years, and this time she brought along a friend. While Skovlund says she doesn't always buy organic, she tries especially hard when it comes to milk.

"I think I've actually been affected a little bit by this day," she says. "When you see the cows and how good they have it, you have that in your thoughts when you're shopping."

Along with his industry position, Helms of Organic Denmark is the third-generation owner of this farm, and he speaks with the matter-of-fact tone of someone who's lived through a few decades of agricultural booms and busts.

A Danish organic food group says there's a direct correlation between the event's popularity and the organic industry's success in the country. Courtesy of Organic Denmark hide caption

toggle caption Courtesy of Organic Denmark

People come to Økodag to show their kids where milk comes from, Helms says, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to buy organic. He thinks that's because most of them can't visualize how it compares to a conventional farm. Most of his neighbors (and many of the people here today), he says, buy conventional milk because organic milk can cost as much as 80 percent more, and they shop based on price alone.

And yet, Helms does not seem worried.

That's because demand for organics continues to grow in urban areas, especially now that the financial crisis is over. And Helms gives Danish grocery stores credit for cooperating with farmers to make organics by paying them a premium for the product.

There's also a recent government initiative aimed at doubling the amount of land devoted to organic production by 2020, largely by encouraging public institutions to serve organic food. All of these developments have created a very different set of challenges from Helms' early days as an organics pioneer.

"The focus right now is to get production up," he says. "Now the market is growing faster than the production. So we have a challenge to get new farmers." And more cows to join the party.

Your Chromebook will let you load a new OS through a USB drive

If you've been aching to try a different operating system on your Chromebook without running it in a window or otherwise jumping through hoops, you're going to get some relief very shortly.

or otherwise jumping through hoops, you're going to get some relief very shortly. Google's Chrome OS team is adding supportfor an easy debugging switch that lets you tinker with the system files, such as by installing new drive images. If you want, you'll have the freedom to boot up from a USB drive and load a new OS, such as Linux. This still won't be a solution for the faint-hearted (you're likely on your own if something goes wrong), but it'll simplify things if you're bored with Google's web-centric software.

Photo by Will Lipman.

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Apple is building a massive farm of solar panels to power its new campus

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will partner with First Solar to build a massive solar farm in California to power its buildings.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will partner with First Solar to build a massive solar farm in California to power its buildings. Cook, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, said the farm will power its offices, including the under-construction Apple Campus 2 “spaceship” site, along with its 53 retail stores and datacenter in the state.

Acknowledging the reality of climate change, Cook said: “The time for talk has passed and the time for action is now.” Apple penned a 25-year deal with solar-panel firm First Solarin what it says will be the largest clean energy power deal to a US company. Cook said there will be a fixed price on the solar energy, which will result in “significant savings” in what Apple currently pays for power. Apple will receive 130 megawatts from the 2,900-acre solar panel farm that First Solar expects to begin work on in Monterey, California, later this year. Apple’s portion of the the First Solar farm will be 1,300 acres, an Apple spokesperson confirmed to Quartz.

This is not the only green energy initiative Apple is working on. Apple’s website says its new Campus 2 headquarters will be powered entirelyby renewable energy sources, and the majority of the energy used by its Maiden, North Carolina data center is generated by on-site solar panels and fuel cells. Apple is also working ona solar-powered data facility in Arizona. The company boaststhat it is “the only company in our industry whose data centers are powered by 100% renewable energy.”

“We’re doing this because it’s right to do,” Tim Cook said to the audience at the Goldman Sachs event, “But you may also be interested to know that it’s good financially to do it.”

Tech Blooms In The Saudi Desert As Aerial Scanning Startup FalconViz Takes Flight

Bérénice Magistretti Crunch Network Contributor
More posts by this contributor:
When we think of Saudi Arabia, we don’t imagine startups popping out of the desert.

Bérénice Magistretti is a freelance writer focusing on startups and entrepreneurship and the former communications manager for Seedstars World. She is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

How to join the network

When we think of Saudi Arabia, we don’t imagine startups popping out of the desert. Yet the Kingdom’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is beginning to boom thanks to newly launched initiatives.

, a Saudi-incorporated startup, is one example.

A 3D aerial scanning and modeling system, FalconViz utilizes multi-rotor copters and fixed wing UAVs with Aerial SFM, a proprietary software.

The result of a collaboration between chief executive Neil Smith, chief technology officer Luca Passone, business developer Mohamed Shalaby and general manager Anas Dahlawi.

They met and created the startup at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), based in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.

Launched in January 2015, FalconViz is now a team of 10 and has already secured $205,000 in seed funding from KAUST and is poised to close its first institutional round from Saudi-based VC funds.

“ This is a first in Saudi Arabia” explains Mohamed Shalaby. “ An investor investing in a Saudi company is extremely rare. They usually invest in US companies.” Shalaby says the attraction is the market size for surveying — $5 billion in Saudi Arabia and $10 billion in the US and Canada.

The company says its edge derives from the technology that was developed by engineers and scientists at KAUST.

The process can be broken down into three steps: First, high-resolution imagery is gathered using a specially configured autonomous UAV navigating a predetermined flight path. Second, the images , orientation s and positioning data gathered during the flight are processed and matched together using Aerial SFM. Finally, an interactive 3D model is generated by Aerial SFM, offering a detailed documentation of the scanned area.

“ Our technology is faster, more efficient and much less disruptive to building sites when used repeatedly” explains Anas Dahlawi, General Manager of FalconViz .

The cost depends on the type of service required. Surveying a developed area costs more than surveying an undeveloped area for example. “ Our prices start at $5K per square kilometer” says Dahlawi.

The team has just received an official agreement from the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) that grants them the license to fly their drones within the Kingdom.

The product has already been commercialized and the service sold to various clients in urban planning and real estate. Examples are Jeddah and Mecca municipalities, the Aviation Investigation Bureau (AIB) and Jeddah’s Kingdom Tower, a skyscraper under construction that will be over 1,000 meters high. They are all based in Saudi Arabia, except for two projects that were carried out in Dubai and Lebanon. This allows the startup to focus locally first, and expand internationally later on.

The team attended the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris where they introduced two notions: firstly, using their drones and technology as a standard tool to measure the energy efficiency of buildings, thereby allowing clients to locate and calculate the exact waste stemming from A/C leakages for example .

Finally, using UAVs instead of fossil fuel-based cars or conventional planes to do massive surveying, making the process more eco-friendly. Something to keep in mind seeing as FalconViz is getting ready to introduce their solar-powered fixed wing UAV.

Google's latest Chromebook update makes it easy to juggle multiple accounts

​Google's latest Chromebook update makes it easy to juggle multiple accounts
Has your company bought into Google's pitch for a Chrome-powered office ?

? Then this update is for you: Google just announceda handful of Chromebook features specifically for office environments, including the ability to easily switch between personal accounts and your organization's credential-secured account. The enhanced identity features primarily focus on enabling the SAML standard used by common enterprise authorization providers, but a new multiple sign-in mode allows that security to live alongside your personal Googleaccount -- possibly enabling users to bring their own Chromebooks to the office with relative ease. The update tacks on a handful of other business-specific features too, including better IT management for network certification and web app provisions, improved virtualization solutions from Citrix and VMware and a new annual subscription planof $50 per device per year. Sound like it could improve your work life? Forward the source link (below) to your IT manager and get the ball rolling.

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The new Chromebook Pixel looks like the old one, costs slightly less

It's been more two years since Google came out with the Chromebook Pixel .

. And man, was it a difficult thing to review: It was finely crafted, and a delight to use, but we couldn't in good conscience recommend that people spend $1,299 on a laptop that ran a glorified version of the Chrome browser. Two years later -- a lifetime in the tech world -- Chrome OS can do a lot more than it used to, and in general, the rest of the world seems to be catching on. That means the Pixel will live to see another day. Google just unveiled an updated, slightly less expensive version with improved specs and longer battery life. It more or less looks like its predecessor, and at $999, it's still kinda pricey.

Gallery: Chromebook Pixel (2015) | 27 Photos

Save for a few alterations, the new Pixel has nearly the same machined aluminum chassis and 12.85-inch, 2,560 x 1,700 screen as the original. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," and all that. As rumored, one of the the bigger changes is that it has not one but two reversible, fast-charging type C USB ports, just like the one on the new MacBook. Additionally, Google refreshed the Pixel with fifth-generation Intel Core processors and a battery rated for 12 hours. That's an enormous improvement over the original, which could barely crack four hours on a charge. This is partly thanks to the new CPU, of course, but also some subtle tweaks designed to save power, including a backlit keyboard that turns off when you're not using it. Google's also touting some fast charging speeds: two hours in 15 minutes, or a full charge in two hours. Speaking of battery life, by the way, you can now double-tap the LED strip on the lid to see how much juice you have left. Quite handy, that.

NewVoiceMedia raises £4m for its cloud-based contact centre

NewVoiceMedia says it will use the new investment to further develop its ContactWorld product and take it global.

NewVoiceMedia, which offers a cloud-based contact centre solution, has raised £4m in VC funding from Eden Venturesand Notion Capital, the fund established last year by Jos and Ben White, founders of Messagelabs.

The company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution claims to offer “sophisticated contact centre technology at a fraction of the cost of traditional models”, opening up call centre functionality to companies of a smaller size for whom it would otherwise be out of reach.

NewVoiceMedia is profitable and serves more than 300 global customers in 11 countries, which include the likes of Berry Bros. & Rudd, Kingston University, Parcelforce Worldwide, SHL Group, Weapprove, and Wokingham Council.

“Buying a traditional customer contact centre is a nightmare – hugely complicated and expensive,” says Mark Farmer, co-founder of Eden Ventures in the press release. “NewVoiceMedia’s cloud-based model simplifies this enormously and makes the capability accessible for smaller businesses, representing a massive global opportunity. It has the potential to utterly disrupt the market.”

Ah, that word disruption.

The release also quotes an interesting stat provided by DMG that claims that SaaS currently accounts for 2-3% of the contact centre market but by 2011 it’s estimated to reach 30-35%. NewVoiceMedia believes that, with the new funding, it’s positioned to benefit nicely from this market growth.

NewVoiceMedia, based in Basingstoke, UK, was founded in 2000 by Ashley Unitt and Richard Pickering. Its current CEO is Jonathan Grant, who invested in the business in 2005.

Information provided by CrunchBase

Information provided by CrunchBase

Information provided by CrunchBase

Most of H&M’s “best” factories in Bangladesh still don’t have working fire exits

Factory fires pose one of the greatest dangers to Bangladesh’s garment workers.

After the 2013 factory collapse at Rana Plaza, more than 200 clothing brandsfrom around the world signed a binding commitment to create(pdf) a Bangladeshi garment industry “in which no worker needs to fear fires, building collapses, or other accidents that could be prevented with reasonable health and safety measures.”

The first brand to sign the commitment was H&M, which is the single largest buyerof garments from Bangladesh. But a study released Oct. 1(pdf) by the Clean Clothes Campaign, in collaboration with several labor groups, says the company is “dramatically behind schedule” in making actual improvements in the factories it sources from. Many of those delayed improvements would ensure worker safety in case of a fire.

The scorched interior of Tazreen Fashions. (Reuters/Andrew Biraj)

What’s more worrisome, the report only looked at H&M’s “Platinum” and “Gold” suppliers—the factories that supposedly boast the highest standards in labor and environmental protections. They account for 56 of the 229 factories H&M uses in Bangladesh.

About 61% didn’t have fire exits that met the accord’s standards, which demand that fire exits have enclosed stairwells and fire-rated doors. Without those measures, exits can quickly fill with smoke in a fire, effectively trapping workers on a factory’s upper floors.

It’s not a small risk. Factory fires are a persistent hazard in Bangladesh, as the New York Times notedafter the 2012 fire at Tazreen Fashions that killed 112 people.

“[Lack of appropriate fire exits] is the defect that has been the primary culprit in virtually every mass fatality fire in the Bangladesh garment industry,” the report states, estimating that this violation alone puts nearly 79,000 workers’ lives in danger.

Safety violation yet to be corrected Share of H&M’s “Platinum” and “Gold factories” in Bangladesh with violation Number of workers endangered Hasn’t removed locking doors 16% 25,500 Hasn’t removed sliding doors and collapsible gates 55% 64,392 Hasn’t created safe fire exits 61% 78,842

Other major fire hazards included lockable doors, as well as sliding doors and collapsible gates, all of which can make it difficult for workers to escape quickly in an emergency.

The Clean Clothes campaign is a coalition of European organizations that advocates for garment workers’ rights. For this report, it collaborated with the International Labor Rights Forum, Maquila Solidarity Network, and Worker Rights Consortium, with research assistance from Fordham University’s School of Law.

A spokesperson for the Clean Clothes Campaign told Quartz the report focused on H&M because it is the largest buyer from Bangladesh, and therefore has significant leverage in the country.

H&M has also “communicated to consumers through their sustainability reports that all significant repairs are complete,” according to the spokesperson. The report was a way to independently check on those claims. Its analysis is based on publicly available information from factory-inspection reports and “corrective action plans” disclosed by the organization behind the accord.

H&M issued a press releasein response, stating that every factory H&M sources from meets the accord’s minimum requirements for operation, and that progress is happening, if slowly.

It says in the factories where it’s the lead brand sourcing there that “almost 60% of the remediation work is completed and we see good progress. However, the accord is experiencing some delays of the planned remediation process.”

In a separate statement to Quartz, a company spokesperson explained that delays are due to technical and structural issues in the factories that “require more time and access to technology not available in Bangladesh.” A heavy workload for the inspection experts was also a factor.

H&M has shown a commitment to improving conditions for workers in its contracted factories. A few weeks ago, it introduceda “fair wage program” in its Asian factories that will boost workers’ pay. But as long as it continues operations in factories without proper fire safety, tens of thousands of lives are in danger.

FDA Probe Points To Cantaloupe Packing Plant As Source Of Listeria

Owner Eric Jensen examines cantaloupe on the Jensen Farms near Holly, Colo., last month.

Ed Andrieski/AP hide caption

toggle caption Ed Andrieski/AP

Owner Eric Jensen examines cantaloupe on the Jensen Farms near Holly, Colo., last month.

Ed Andrieski/AP

The Jensen Farms cantaloupe blamed for the deadliest listeria outbreak in years may have become contaminated in the farm's own packing facilities.

That's the conclusion of the FDA's investigationinto the source of the outbreak so far, although the saga is far from over.

And once again, the likely culprit is poop.

In a conference call with reporters today, FDA's Sherri McGarrysays the agency's tests of cantaloupes growing in the fields were negative. Same for some samples collected in the packing facility, although she noted they were collected after the equipment had been thoroughly cleaned.

Listeria bacteria were found on some of the fruit in cold storage and some equipment, but not in the water used to wash the cantaloupes. (Read the full inspection report here.)

But where did the bacteria come from? A farm truck used to haul cantaloupes to a cattle facility — increasing the risk of contamination via animal feces — is one possibility.

Also, Magary says, the packing facility has a floor that allows water to pool and contains equipment previously used on another crop — potatoes — that wasn't "easily cleanable and sanitized." And, the packing facility is open to the air.

She added that there is no reason to believe these practices are widespread in the industry.

Jensen Farms is currently not operating and has agreed to allow government inspectors to inspect it before reopening. It initiated a recall Sept. 14.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg says she hopes the listeria investigation will lead to better prevention of foodborne illnesses in the future - a mantrathe agency has been repeating since the first reports came out last month.

As of yesterday, the outbreak has been blamed for at least 25 deaths and 123 illnesses in 26 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. While the casualties have slowed since September, they still may creep up, given the long incubation period of listeria, officials say.

Still, not everyone who was exposed got sick, and our own Allison Aubrey reported on why that is recently.

Stay tuned for more on the listeria outbreak tonight on All Things Considered.

NewVoiceMedia Takes $20M Led By Highland Capital, MMC To Build Contact Centers In The Clouds

NewVoiceMedia , an enterprise startup riding the wave of cloud-based services, has raised $20 million for its business of contact center solutions, which currently serves 8,000 agents in 30 countries.

, an enterprise startup riding the wave of cloud-based services, has raised $20 million for its business of contact center solutions, which currently serves 8,000 agents in 30 countries. The Series B round was led by Highland Capital Partners and MMC, with participation from existing investors Eden Ventures and Notion Capital, and brings the total funding for NVM to $26.3 million.

In an interview by email, NVM’s CEO Jonathan Gale says that the new investment will be used to help the UK-based company expand further into the U.S., as well as product development in workforce optimization and multi-channel solutions.

The company already sells products for marketing, sales, service desks and other operating divisions; and it also targets home workers and small businesses through to larger enterprises. The goal with new product development is to combine functionalities to meet how businesses run themselves, and also to ensure that its products remain cost-effective. “They are likely to have invested in a CRM and are looking to maximise that investment by integrating additional services,” notes Gale.

But that’s not to belittle the amount of investment needed to crack the U.S. — a must-have market for any serious enterprise tech startup, in the mind of Laurence Garrett, the Highland partner who will be joining NVM’s board. “It is really tough for European companies to do America properly and correctly,” he noted in an interview.

The enterprise market for cloud services has been in the ascendent for some time now, with investors like Andreessen Horowitz putting tens of millions of dollars, and a lot of consideration, into backing startups that tackle the space from disruptive angles. While there may always be a public appetite for hearing about the latest and coolest consumer tech service, the enterprise startups often fly a little lower but can be just as revolutionary and game-changing in what they ultimately achieve.

NVM’s disruptive angle is in the area of contact centers, specifically replicating — for a fraction of the price — the offerings based on costly customer premises equipment that helps customer service teams route calls, offer automated responses and integrate live responses with customer record access.

NVM’s business comes from two directions: The first is the larger enterprise looking to cut down operational expenditures, choosing to leave CPE behind in its next upgrade cycle in favor of lower-cost cloud solutions. The second is the smaller company that never had the scale to invest in physical contact center solutions before but is now able to consider less-expensive, more flexible customer service options in the cloud.

NVM is not the only company tackling this area. Cloud competitors include Five9, Contactual and Interactive Intelligence; and of course on-premise companies like Genesys, Avaya and Aspect are also trying hard to remain in the game. Gale notes that NVM stands apart because of its heavy investment in “the security, availability and performance aspects of its service,” with the status of these played out in real time on a public trust site.

With a lot of cloud services competing on price — NVM’s offering starts at $47 per agent per monthfor a minimum of five agents and one supervisor — cloud companies longer term may seek bigger margins and more multi-channel efficiency by way of consolidation. But for now NVM has continued to make itself as adaptable as possible, with native integration with Salesforce among its features.

“The objective is not to address the agent desktop market directly, but to integrate seamlessly with it bringing voice, chat, email and social channels to the desktop through intelligent queueing and routing,” notes Gale. “Couple this with management reporting, analytics and management tools (like workforce optimisation) and that represents a multi-billion-dollar market opportunity annually.”

For Highland, the decision to invest was influenced in part by the leadership at NVM: one of Gale’s past roles was as VP of business development at MessageLabs before it was sold to Symantec for $695 million. “He really understands the software-as-a-service business model,” notes Garrett. “At NVM, he’s taken a great business and made it better.”

The company now is seeing year-on-year growth of 200 percent, as well as an annual run rate of over $15 million, with customers like Parcelforce, PhotoBox, QlikTech and SHL showing that the company can “grow well on modest capital,” Garrett says. “Once we see that criteria met for a European startup, we get excited.”

NewVoiceMedia Picks Up Another $35M Led By Bessemer As Contact Centers Take To The Clouds

With APIs from the likes of Twilio (and emerging Layer ) fuelling a new concept of how cloud-based archictecture can be applied to the worlds of telephony and communications, UK startup NewVoiceMedia is today announcing a new round of $35 million to build out its business applying this idea to the world of call centers.

This Series C round is led by a new investor, Bessemer Venture Partners, along with participation from existing investors Highland Capital Partners Europe, Eden Ventures and Notion Capital. It’s the second round of funding announced by NVM this year, after a $20M Series B roundin January. It brings the total raised by the company to $61.3 million.

That past round was raised to help NVM expand to North America, and this is also partly where this latest investment will go. “It will be used for further research and development, expansion throughout the U.S. and APAC, including new offices in New York, building an execution capability in sales, marketing and professional services and developing a global network,” Jonathan Gale, the company’s CEO, tells me. Current customers include Parcelforce, QlikView, DPD, SHL Group and Topcon Positioning Systems.

Gale tells me that although NewVoiceMedia has had its eye on North America for a while, the office there actually only opened in August of this year, in San Francisco. This gives it a strategic proximity not just to customers but to partners in the wider landscape of cloud-based business services. “The company’s solutions were already widely used in the U.S., but the new office has brought the company closer to customers in the region, as well as Salesforce,” Gale says. Some 20% of NewVoiceMedia’s seats are in North America currently.

The company is still at an early stage of growth. It currently has some 150 employees, and at the end of fiscal year 13 had revenues just under $10 million. “Post investment, we are looking to grow to 100% per annum over the next two years – driven from the U.S.,” he says.

And similarly, cloud services are at an early stage in the world of contact centers. While companies like Salesforce and Box, and trends around smartphones and tablets, have done a lot to bring cloud services into more mainstream enterprise discourse, this is still only starting to have an impact on an industry full of legacy, with large, physical spaces invested with millions of dollars of physical equipment.

Making the shift to software-based systems, where people can be more distributed and many functions more automated, almost certainly makes better business sense, but retiring the older systems will not be done overnight. NVM hopes, however, that when it happens, it will be the one to be at the forefront.

“The contact centre market is realising the power of the cloud and this is bringing rapid change to the industry, mirroring the Salesforce-led transformation of the CRM market,” Gales says. “It’s a very exciting phase and we are pleased to be driving this change. Our true cloud technology is available, secure and scalable, and we’re continually tapping into major developments in social media and mobile devices to make sure every customer interaction is a great experience.”

NVM’s early-mover position is also what attracted BVP to the deal. “We have been interested in the potential that an emerging player has to disrupt the massive contact centre market globally. NewVoiceMedia really stood out to us with its full suite of true cloud, multi-tenant, contact centre capabilities, built entirely in-house,” noted
Alex Ferrara, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, in a statement.

It looks like this could be the first of other investments for BVP in this space, and specifically around European startups, which have been strong in the area of enterprise and cloud services. “Bessemer Venture Partners believes cloud computing is the most significant trend in the software industry of the decade,” Ferrara says. “We are actively seeking to expand our portfolio of European cloud vendors and consider businesses with a compelling proposition, at all stages, from seed to growth.”

H&M will have to square its sustainability push with the planned opening of 4,000 more stores

In major markets around the world, you may be seeing more sights like this in a few years: The world’s largest H&M at Herald Square, seen from an H&M across the street.

(Marc Bain)

That’s an H&M clothing store—photographed from another H&M just across the street.

The Swedish fast-fashion chain, which vies with Zara as the largest fashion company in the world in sales volume, is opening store number 4,000 this year in New Delhi. That’s up from about 2,200 stores at the end of 2010. And the expansion is far from over.

“I think we will go to 7,000, 8,000 stores plus and beyond,” CEO Karl-Johan Persson told Bloombergyesterday (April 6). “We’re not stressed to reach a certain size or to be number one but it’s still expansion ahead of us.”

That doubling in size will take somewhere from four to eight years. It also will take H&M’s already massive environmental impact to new levels, at a time when the company is trying hard to reduce its footprint and control the waste that fast-fashion generates.

“In the long run, the negative impact is really linked to resource use,” said Henrik Lampa, H&M’s environmental sustainability manager, in an interviewlast year. The company is turning more to organic fibers, working to clean upheavily polluting textile factories in China, and, in a couple weeks, kicking off a campaign to collect 1,000 tons of used or otherwise unwanted garments in order to recycle them, instead of seeing them wind up in landfills.

But it’s also a business based on growth, which naturally means more resource use. A Morgan Stanley research note from March even suggests that new store openings are what’s propping up the company’s profit growth, now that sales at H&M’s brick-and-mortar locations are declining on a per-square-meter basis.

If that is the case, Persson isn’t fazed. “Our strong expansion continues, we are gaining market share and we are confident that we can grow at a fast pace both through stores and online, in existing as well as in new markets, for many years to come,” he said today in a press releaseannouncing H&M’s quarterly earnings.

The company says it will add 425 stores this fiscal year, mostly in existing markets, but also expanding into new territory, such as New Zealand, Cyprus, and Puerto Rico.

Google is giving Chrome's app launcher the axe

The Chromium team says it's in an effort to further streamline the browser.

Image credit: Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

Justin Sullivan via Getty Images

Folks who favor launching Chrome appsfrom their dock on OSX or the taskbar on Windows rather than through the browser itself are bound to be disappointed by today's news. Google has announcedthat the Chrome App Launcher will be removed from the Apple, Linux and Microsoft operating systems. It's still safe on Chrome OS, though.

The internet juggernaut says that the removal will take place gradually over the coming months, starting with disabling the launcher upon initially installing a new application in a few weeks. The full-on end point is July -- three years after the launcher hit Windows. And in case your friends don't read Engadget, Google says it'll notify users that the launcher is going the way of the Tyrannosaurus.

It's part of Google's moves to make its browser less bloated, with the blog post explicitly citing last summer's removal of the Chrome notification centeras an example of those efforts. Here's to hoping that some of this results in the browser being less of a resource hog that strains even the most resilient ultrabook'sbattery life.

There’s a gaping hole in many brands’ “eco-friendly” practices

Despite abundant “green” labels and corporate sustainability reports, there’s a gaping hole in many brands’ efforts to run sustainable, eco-friendly businesses.

Despite abundant “green” labels and corporate sustainability reports, there’s a gaping hole in many brands’ efforts to run sustainable, eco-friendly businesses. Sourcing might be ethical and storefronts energy-efficient, but the supply chains linking manufacturing in China to sales abroad are surprisingly dirty, says new research from a US and Chinese watchdog partnership.

Together, China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) and the US-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) are trying to redefine how big companies think of sustainability. The two teamed up a few years ago, after IPE documented proof that Apple was sourcingfrom heavily polluting factories in China, an allegation Apple initially brushed aside. But once IPE enlisted NRDC’s help to prompt Apple to conduct an independent review in 2012, Apple vowed to clean up.

Now, NRDC and IPE are collaborating on an annual joint report(pdf) called the Corporate Information Transparency Index (CITI) to pull back the curtain on brands’ supply chains in China, the epicenter for global manufacturing. And its 2015 findings aren’t pretty: Only 28 of the 167 companiesreviewed were found to be operating in China at minimal acceptable standards.

Top scorers included Adidas, Levi’s, Panasonic, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and Hitachi. Apple has genuinely cleaned up after being called out by IPE and NRDC and led all brands. H&M, though its biggest challenge may be the sheer quantity of manufacturingit does, also scored highly, showing it’s committed to mitigating its huge footprint in China.

On the other end were brands such as Macy’s, Hyundai, Guess, Polo Ralph Lauren, Victoria’s Secret, and Chanel, according to the report.

Many environmental professionals arguethe worst pollution often happens in the supply chain. Luxury group Kering, owner of fashion brands such as Gucci and Saint Laurent, has found in its own audits that more than 90%of its environmental impact happens early in its supply chain. Yet factors at the end of the process—like the carbon footprint of a brand’s retail operations, or its recycling efforts—are what tend to attract the attention of more established indexes, such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Global Reporting Initiative, and Carbon Disclosure Project. As CITI notes, “Even a failing ‘grade’ in supply chain oversight will impact a company’s total sustainability score in these [other indexes] by only 5% or less.”

CITI makes an important addition to other prominent environmental indexes by focusing on the manufacturing process. And unlike most other sustainability indexes, CITI evaluates factories itself, rather than allowing brands to self-report their practices. (While it’d be great if corporations announced their own bad habits, Volkswagen’s and other car makers’ consistent fudging of emissions testssuggests they aren’t likely to do that.)

Here’s how it works: IPE examined factories in China that had an environmental complaint against them. It then researched which brands were sourcing from those factories, and made every effort to alert the brands to the problem.

IPE scored brands for sustainability based in part on how they responded, and according to other criteria it developed with NRDC. Brands earned points, for instance, by having a screening mechanism in place to check on their supplier factories, and for keeping track of where waste water from those factories ended up.

The unique methodology means that some brands, though high-scorers in other indexes, scored poorly on CITI. Nestlé, which was at the top of its categoryin the Dow Jones index, scored just 9 out of 100 possible points on CITI. GM, a high scorer in the Carbon Disclosure Project, scored 5.5 on CITI.

The Kering group has a robust sustainability program, yet in the category of leather goods, subsidiary Gucci scored only 3 points. Greer tells Quartz that the brand was “utterly unresponsive” when contacted about problems at a factory in China, which is surprising given that NRDC works closely with Kering on other projects.

In a statement to Quartz, a spokesperson for Gucci said:

“We wish to point out that all of Gucci’s leather goods products—like the ready-to-wear and shoes products categories—are manufactured in Italy, following with the utmost respect the highest standards in terms of quality and Italian craftsmanship that made Gucci one of the most respected Italian luxury fashion brands. Gucci made this point very clearly last year once asked about. As far as our brand is concerned, the outcome of the study is therefore to be considered incorrect.”

Scoring was handled entirely by the IPE, according to Greer, since they were on the ground in China and better positioned to understand local context around factory violations.

“These [factories] are thousands and thousands of miles away, so American consumers or consumers in Europe and these kinds of places are not viscerally connected with it,” says Greer.

She notes that CITI’s standards are the minimum that would be required of companies operating in the US. “It really reflects what a basic environmental-management program should look like,” she tells Quartz. “Despite the fact that we have the internet, and there are many, many incidents where people take pictures and they go viral, I still think that many of these companies are sort of hiding behind the opacity of their supply chain.”

Thanks to initiatives like CITI, that’s starting to change.

Wild Oyster Reef Death Doesn't Equal A Bivalve Shortage

Not to worry, there are still lots of these beauties around.

Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty Images

Not to worry, there are still lots of these beauties around.

Jean-Pierre Muller/AFP/Getty Images

Screaming headlines this week threatened of a wild oyster " apocalypse" and told foodies to eat upbefore these precious bivalves become extinct. That's because a report published in BioSciencesays 85 percent of wild oyster reefs are gone.

But Julie Qiu, who writes an all-things-oyster blog called In A Half Shell, says, "Stop panicking and get the facts."

Facts like this one: 95 percent of the oysters we slurp up at fancy restaurants and roadside shacks alike are farmed, not wild, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. So you're not likely to see a big change on your plate anytime soon.

Now, we're not quibbling with the environmental health facts about native oyster reef depletion. These reefs serve as barriersto land erosion, and the oysters themselves help filter and purify seawater, so less of them is bad.

"The [BioScience] report was really great about the environmental conditions of oysters today, but it didn't make the connection to the way we eat," Qiu tells Shots. And that led a lot of people to jump to conclusions, she says.

Wild oyster reef depletion is sad but old news. The Climatideblog reports that this data's been out for over a year. And we've done a dozen pieces already on the problems and restoration efforts underway in recent years, including this oneabout the depletion of oysters on the West Coast in 2008.

We'll no doubt do more stories on this, not to mention continue to keep tabs on oyster-related recalls, the status of the oyster business, and oyster safetyin the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill.

As NPR science correspondent (and King of Puns) Richard Harrisputs it, we need to say "Oyster-la-vista" to the hype about the vanishing oyster supply.

Google tests native desktop notifications for Chrome on Mac

Notifications from Chrome may soon behave like all of your other OS X pings.

Google Chrome already has its own desktop notificationsfor Windows and Mac to alert you to new Gmail messages and other updates. However, those pop-upson Apple machines act independently from all of the other OS X notifications, so you can't employ that handy Do Not Disturb option to keep them hidden or peruse 'em from the Notification Center.

The good news is it looks like Google's browser will soon offer the native push notifications on Mac as the feature is currently in testing. If you're feeling adventurous, you can give it a go by enabling the feature via this linkin Chrome. Be warned that the tool isn't without bugs just yet and what appears in the stable version browser differs from the unstable nightly builds pushed to Chrome Canary.

Army Corps Project Pits Farmland Against Flood Threat

A big, metal gate designed in 1914 to protect Cairo, Ill., from flood waters marks the entrance to the town.

A big, metal gate designed in 1914 to protect Cairo, Ill., from flood waters marks the entrance to the town. Today, Cairo's population has dwindled to about 2,800 due in large part to floods, evacuations and a suffering economy. Kristofor Husted/KBIA hide caption

toggle caption Kristofor Husted/KBIA

A big, metal gate designed in 1914 to protect Cairo, Ill., from flood waters marks the entrance to the town. Today, Cairo's population has dwindled to about 2,800 due in large part to floods, evacuations and a suffering economy.

Kristofor Husted/KBIA

For years, some small towns and farmers along the Mississippi River have been battling each other over a flood project set up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

On the western shore, farmers in southeast Missouri need the project to protect their valuable farmland. But small river towns on the eastern side of the river say the project protects those influential farmers at the cost of their small communities. As a last-ditch effort, the opposition to the project is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to kill the project all together.

Lynn Bock is the attorney for the St. John Levee and Drainage District in New Madrid, Mo. He lives at the southern end of the floodplain. Part of the levee system there follows the Mississippi River path. On the other side of the levee are thousands of acres of productive farmland.

"When you look at these fields, that's our strip mall. That's our economy in this part of the world," Bock says. "We make it or don't make it based on how farmers do."

The levee system here is part of a $165 million dollar projectcalled the New Madrid Floodway Project that's designed to protect the land around the Mississippi River. Farmers grow millions of dollars' worth of soybeans, corn, cotton and rice there.

A truck drives on top of a levee that protects a soybean field in New Madrid County, Mo., when the Mississippi River floods. Kristofor Husted/KBIA hide caption

toggle caption Kristofor Husted/KBIA

A truck drives on top of a levee that protects a soybean field in New Madrid County, Mo., when the Mississippi River floods.

Kristofor Husted/KBIA

The farmland isn't without its weaknesses, though. During major Mississippi River floods, the Army Corps diverts the excess water into this floodplain, called the New Madrid Floodway.

Now, the Corps wants to effectively separate the farmland from the river by completing the levee system and building an earthen wall along a 1,500-foot gap. This final levee would essentially cordon off the lucrative farmland in the floodway, protecting the crops from most floods. That's good for farmers west of the river, but maybe not so good for towns on the other side.

"[With] what we can produce in the floodway itself, in [those] 133,000 acres of farmland, we're able to feed on an annual basis about 1.3 million people," says Kevin Mainord, farmer and mayor of East Prairie, Mo. He says closing that gap is critical.

The levee system protects the farms most of the time, but every 75 years or so, a major flood slams the area. Then, the New Madrid Floodway has to be opened up and used as, well, a floodway.

That's what happened in the great flood of 2011. The floodwater was sweeping up to the edges of Cairo, Ill., a town of 2,800 with many low-income residents.

"We did everything imaginable to help people during that situation because it was awful," says Monica Smith, who works at the Cairo library. "People had to leave their homes that hadn't been out of their homes in years, and then some of them didn't have any place to go."

When the Army Corps planned to open up the floodway to help Cairo, the state of Missouri, backed by U.S. members of Congress, sued to stop the move. The state wanted to prevent damage to crops already planted. For two days, the floodwaters crept up on Cairo. Mayor Tyrone Coleman says after the town was evacuated, some stayed behind to fight the flood.

"We had to utilize inmates from the maximum [security] prison, Corps of Engineer personnel, National Guard, and then there were a number of local citizens that helped with sand bagging," he says.

After two intense and difficult days, Missouri lost the legal challenge and the Corps opened the floodway. But some say it was too little, too late. And after that flood, many residents never returned to Cairo.

Mayor Tyrone Coleman of Cairo, Ill., opposes the New Madrid Floodway project. A major flood in 2011 forced his town to evacuate. Kristofor Husted/KBIA hide caption

toggle caption Kristofor Husted/KBIA

Mayor Tyrone Coleman of Cairo, Ill., opposes the New Madrid Floodway project. A major flood in 2011 forced his town to evacuate.

Kristofor Husted/KBIA

On the other side, with the floodway open, the water wiped away many of crops. Many of those residents never returned either.

"The floodway was destroyed — completely," Mainord says. "There are probably seven residents that are living there now , where there were hundreds before the flood of 2011."

Now, the Army Corps wants to close off the last part of the levee system, and that's pitting some deep-pocketed farm owners against less wealthy towns like Cairo. Environmental groups, like the National Wildlife Federation, are also fighting the project. They say cutting off the floodway with a plug would be catastrophic for the 50,000 acres of wetland that fish and waterfowl call home.

Project engineer Danny Ward says the Corps' most recent environmental impact statement is meant to appease those concerns.

"We [sought] to balance the socioeconomic impacts associated with floods, as well as the environmental benefits derived from the flooding," he says.

The Corps says the new levee won't affect Cairo, and the floodway will still be used during historic floods. But Mayor Coleman, who had a front-row seat to the devastation in 2011, isn't buying it.

"You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what's happening here," Coleman says.

As a final play, Cairo has teamed up with other river towns and conservation groups to ask the Environmental Protection Agency to use part of the Clean Water Act to kill the entire project.

Sometime after March, the public will have a chance to comment on the project, after an independent panel reviews the Corps' most recent environmental impact statement.

This story comes to us from Harvest Public Media, a public radio reporting collaboration that focuses on agriculture and food production.

NewVoiceMedia Raises Another $50M For Its Cloud-Based Contact Centers

NewVoiceMedia , a UK-based provider of cloud-based contact solutions, is today announcing that it has raised another $50 million.

, a UK-based provider of cloud-based contact solutions, is today announcing that it has raised another $50 million. The company will use the funding to build out its business in America and Asia in order to compete with the likes of Inside Sales, LiveOps, inContact, carriers, and a number of regional providers.

With a long list like that, you can see where big funding might come in handy, but Jonathan Gale, the CEO of the company, tells me that this was only part of the impetus for raising the money.

The other simply had to do with seizing the moment as it was spotted by investors as well as NVM itself. “We had no plans to raise more so soon,” he tells me in an interview, “but the contact centre world is starting to migrate aggressively to the cloud and with customers coming off Cisco and Avaya on-premise solutions, we were seeing that they’re not even considering on-premise or hybrid anymore.”

NVM is not disclosing its current valuation except to say that it’s ‘big’. From what I understand it’s in the region of hundreds of millions but not net breaking 10 figures. The company told me last year that it had licensing revenues of $10 million for the year. Gale says that the projection is that this will grow 103 percent this year.

To date, NVM, which was founded in 2000, has raised $105 million. Nearly all of that has come in the last year-and-a-half (including $20 million in January 2013and $35 million in September 2013). This is another measure not just of current investor interest in the enterprise space, but of the need for those who are serious about leading in it needing to push ahead aggressively right now to grow.

“A number of investors were pursuing us,” Gale says. “We think there is a potential in growing faster and harder than you are already doing and to be more global in scale… I think that the market is quite reminiscent of the CRM market in 2001-2002 when it was aggressively transitioning to the cloud,” he adds.

The CRM comparison made by Gale is not by accident. This latest round, a Series E, was led by Technology Crossover Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Highland Capital Partners Europe, Eden Ventures, Notion Capital, plus one strategic investor: the cloud-based CRM giant Salesforce.

Salesforce had actually been a part of a previous, undisclosed round as well as this latest funding injection. And when you think about it, this makes a lot of sense: NewVoiceMedia is among the army of startups that have been leveraging the rise of cloud-based services to disrupt the world of enterprise IT, and it’s fitting that among the backers of this latest round is one of the bigger businesses to have benefitted and driven that move to cloud services.

It also helps that NVM has integrated very closely and easily with Salesforce for a long time now, and Gale tells me that it’s one of the strongest sales channels that his company has.

To date, NewVoiceMedia has been seeing strong interest from two types of businesses: those that work in sales and those in services, which each account for roughly half of its business. Gale says its customersare typically of the 2,000-seat size, but in his past experience at MessageLabs (now a part of Symantec), he recognises a cycle in progress.

“I recall enterprise customers that started really sniffing hard around your solution two to three years before they bought,” he says. “And I’m finding that we’re having those conversations now at NewVoiceMedia with the 5,000-10,000-seat customers who may not buy this year but are starting to factor that into the cycle for the future.”

As for where the money will be invested beyond marketing and sales, Gale says he “wouldn’t rule out” acquisitions, although the company has already built a healthy business growing organically by investing a lot in its own R&D.

Where investment is likely to be made is to help continue building out NVM’s infrastructure. In the UK, the company has its own data centers but more recently, outside of the country it’s moved its whole platform to Amazon, and now has six nodes globally on AWS, from previously running everything out of the UK. “That’s allowed us to expand quickly,” Gale says. The projection is that in the next year the company will add between 35-50 percent of its bookings from outside the UK.

Although NVM has just pulled in a Series E, the company is not making any commitments on what might happen next. “I wouldn’t rule anything in or out on the subject of an IPO,” Gale says. “We’re well capitalized and have a lot of money in the bank we are investing in growth. We don’t have any immediate plans to do anything other than focus on growing the business, doubling down and continuing to build out the product and our IP.”

And although it already sits very closely with Salesforce as a product, and now the CRM giant is an investor, Gale cautions against assuming this, or one of its legacy competitors, could become another exit route. “There is a place for an independent market leader in this space,” he says. “In two to three years, there could be an IPO or further private funding. We’re not focused on that at the moment. We’re delighted the maker is moving the way that it is.”

America loves women like Hillary Clinton–as long as they’re not asking for a promotion

It’s hard to remember these days, but just a few years ago, everybody loved Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It’s hard to remember these days, but just a few years ago, everybody loved Hillary Rodham Clinton. When she stepped down as US secretary of state in January 2013 after four years in office, her approval rating stood at what the Wall Street Journal described as an “eye-popping” 69%. That made her not only the most popular politician in the country, but the second-most popular secretary of state since 1948.

The 2012 “ Texts from Hillary ” meme, which featured a sunglasses-clad Clinton scrolling through her Blackberry aboard a military flight to Libya, had given rise to a flood of think pieces hailing her “ badass cool. ” The Washington Post wanted president Barack Obama to give vice president Joe Biden the boot and replace him with Clinton. Taking stock of Clinton’s approval ratings, Nate Silver noted in a 2012 piece for the New York Times that she currently held “remarkably high numbers for a politician in an era when many public officials are distrusted or disliked.”

How times have changed. “The FBI And 67 Percent of Americans Distrust Hillary Clinton,” booms a recent headline in the Huffington Post. Clinton’s favorability ratings currently hover around 40.8% . Bob Woodward complains that “there is something unrelaxed about the way she is communicating.” “Hillary’s personality repels me,” Walker Bragman writes in Salon .

How can we reconcile the “unlikable” Democratic presidential candidate of today with the adored politician of recent history? How can we reconcile the “ unlikable ” Democratic presidential candidate of today with the adored politician of recent history? It’s simple: Public opinion of Clinton has followed a fixed pattern throughout her career. Her public approval plummetswhenever she applies for a new position. Then it soarswhen she gets the job. The wild difference between the way we talk about Clinton when she campaigns and the way we talk about her when she’s in office can’t be explained as ordinary political mud-slinging. Rather, the predictable swings of public opinion reveal Americans’ continued prejudice against women caught in the act of asking for power.

We beg Clinton to run, and then accuse her of feeling “entitled” to win. Several feminist writers have analyzed the Clinton yo-yo. Melissa McEwan sees a deliberate pattern of humiliation , which involves “ building [Clinton] up and pressuring her to take on increasingly prominent public challenges, only to immediately turn on her and unleash breathtaking misogyny against her when she steps up to the plate.”

If you find this hypothesis unlikely, there’s Ann Friedman’s explanation: Clinton makes people uncomfortable by succeeding too visibly. Clinton is trapped in “ the catch-22 of female ambition ,” Friedman writes: “To succeed, she needs to be liked, but to be liked, she needs to temper her success.”

It’s not her success that seems to arouse ire, but the act of campaigning itself. Yet it seems odd that even when Clinton ascends to ever-greater positions of power—from first lady to senator, from senator to secretary of state—we start liking her again once she’s landed the job. It’s not her success that seems to arouse ire, but the act of campaigning itself.

This issue is not specific to Clinton. As Slate writer Jamelle Bouie has pointed out on Twitter, even progressive demigod Elizabeth Warren was seen as “unlikable” when she ran for the Massachusetts senate seat. Local outlets published op-eds about how women were being “turned off” by Warren’s “ know-it-all style”—a framing that’s indistinguishable from 2016 Clinton coverage. “ I’m asking her to be more authentic ,” a Democratic analyst for Boston radio station WBUR said of Warren. “I want her to just sound like a human being, not read the script that makes her sound like some angry, hectoring school marm.”

Once Warren made it to the Senate, she was lionized—right down to a Clinton-esque moment in which supporters begged her to run for President . Yet seeing Warren engaged in the actual act of running seems to freak people out.

Campaigning is not succeeding. It’s asking for success, and for power. To campaign is to publicly claim that you are better than the others (usually white men) who want the same job, and that a whole lot of people should work to place you in a more powerful position. In other words, campaigning is a transgressive act for women.

To campaign is to publicly claim that you are better than the others (usually white men) who want the same job. Women often find self-promotion difficult even outside the realm of politics. For example, a 2011 study found that men are four times more likely to ask for raises than their female co-workers. Women are much more likely than men to under-estimate their abilities. When they apply for jobs, they often refuse to even submit a resume unless they’re certain they have 100% of the requisite qualification s. (The qualification threshold for men is only 60%. Think about that the next time you wonder why on Earth Donald Trump thinks he should be president–or, for that matter, when Bernie Sanders insists that his lack of foreign policy experience compared to Clinton’s doesn’t matter, because he has better “judgment.”)

Articles on women’s workplace behavior are littered with tales of the “confidence gap” and “ impostor syndrome ”–that is, the recurring belief among high-achieving women that all of their achievements have been somehow accidental and are therefore undeserved. But the rare, lucky women who do manage to apply for higher-level jobs, advocate for fair wages, and feel good about themselves in the meantime may find that the “confidence gap” is less personal neurosis than sadly justified risk assessment. Women who put themselves forward in the same assertive, confident style as men are routinely found pushy, “bitchy,” or unlikable, and professionally penalized for that, too.

In politics, the pattern is no different. The so-called “ ambition gap ” begins in college. In both 2001 and 2011, women were 16 percentage points less likely than men to say they had thought about running for office, according to a study of nearly 4,000 Americans published in 2012 by the Women & Politics Institute. Women consider themselves less qualified for politics (again, men with the exact same qualifications as those women describe themselves as “very qualified” for the same positions), less interested in high-level positions and less likely to run for them.

Power-seeking men were seen as strong and competent. Power-seeking women were greeted by both sexes with “moral outrage.” When women do overcome the ambition gap, we punish them for it. One Harvard study found that “ when participants saw female politicians as power-seeking, they also saw them as having less communality (i.e., being unsupportive and uncaring), while this was not true for their perceptions of power-seeking male politicians.” Power-seeking men were seen as strong and competent. Power-seeking women were greeted by both sexes with “moral outrage.”

Thus, the single worst thing a female politician can do to herself is to look for a job in politics. We can accept women in power, but not women’s desire for more of it.

Would a victory in the primaries or general election cool down public anger toward Clinton—or increase it to record levels? As Friedman pointed out to me in conversation, there’s no way to know: “W hen you get to the level Hillary is at now … there’s no data. It’s just her.” As the only woman to ever be a leading contender for president, Clinton is the only case study we have about how gender impacts frontrunners. This gives us an incomplete picture, as Friedman notes, because it erases any complexity that arises from Clinton’s status as an individual, and imperfect, politician.

Personally, I think that we’ll start liking Clinton again sooner rather than later. After all, she can’t keep campaigning forever. If she loses the Democratic primaries or the general election, she’ll have run out of rungs to climb. The loss would let us forgive her. And if she makes it to the top, she’ll have reached a vantage point that she—and we—have never seen before. Up there, everything may look new.

We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.