This enormous scale has given WFC the ability to focus on their core growth strategy, which is cross-selling their very diversified list of financial products, including credit cards, mortgages, personal lines/loans, student loans, auto loans and wealth-management services.
Cross-selling has also led to a much higher ratio of products per customer, with a much longer tenure, as compared to other similar banks. Sanford and Bernstein report that at the end of the fourth quarter of 2012, the Wells Fargo retail-bank household cross-sell was 6.05 products per household, which was up from 5.93 a year earlier.
Wells Fargo management believes that they can increase this number to 8.0 per household, which is approximately half of their estimated potential demand for an average U.S. household. Sanford and Bernstein also state that at the end of the fourth quarter 2012, one in four households had eight or more products per household.
Some investors have been focused on WFC's reduction in net interest margin (NIM) and are expressing concern over the fact that it declined by 71 basis points from the first quarter 2010 through the fourth quarter 2012. A 71-basis-point reduction in NIM is significant, but this figure was negatively impacted because the bank enjoyed $172 billion in new deposits over that same period of time.
Understanding that management's focus is on cross-selling financial products and services, it becomes clear that the new deposits of $172 billion will create an enormous opportunity for growth in lending and fee generation, and possibly the NIM reduction is temporary. We could see more NIM reduction in the short-term, because it appears that the new bank deposits will keep coming.
According to a recent study by Sanford C. Bernstein, Wells Fargo is seeing enormous deposit growth in the northern plains states, which is a key area of the emerging U.S. energy boom. According to the rtls, business customers in that region are flooding the banks with new cash, and WFC had the most deposits in all five states.
Wells Fargo’s management team does not manage to NIM, but is more focused on net-interest income. Additionally, WFC has a balanced business model, with revenue diversification from their various lending activities across consumer and commercial customers, and by non-lending activities such as banking fees, trust and investment services fees, card fees and insurance.
During this period of time, when NIM was dropping, Wells Fargo still posted record earnings-per-share growth, which speaks to how important their revenue diversity is to the bottom line. In fact, WFC has recorded 12 consecutive quarters of EPS growth, including seven quarters of record EPS growth, all during a tough period of time that included substantial regulatory change, declining interest rates, uneven economic growth and European and Asian economic challenges.
Cross-selling has also led to a much higher ratio of products per customer, with a much longer tenure, as compared to other similar banks.
As an investor, we search for management teams that demonstrate concern for their shareholders, by being good stewards of our money. Wells Fargo continues to be shareholder focused, illustrated by their continued desire to return capital to shareholders through the payment of dividends and repurchase of shares and/or smart acquisitions.
Last season's Champions League winners went in front when Branislav Ivanovic - victim of Luis Suarez's bite - won a header which went in off Victor Moses, who claimed his third goal in as many Europa League games.
The visitors should have scored again prior to Fernando Torres striking the post before Cesar Azpilicueta was adjudged to have fouled Valentin Stocker and Fabian Schar converted an 87th-minute penalty. However, Chelsea responded and Luiz's late intervention earned the advantage ahead of next week's return at Stamford Bridge.
Chelsea, who had lost four of their five prior European away games, missed numerous chances and Luiz's shot skipped around the wall and inside the post after John Terry had been denied by goalkeeper Yann Sommer's point-blank save earlier in stoppage time.
Chelsea, playing in white, had to be patient as Basle started well before Azpilicueta raced down the right and crossed to the near post, where Lampard's prod towards goal was turned away for a corner by Sommer. Lampard's set-piece was met by Ivanovic, whose header deflected off Moses and bounced inside the far post.
Eden Hazard, playing centrally behind Torres, was doing his utmost to find openings in the Basle defence, but all too frequently Chelsea gave the ball away. Torres twice had half-chances before Lampard found Ramires and the Brazilian's dipping shot from the right was saved well by Sommer.
Much of the second half was disjointed and punctuated by mistakes as Chelsea were forced to repel repeated Basle attacks. Fabian Frei shot narrowly wide from the edge of the box and Cole received a yellow card for time wasting at a throw-in before Aleksandar Dragovic was booked for a sliding challenge on Torres, meaning the defender will now miss the second leg.
Hazard made way for Juan Mata and Lampard was replaced by Oscar as Chelsea's search for a second continued to prove elusive. Basle substitute Marcelo Diaz curled an effort narrowly wide and Cech collected at the feet of Mohamed Salah after the winger had been played in by Dragovic. But Chelsea found themselves level when Azpilicueta was ruled to have hauled down Stocker in the area and Schar sent the ball down the middle of Cech's goal.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Hannah Georgas turns angst into ear candy
Cathartic as the writing and recording of Hannah Georgas might have been, the creative process seemingly didn’t end on a high note. “Elephant”, the wounded, reverb-drowned lullaby that kicks off the album, was the last song completed, and it suggests that, by that point, the storm clouds had gathered round and the heavy rains rolled in. Over heart-flutter synths and jagged-glass guitar, Vancouver-based Hannah Georgas sings “As I age it sinks deeper in/This life is temporary/It’s all gonna end.” Just in case that’s not bleak enough, she follows that up with “I don’t wanna wake up one day thinking ‘What did I miss?’/I fear my own fate.”
“Elephant” is a bold artistic statement, mostly because Hannah Georgas is a record that finds the 29-year-old reshaping herself as a thinking person’s electro-pop artist, this being a departure from the singer-songwriter stylings of 2010’s This Is Good. The safe route would have been to kick things off with an instantly accessible shot of ear candy: the retro new-wave dance jam “Shortie” or the instantly addictive “Robotic”.
Reached on her cellphone on a busy morning in Vancouver, Georgas has no problem flashing back to what should have been a happy time. Unflinchingly mining her private life for inspiration, she’d just created a record that managed the difficult task of being catchy and accessible yet emotionally engaging. Still, things weren’t all lollipops and winning Lotto Max tickets, so there was no point pretending otherwise.
“I woke up one morning feeling down and out, and ‘Elephant’ just came out right away,” Georgas says with a wry laugh. “I phoned up and had a chat with my sister, complaining about how I was feeling sad. She was like, ‘Go write another song.’ I was like, ‘Fuck you! I hate when people say that.’ But I did sit down and write that last one for the Hands free access, funnily enough. I felt like I still had something to say. I was very emotional.”
Lest all of this make the singer sound more tortured than Morrissey, rest assured that Georgas couldn’t be more wonderful to talk to. Her interview with the Georgia Straight starts off with a conversation about guilty breakfast pleasures. Although Georgas was raised in one of those households where Cap’n Crunch is seen as the devil’s cereal, she’s making up for lost time now.
However, it’s not sugary cereals or the brilliance of seeing MC Hammer when she was a teen growing up in Newmarket, Ontario, that’s mostly on the mind of Georgas this morning, but rather the Juno Awards (which will take place three days after this interview). The singer is trying on dresses with a stylist, her fave pieces so far coming from two lines: Vancouver-based Obakki and Toronto’s Greta Constantine. This fashion session is important because she’s not only scheduled to perform “Robotic” at the Junos, but is also up for two awards for Hannah Georgas (alternative album of the year and songwriter of the year).
That the fall-of-2012 release has been a critical and commercial success shouldn’t surprise anyone. Georgas isn’t afraid to bare her soul on Hannah Georgas, and that’s connected with plenty of folks who can relate to her troubles. She confirms that she had plenty of personal turmoil leading up to the album; the beautiful downer “Somebody”, for instance, was sparked by her falling in love with a good friend. Lyrics such as “I know you don’t know what you do/What you do to me/But it hurts like hell” are a tip-off that the feeling wasn’t reciprocated. The upside of that, however, was that angst, as is so often the case, proved good for art.
“Starting on January 6 [2012], I rented a cabin on Salt Spring Island with no cellphone reception or Internet connection,” Georgas says. “I was there by myself, and then just kind of went to work. That was where everything sparked. Then I came back and made an effort to write every single day until basically the end of the summer. Lyrically, I guess that everything that I was going through at that time just kind of seeped to the surface. I was reflecting on relationships and relationships with friends. I tend to write from a personal standpoint. Even if what I’m writing isn’t personal, it’s about something that’s affected me.”
Helping her reshape her sound was Graham Walsh, a synth-obsessed member of Toronto analogue-electronica upstarts Holy Fuck. Georgas decamped to Hogtown, and then got busy retooling her sonic palette with brilliant results, laying the groundwork for songs like the driving keyboard pop of “Millions” and the futuristic dance-floor filler “Waiting Game”.
“I wanted to challenge myself, even with the demo and writing process,” she says. “I wanted to mess around more and have fun with the production. I played a lot with beats and keys and stuff like that on my computer, as opposed to the last record, where I had my songs on guitar and then just went into a friend’s studio, pressed Record, and played the songs on guitar, and then handed them to a producer to be fleshed out.
“This time I wanted more of an electronic element, and wanted someone who would really know how to realize that,” Georgas continues. “I thought that Graham Walsh would be an awesome fusion with my pop sensibilities, so I was like, ‘Yeah, I wanna work with that dude.’ The stars aligned.”
What might have pleased her most was how easy it was to change things up, perhaps because Walsh and Georgas meshed so well as a team.
“It’s important to find someone with the same musical vision, and who has the same musical taste,” she suggests. “One thing I found out with Graham is that he’d put on a record while we’d just be hanging out, and I’d be like, ‘What is this? This is so awesome.’ It was like ‘Man, you’ve got great taste in music. I like exactly what you like.’ ”
There’s genuine joy in her voice as she recalls this, suggesting there were far more great moments during the creation of Hannah Georgas than bad ones. The singer confirms that, despite what darker moments like “Elephant” and “Somebody” hint at, she indeed has been in a good place.
“I’ve been able to just do music for the last three or four years, and not do anything but focus my efforts on that,” Georgas acknowledges. “This has been my career, and I feel great about that. Being your own sort of business, you’re always having to think ahead and look at music differently, almost from a business perspective. It’s not like when I was 18 years old and was like ‘I just wanna play.’ Now I think about how I can make this work forever. But, yeah, I’m pretty happy.”
“Elephant” is a bold artistic statement, mostly because Hannah Georgas is a record that finds the 29-year-old reshaping herself as a thinking person’s electro-pop artist, this being a departure from the singer-songwriter stylings of 2010’s This Is Good. The safe route would have been to kick things off with an instantly accessible shot of ear candy: the retro new-wave dance jam “Shortie” or the instantly addictive “Robotic”.
Reached on her cellphone on a busy morning in Vancouver, Georgas has no problem flashing back to what should have been a happy time. Unflinchingly mining her private life for inspiration, she’d just created a record that managed the difficult task of being catchy and accessible yet emotionally engaging. Still, things weren’t all lollipops and winning Lotto Max tickets, so there was no point pretending otherwise.
“I woke up one morning feeling down and out, and ‘Elephant’ just came out right away,” Georgas says with a wry laugh. “I phoned up and had a chat with my sister, complaining about how I was feeling sad. She was like, ‘Go write another song.’ I was like, ‘Fuck you! I hate when people say that.’ But I did sit down and write that last one for the Hands free access, funnily enough. I felt like I still had something to say. I was very emotional.”
Lest all of this make the singer sound more tortured than Morrissey, rest assured that Georgas couldn’t be more wonderful to talk to. Her interview with the Georgia Straight starts off with a conversation about guilty breakfast pleasures. Although Georgas was raised in one of those households where Cap’n Crunch is seen as the devil’s cereal, she’s making up for lost time now.
However, it’s not sugary cereals or the brilliance of seeing MC Hammer when she was a teen growing up in Newmarket, Ontario, that’s mostly on the mind of Georgas this morning, but rather the Juno Awards (which will take place three days after this interview). The singer is trying on dresses with a stylist, her fave pieces so far coming from two lines: Vancouver-based Obakki and Toronto’s Greta Constantine. This fashion session is important because she’s not only scheduled to perform “Robotic” at the Junos, but is also up for two awards for Hannah Georgas (alternative album of the year and songwriter of the year).
That the fall-of-2012 release has been a critical and commercial success shouldn’t surprise anyone. Georgas isn’t afraid to bare her soul on Hannah Georgas, and that’s connected with plenty of folks who can relate to her troubles. She confirms that she had plenty of personal turmoil leading up to the album; the beautiful downer “Somebody”, for instance, was sparked by her falling in love with a good friend. Lyrics such as “I know you don’t know what you do/What you do to me/But it hurts like hell” are a tip-off that the feeling wasn’t reciprocated. The upside of that, however, was that angst, as is so often the case, proved good for art.
“Starting on January 6 [2012], I rented a cabin on Salt Spring Island with no cellphone reception or Internet connection,” Georgas says. “I was there by myself, and then just kind of went to work. That was where everything sparked. Then I came back and made an effort to write every single day until basically the end of the summer. Lyrically, I guess that everything that I was going through at that time just kind of seeped to the surface. I was reflecting on relationships and relationships with friends. I tend to write from a personal standpoint. Even if what I’m writing isn’t personal, it’s about something that’s affected me.”
Helping her reshape her sound was Graham Walsh, a synth-obsessed member of Toronto analogue-electronica upstarts Holy Fuck. Georgas decamped to Hogtown, and then got busy retooling her sonic palette with brilliant results, laying the groundwork for songs like the driving keyboard pop of “Millions” and the futuristic dance-floor filler “Waiting Game”.
“I wanted to challenge myself, even with the demo and writing process,” she says. “I wanted to mess around more and have fun with the production. I played a lot with beats and keys and stuff like that on my computer, as opposed to the last record, where I had my songs on guitar and then just went into a friend’s studio, pressed Record, and played the songs on guitar, and then handed them to a producer to be fleshed out.
“This time I wanted more of an electronic element, and wanted someone who would really know how to realize that,” Georgas continues. “I thought that Graham Walsh would be an awesome fusion with my pop sensibilities, so I was like, ‘Yeah, I wanna work with that dude.’ The stars aligned.”
What might have pleased her most was how easy it was to change things up, perhaps because Walsh and Georgas meshed so well as a team.
“It’s important to find someone with the same musical vision, and who has the same musical taste,” she suggests. “One thing I found out with Graham is that he’d put on a record while we’d just be hanging out, and I’d be like, ‘What is this? This is so awesome.’ It was like ‘Man, you’ve got great taste in music. I like exactly what you like.’ ”
There’s genuine joy in her voice as she recalls this, suggesting there were far more great moments during the creation of Hannah Georgas than bad ones. The singer confirms that, despite what darker moments like “Elephant” and “Somebody” hint at, she indeed has been in a good place.
“I’ve been able to just do music for the last three or four years, and not do anything but focus my efforts on that,” Georgas acknowledges. “This has been my career, and I feel great about that. Being your own sort of business, you’re always having to think ahead and look at music differently, almost from a business perspective. It’s not like when I was 18 years old and was like ‘I just wanna play.’ Now I think about how I can make this work forever. But, yeah, I’m pretty happy.”
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Violating state law
Recently, I’ve read several news reports about the potential mishandling of personal documents by the Missouri Department of Revenue. It appears that the DOR is violating state law and sharing private data with an out-of-state vendor. These stories immediately made me think of my most recent experience renewing my license.
In late February of this year, I went through the proper process to obtain my license. I pulled together my necessary information and was told I needed to bring a valid form of ID with me to the Department of Motor Vehicles. This did not concern me, as I’m always proactive in fending off identity theft and presumed that the ID would be so that the agent could verify that I am who I say I am.
When I arrived at the DMV, the agent requested my paperwork and a form of ID, so I handed him my papers and my passport. The agent told me nothing about the process, nor was I given any information to review. Instead, the agent simply looked over the paperwork and slid my passport into a small device that appeared to be a portable printer/copier. Again, I made the assumption that this was for the purpose of the agent verifying my identity. At no time was I informed that the process was, in fact, a scan of my data – nor was I told that this data would leave the building. Had that information been shared with me, I would have objected.
In the past, when I have renewed my license, I’ve received a new plastic card. This time, I was handed a sheet of paper with the license info printed on it, and was told that I would receive the actual card in three to four weeks. Surprised, I asked about the reason for this change. I was told – somewhat ambiguously – that there had been some “security issues” at some license offices, so the cards were now created in a centralized location for better security. This made a certain amount of sense, but at no time was I informed that my personal data was being transmitted outside of the DOR.
In retrospect, I now see that the information I was given was incorrect (and in some cases partially withheld) during the renewal process. This experience raises serious red flags for me. I am always diligent about protecting my personal data, in order to prevent identity theft – but how can I do so when a state agency refuses to be forthcoming about its uses of data? It’s time for the DOR to come clean about how they are using our data, where they are sending it, and why.
"While we have made progress in making food safer -- including cutting E. coli O157-related illnesses in half -- we still have work to do. As Salmonella rates continue to stagnate, we look forward to CSPI's support, and the support of other groups committed to food safety, of our efforts to reduce this dangerous foodborne pathogen, including modernization of the poultry inspection system."
In addition, the Environmental Working Group last week published an analysis of existing data on antibiotic-resistant bacteria contained in meat sold in supermarkets.
Eighty-one percent of ground chicken, 69% of pork chops, 55% of ground beef and 39% of chicken were found to contain the bacteria, the organization reported, citing data from a February Food and Drug Administration report. Antibiotic resistance reduces doctors' options to treat you if you become ill.
On Monday, the Environmental Working Group published the latest version of its "dirty dozen" fruits and vegetables. The advocacy group describes it as a consumer shoppers' guide to determine which types of produce pose the highest threat of pesticides.
Although pesticides are not a cause of foodborne illness, produce can be a source of food poisoning. In 2012, cantaloupes, spinach and spring mix salad and mangoes were linked to outbreaks.
Improving food safety begins before the products ever reach the consumer, at the slaughterhouse and in the fields, but "being careful in the kitchen is also very important," said Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases.
A CDC study published in 2010 once again highlighted the fact that young children can be exposed to raw meat and poultry products while riding in shopping carts, particularly if they ride in the basket of the cart.
Researchers suggest that parents keep their child away from these products, which could be leaking juices carrying bacteria, by placing their child in the cart's seat, and not place meat or poultry products in the seat while shopping to avoid contamination.
All consumers can benefit from separating their raw meat, poultry and seafood purchases from other food products to prevent cross-contamination.
In late February of this year, I went through the proper process to obtain my license. I pulled together my necessary information and was told I needed to bring a valid form of ID with me to the Department of Motor Vehicles. This did not concern me, as I’m always proactive in fending off identity theft and presumed that the ID would be so that the agent could verify that I am who I say I am.
When I arrived at the DMV, the agent requested my paperwork and a form of ID, so I handed him my papers and my passport. The agent told me nothing about the process, nor was I given any information to review. Instead, the agent simply looked over the paperwork and slid my passport into a small device that appeared to be a portable printer/copier. Again, I made the assumption that this was for the purpose of the agent verifying my identity. At no time was I informed that the process was, in fact, a scan of my data – nor was I told that this data would leave the building. Had that information been shared with me, I would have objected.
In the past, when I have renewed my license, I’ve received a new plastic card. This time, I was handed a sheet of paper with the license info printed on it, and was told that I would receive the actual card in three to four weeks. Surprised, I asked about the reason for this change. I was told – somewhat ambiguously – that there had been some “security issues” at some license offices, so the cards were now created in a centralized location for better security. This made a certain amount of sense, but at no time was I informed that my personal data was being transmitted outside of the DOR.
In retrospect, I now see that the information I was given was incorrect (and in some cases partially withheld) during the renewal process. This experience raises serious red flags for me. I am always diligent about protecting my personal data, in order to prevent identity theft – but how can I do so when a state agency refuses to be forthcoming about its uses of data? It’s time for the DOR to come clean about how they are using our data, where they are sending it, and why.
"While we have made progress in making food safer -- including cutting E. coli O157-related illnesses in half -- we still have work to do. As Salmonella rates continue to stagnate, we look forward to CSPI's support, and the support of other groups committed to food safety, of our efforts to reduce this dangerous foodborne pathogen, including modernization of the poultry inspection system."
In addition, the Environmental Working Group last week published an analysis of existing data on antibiotic-resistant bacteria contained in meat sold in supermarkets.
Eighty-one percent of ground chicken, 69% of pork chops, 55% of ground beef and 39% of chicken were found to contain the bacteria, the organization reported, citing data from a February Food and Drug Administration report. Antibiotic resistance reduces doctors' options to treat you if you become ill.
On Monday, the Environmental Working Group published the latest version of its "dirty dozen" fruits and vegetables. The advocacy group describes it as a consumer shoppers' guide to determine which types of produce pose the highest threat of pesticides.
Although pesticides are not a cause of foodborne illness, produce can be a source of food poisoning. In 2012, cantaloupes, spinach and spring mix salad and mangoes were linked to outbreaks.
Improving food safety begins before the products ever reach the consumer, at the slaughterhouse and in the fields, but "being careful in the kitchen is also very important," said Dr. Robert Tauxe, deputy director of the CDC's Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases.
A CDC study published in 2010 once again highlighted the fact that young children can be exposed to raw meat and poultry products while riding in shopping carts, particularly if they ride in the basket of the cart.
Researchers suggest that parents keep their child away from these products, which could be leaking juices carrying bacteria, by placing their child in the cart's seat, and not place meat or poultry products in the seat while shopping to avoid contamination.
All consumers can benefit from separating their raw meat, poultry and seafood purchases from other food products to prevent cross-contamination.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Commbank’s queue buster
While it might be Australia’s largest financial institution with more than a century of history, CommBank’s latest project pits it against tablet manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung and software developers such as Square. The bank announced its intention to build Albert – essentially a hybrid between an EFTPOS terminal and a consumer tablet – in July last year and is on track to launch it within the next few months.
Albert uses CommBank’s Pi operating system based on Android. This is all new development since the technical specifications were only made available at the time of the announcement eight months ago. “Any Android developer can use our software development kit and create whatever application they need, with the exception that they can’t try to take a payment any other way because we have to make sure it’s secure,” Bayer Rosmarin says.
“Not only that, but our customers themselves, the big ones, can develop their own applications that are specific and unique to their organisation.”
The idea of Albert is to free sales assistants from standing behind a cash register, so they can serve customers and take payments on the shop floor.
Retailers can either integrate their existing point-of-sales (POS) software and inventory systems into the payment processing function on Albert, or use apps to handle the sale.
“We found from consumers that one of the things they uniformly hate is standing in queues, yet most retail environments are designed around the idea that people have to queue,” Bayer Rosmarin says.
“We wanted to untether the device and make it possible for the payment to come to you. From an application perspective, we also wanted to make the payment interaction much richer and enable our customers to differentiate their experience at that critical moment.”
There are already apps that can process payments on an existing iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, such as those offered by Square and CommBank’s own Leo product for iPhone and iPod Touch.
The difference with Albert is that the tablet has been custom built for taking payments and is manufactured with a slot where customers insert a card and a chip reader. Customers enter their PIN through an encrypted keypad on the touchscreen, which CommBank says is a world first.
CommBank has not moved into hardware manufacturing itself – the bank worked with design consultancy IDEO and then outsourced production to a German company Wincor Nixdorf, which makes ATMs and EFTPOS terminals, to build the tablet. The commercial deal gives Wincor Nixdorf control over the intellectual property for the hardware, while the bank retains ownership of Pi.
CommBank’s existing product, Leo, takes card payments through a case integrated with an iPhone or iPod Touch. Leo has functions such as splitting the bill but CommBank is limited by the need to get approval from Apple to release via the App Store. Bayer Rosmarin says this approach would not work for a generic tablet, because there are no cases in production that would allow transactions to be done chip and pin to keep down fraud rates.
“Tablets don’t really work in the real world and the reason is that in Australia … there is a strong preference for transactions to be done chip and pin,” she says. “It’s not a long-term solution especially where taking money is concerned. It’s a whole different level and we know what criminal gangs do when they target ATMs and EFTPOS terminals. If we could have used a tablet that was out there ... we absolutely would have. We could have waited for someone to come up with a solution or we could have said ‘no, the time is right to change this industry and if no one else is doing it, then we’ll step up’.”
She says that many larger companies did not want to equip staff with iPads or other tablets more expensive than an EFTPOS terminal that would be “objects of consumer desire” for a transient workforce.
CommBank will approve Pi-based apps for Albert and release them through the App Bank. Bayer Rosmarin says some of the third-party apps in the pipeline include catalogue display, inventory top-ups and redemption of marketing offers at the point of sale. CommBank is also developing a number of apps in-house, including tools to split the bill, tip service staff or donate to charity, email a receipt or keep an open tab at a bar or local store.
There is also a business assistant function to help store owners reconcile transactions at the end of the day and provide such data as payment type and location of credit card customers.
The digital strategist for retail consultancy Retail Oasis, Nicole Venter, says the Albert device could be great for retailers. “It’s good to see Commbank continuing to innovate beyond the curve, creating a very flexible POS system and completely changing the approach from what is quite a locked development process to an open one, directly asking the consumer (or developer in this case) to tell them what they want.”
However, Venter says the fact the product is from a specific bank rather than a generic payment provider such as Google, PayPal, BPay, or Visa would limit global uptake and some retailers would be put off by this.
Albert uses CommBank’s Pi operating system based on Android. This is all new development since the technical specifications were only made available at the time of the announcement eight months ago. “Any Android developer can use our software development kit and create whatever application they need, with the exception that they can’t try to take a payment any other way because we have to make sure it’s secure,” Bayer Rosmarin says.
“Not only that, but our customers themselves, the big ones, can develop their own applications that are specific and unique to their organisation.”
The idea of Albert is to free sales assistants from standing behind a cash register, so they can serve customers and take payments on the shop floor.
Retailers can either integrate their existing point-of-sales (POS) software and inventory systems into the payment processing function on Albert, or use apps to handle the sale.
“We found from consumers that one of the things they uniformly hate is standing in queues, yet most retail environments are designed around the idea that people have to queue,” Bayer Rosmarin says.
“We wanted to untether the device and make it possible for the payment to come to you. From an application perspective, we also wanted to make the payment interaction much richer and enable our customers to differentiate their experience at that critical moment.”
There are already apps that can process payments on an existing iOS or Android smartphone or tablet, such as those offered by Square and CommBank’s own Leo product for iPhone and iPod Touch.
The difference with Albert is that the tablet has been custom built for taking payments and is manufactured with a slot where customers insert a card and a chip reader. Customers enter their PIN through an encrypted keypad on the touchscreen, which CommBank says is a world first.
CommBank has not moved into hardware manufacturing itself – the bank worked with design consultancy IDEO and then outsourced production to a German company Wincor Nixdorf, which makes ATMs and EFTPOS terminals, to build the tablet. The commercial deal gives Wincor Nixdorf control over the intellectual property for the hardware, while the bank retains ownership of Pi.
CommBank’s existing product, Leo, takes card payments through a case integrated with an iPhone or iPod Touch. Leo has functions such as splitting the bill but CommBank is limited by the need to get approval from Apple to release via the App Store. Bayer Rosmarin says this approach would not work for a generic tablet, because there are no cases in production that would allow transactions to be done chip and pin to keep down fraud rates.
“Tablets don’t really work in the real world and the reason is that in Australia … there is a strong preference for transactions to be done chip and pin,” she says. “It’s not a long-term solution especially where taking money is concerned. It’s a whole different level and we know what criminal gangs do when they target ATMs and EFTPOS terminals. If we could have used a tablet that was out there ... we absolutely would have. We could have waited for someone to come up with a solution or we could have said ‘no, the time is right to change this industry and if no one else is doing it, then we’ll step up’.”
She says that many larger companies did not want to equip staff with iPads or other tablets more expensive than an EFTPOS terminal that would be “objects of consumer desire” for a transient workforce.
CommBank will approve Pi-based apps for Albert and release them through the App Bank. Bayer Rosmarin says some of the third-party apps in the pipeline include catalogue display, inventory top-ups and redemption of marketing offers at the point of sale. CommBank is also developing a number of apps in-house, including tools to split the bill, tip service staff or donate to charity, email a receipt or keep an open tab at a bar or local store.
There is also a business assistant function to help store owners reconcile transactions at the end of the day and provide such data as payment type and location of credit card customers.
The digital strategist for retail consultancy Retail Oasis, Nicole Venter, says the Albert device could be great for retailers. “It’s good to see Commbank continuing to innovate beyond the curve, creating a very flexible POS system and completely changing the approach from what is quite a locked development process to an open one, directly asking the consumer (or developer in this case) to tell them what they want.”
However, Venter says the fact the product is from a specific bank rather than a generic payment provider such as Google, PayPal, BPay, or Visa would limit global uptake and some retailers would be put off by this.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
From Android to iPhone: The First 24 Hours
After four years of using Android smartphones every day, I decided to make the switch to iOS. I’ve experienced many ups and downs with Android, but couldn’t help but wonder what things could be like on the other side. Now that T-Mobile carries the iPhone, my transition is complete. A lot of impressions are formed after getting a new device, so I decided to recall my first full day of iPhone ownership.
I’ve been around the iPhone for a long time, but I’ve never spent an extended amount of time with one. My first impressions after taking it out of the box was how light and solid the phone feels. I understood why people love phones that aren’t mostly constructed out of plastic. It just feels good to hold. I loved the whole design of the phone until I got around to the nano SIM tray. I hate the nano SIM tray. I didn’t get a dedicated tool to open it, so I had to use a paper clip. The last thing I wanted to do with my shiny new iPhone 5 was risk scratching it with a paper clip. But since I needed the SIM card number for activation, I had no choice.
I took to the smaller 4-inch screen better than I thought I would. I made some typing errors due to the decreased screen size, but it’s nothing I won’t get used to. I will say it’s nice to be able to operate my phone with one hand again. Fiddling around with a 4.5-inch screen and dropping it on my face in bed was starting to get irritating.
As for the iOS UI design – well, it’s kind of boring. I know a lot of people have been saying iOS has become stale and I have to agree. I’m not asking for a bunch of widgets everywhere, I just think Apple should do something different with iOS. If it were to create an equivalent of widgets, I’d be happy if they were applied in a way similar to Action Launcher for Android. A simple swipe on an app’s icon automatically brings up its widget. It saves space and provides access to a decent amount of information. I think the overall design of iOS is far surpassed by Android at this point.
Regardless of all the bells and whistles, no phone would be worth any money if its performance is bad. That said, I’m loving the performance. Chrome works better on iOS compared to Android, and all the apps I tried were smooth. It’s nice knowing everything I download will be compatible with my phone. I’m sure some apps will crash on occasion but I like not having to worry about if a certain app supports my phone.
The answer depends on how you define 'nearly': do you adhere to the Oxford English definition of 'very close to, almost', or the popular newspaper definition of 'somebody said they knew somebody who thought it might happen'? If it's the former, alas we can only tell you that no, Colonel Gaddafi did not nearly buy Crystal Palace once. If it's the latter, then ding-ding-ding, you're a winner! Yes, Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi did indeed nearly buy Crystal Palace!
The story broke in July 2004. The club's chairman Simon Jordan was making no secret of the fact that he wanted to sell the club and do one – "I don't enjoy football anymore" – and told reporters he'd heard that Colonel Gaddafi and his son Al-Saadi were interested. "If they did [make an offer]," he said, "I would consider it." Having invested a fortune that could otherwise have been spent on self-tanning products, Jordan would probably have considered selling to anyone with the readies, but fans were less than enthused by the thought of the Libyan leader taking over the club's affairs. His nickname – Mad Dog – may have suggested wicked bantz but most were troubled by the provenance of the money involved. "There's giving someone a second chance," a club shop assistant called Lucy Kirby told the Telegraph, "but that's going too far."
"Gaddafi is not a name which necessarily inspires enthusiasm from the British public," said Jordan, who also conceded that any deal would carry "a degree of stigma". But the deal might have been the one to secure Palace's hard-won Premier League status. "At the end of the day," said Jordan, "many people might see Roman Abramovich's involvement at Chelsea as less than palatable, but he is moving the club forward. If Gaddafi's money was able to progress Palace and allow them to compete at the top of the tree and be a successful football club, then one would have to take that into consideration."
Gaddafi already owned a 5% stake in Juventus after purchasing shares using the state-owned Libya Arab Foreign Investment Company, and had previously been linked with buying a similar sized stake in Liverpool, so the story was not completely outlandish (although we're not sure how much credibility Al-Saadi's oft-mentioned spell at Perugia really lent things, having lasted only 15 minutes). In fact, the BBC set a business reporter to work on what the deal might mean for Palace: "Libya is sitting on almost $1.5 trillion (￡801bn) worth of oil. Enough to buy rather a lot of David Beckhams and Wayne Rooneys."
It was only a matter of days before hopes of a team full of Beckhams and Rooneys (imagine the card count! They haven't thought this through) were killed stone dead, however, when a spokesman for the Libyans said: "Mr Gaddafi had been informed about the rumours that bounded him to a possible interest to buy Crystal Palace, but he knew nothing and he isn't involved in this situation."
I’ve been around the iPhone for a long time, but I’ve never spent an extended amount of time with one. My first impressions after taking it out of the box was how light and solid the phone feels. I understood why people love phones that aren’t mostly constructed out of plastic. It just feels good to hold. I loved the whole design of the phone until I got around to the nano SIM tray. I hate the nano SIM tray. I didn’t get a dedicated tool to open it, so I had to use a paper clip. The last thing I wanted to do with my shiny new iPhone 5 was risk scratching it with a paper clip. But since I needed the SIM card number for activation, I had no choice.
I took to the smaller 4-inch screen better than I thought I would. I made some typing errors due to the decreased screen size, but it’s nothing I won’t get used to. I will say it’s nice to be able to operate my phone with one hand again. Fiddling around with a 4.5-inch screen and dropping it on my face in bed was starting to get irritating.
As for the iOS UI design – well, it’s kind of boring. I know a lot of people have been saying iOS has become stale and I have to agree. I’m not asking for a bunch of widgets everywhere, I just think Apple should do something different with iOS. If it were to create an equivalent of widgets, I’d be happy if they were applied in a way similar to Action Launcher for Android. A simple swipe on an app’s icon automatically brings up its widget. It saves space and provides access to a decent amount of information. I think the overall design of iOS is far surpassed by Android at this point.
Regardless of all the bells and whistles, no phone would be worth any money if its performance is bad. That said, I’m loving the performance. Chrome works better on iOS compared to Android, and all the apps I tried were smooth. It’s nice knowing everything I download will be compatible with my phone. I’m sure some apps will crash on occasion but I like not having to worry about if a certain app supports my phone.
The answer depends on how you define 'nearly': do you adhere to the Oxford English definition of 'very close to, almost', or the popular newspaper definition of 'somebody said they knew somebody who thought it might happen'? If it's the former, alas we can only tell you that no, Colonel Gaddafi did not nearly buy Crystal Palace once. If it's the latter, then ding-ding-ding, you're a winner! Yes, Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi did indeed nearly buy Crystal Palace!
The story broke in July 2004. The club's chairman Simon Jordan was making no secret of the fact that he wanted to sell the club and do one – "I don't enjoy football anymore" – and told reporters he'd heard that Colonel Gaddafi and his son Al-Saadi were interested. "If they did [make an offer]," he said, "I would consider it." Having invested a fortune that could otherwise have been spent on self-tanning products, Jordan would probably have considered selling to anyone with the readies, but fans were less than enthused by the thought of the Libyan leader taking over the club's affairs. His nickname – Mad Dog – may have suggested wicked bantz but most were troubled by the provenance of the money involved. "There's giving someone a second chance," a club shop assistant called Lucy Kirby told the Telegraph, "but that's going too far."
"Gaddafi is not a name which necessarily inspires enthusiasm from the British public," said Jordan, who also conceded that any deal would carry "a degree of stigma". But the deal might have been the one to secure Palace's hard-won Premier League status. "At the end of the day," said Jordan, "many people might see Roman Abramovich's involvement at Chelsea as less than palatable, but he is moving the club forward. If Gaddafi's money was able to progress Palace and allow them to compete at the top of the tree and be a successful football club, then one would have to take that into consideration."
Gaddafi already owned a 5% stake in Juventus after purchasing shares using the state-owned Libya Arab Foreign Investment Company, and had previously been linked with buying a similar sized stake in Liverpool, so the story was not completely outlandish (although we're not sure how much credibility Al-Saadi's oft-mentioned spell at Perugia really lent things, having lasted only 15 minutes). In fact, the BBC set a business reporter to work on what the deal might mean for Palace: "Libya is sitting on almost $1.5 trillion (￡801bn) worth of oil. Enough to buy rather a lot of David Beckhams and Wayne Rooneys."
It was only a matter of days before hopes of a team full of Beckhams and Rooneys (imagine the card count! They haven't thought this through) were killed stone dead, however, when a spokesman for the Libyans said: "Mr Gaddafi had been informed about the rumours that bounded him to a possible interest to buy Crystal Palace, but he knew nothing and he isn't involved in this situation."
Thursday, April 11, 2013
A Q&A With Cheryl Strayed
At last night’s Library Foundation of Los Angeles ALOUD event, which featured the New York Times best selling author in conversation with High County News contributing editor Judith Lewis Mernit, one of the first things Strayed shared with the small, intimate audience was how, as a young girl in graduate school, she coped with her mother’s untimely death: “I had sex with men and women and all kinds of things. Actually, just men and women.” The crowd erupted with laughter.
Strayed’s purple-prose memoir, Wild, has received bountiful acclaim (Dwight Garner! George Saunders! Oprah!) since its release last year. The book chronicles her impulsive decision to hike over 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail—alone—four years after losing her mother. She charmed last night’s crowd with her candor, wit, and occasional use of profanity; here, she continues the trend, revealing her innermost thoughts on teaching life lessons to strangers, the extent to which memory (or lack thereof) determines truth, and the authors you should be paying attention to right now.
In maybe two or three articles that were written about me, a couple of journalists had called me an overnight success or used that kind of phrasing. I wouldn’t say it’s the predominant thing that’s been said, but I guess what I just do is correct people wherever I can. Often at my events I talk about how Wild is my second book, and people seem kind of surprised by that. In all of my talks, in some way I try to inform people about the situation beyond Wild, what’s happening in the literary culture of the United States. So many of the good books that are being written aren’t bestsellers. I was a successful writer before Wild had become a best seller, had achieved all of the things I had set out to do, and I talk about that. People don’t mean to be insulting, but we forget that just because we haven’t heard of someone, it doesn’t mean they’re not an amazing writer.
My first impulse was to ask myself that question. It didn’t take me very long—a matter of minutes—to move past that. Our best advice comes from a variety of sources: friends, parents, a stranger at the grocery store. You don’t know where wisdom is going to come from. When I undertook to write that Dear Sugar column, I thought, this is what I’ve been doing as a writer, asking those questions: What does it mean to be human? Who are we, really? We all know that real humans are more contradictory than any of us would like to believe—a mix of positive and negative, dark and light. As a writer, it’s my job to wrestle with those things, both with my self and with the characters on the page. Undertaking other people’s situations just seemed natural.
I am of the camp that you should really do your very best to tell the truth in non-fiction. In non-fiction, you’re saying, this actually happened to me. I think the events that you’re writing about should be objectively true. Did she hike this trail when she said she did? Yes. Did she meet these people? Yes. These memoirs that have been uncovered to be fake have given memoir this bad rap. It really does muddy the waters of readers understanding what this form is: a highly subjective telling of an objective truth. I took great care in Wild to write what happened as I remember it.
Does non-fiction have more power as a genre? I don’t think so, not truly—I can be as moved by fiction as I can by non-fiction. But when it comes to marketing and publicizing, people tend to be attracted to true stories. I know this because when I was on tour for Torch, people would always ask about the non-fiction aspects. I think fiction is harder, at the outset, to sink into. Once I read that Frey was initially trying to sell that book as a novel, I felt a lot of sympathy for him. I can see how what happened to him ended up happening. Like many first novels, Frey’s book is very autobiographical in nature. There’s a writer said something like, “We used to have a different word for memoirs: a first novel.” I think that [Frey’s] agent couldn’t sell it as a novel, so they tried to sell it as a memoir. I also think, without knowing every little in and out about the book, that a whole lot of it is true. Here’s this book and it’s like, 82% true; the other 18 percent is exaggeration, composite characters and omissions. Let’s just let it be. Why should that emotional reaction change if a reader finds out that not everything is true? I’m not saying I condone lying, but I’m saying why not make room for this form? People think that [my first novel,] Torch is mostly a memoir. But no, it’s a novel. We always want to push our fiction toward non-fiction and our non-fiction towards fiction. Why can’t we have a novel that meets in the middle?
It wasn’t written as a retrospective, but I wanted to bring that to bear on the work. To me, [the past and present selves,] they can’t even be separated. Inevitably, the person I am now is the person who’s writing. That’s why I think it’s good that I didn’t write the story in Wild right after it happened—I let the story marinate, and by that point, I couldn’t even pretend to be the 26-year-old me. In the book, I don’t say much about my life now. I mention it a little in the penultimate paragraph of the book; there’s a thing where I leap forward and say, “Looking back…,” but everything else, I write it as if it’s right back then. I thought the inclusion of the older self would weigh down the narrative.
I was absolutely a fiction writer first. And I still think of myself as a fiction writer, but as a non-fiction writer, too. I didn’t find it hard to cross over because they’re very similar—I try to achieve the same things in both forms: make the sentences come alive. The only difference is, one toolbox has “what actually happened” plus “anything I feel like making up,” and the other toolbox only has “what actually happened.” They feel very similar to me; I move back and forth between the two. One of the things that’s funny about fiction, you’re in this genre where you have license to make up anything you want, but so often, the weirder things actually happen in non-fiction. If I put a crazy, real story into a novel, people would think it’s too much. It would seem contrived.
Strayed’s purple-prose memoir, Wild, has received bountiful acclaim (Dwight Garner! George Saunders! Oprah!) since its release last year. The book chronicles her impulsive decision to hike over 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail—alone—four years after losing her mother. She charmed last night’s crowd with her candor, wit, and occasional use of profanity; here, she continues the trend, revealing her innermost thoughts on teaching life lessons to strangers, the extent to which memory (or lack thereof) determines truth, and the authors you should be paying attention to right now.
In maybe two or three articles that were written about me, a couple of journalists had called me an overnight success or used that kind of phrasing. I wouldn’t say it’s the predominant thing that’s been said, but I guess what I just do is correct people wherever I can. Often at my events I talk about how Wild is my second book, and people seem kind of surprised by that. In all of my talks, in some way I try to inform people about the situation beyond Wild, what’s happening in the literary culture of the United States. So many of the good books that are being written aren’t bestsellers. I was a successful writer before Wild had become a best seller, had achieved all of the things I had set out to do, and I talk about that. People don’t mean to be insulting, but we forget that just because we haven’t heard of someone, it doesn’t mean they’re not an amazing writer.
My first impulse was to ask myself that question. It didn’t take me very long—a matter of minutes—to move past that. Our best advice comes from a variety of sources: friends, parents, a stranger at the grocery store. You don’t know where wisdom is going to come from. When I undertook to write that Dear Sugar column, I thought, this is what I’ve been doing as a writer, asking those questions: What does it mean to be human? Who are we, really? We all know that real humans are more contradictory than any of us would like to believe—a mix of positive and negative, dark and light. As a writer, it’s my job to wrestle with those things, both with my self and with the characters on the page. Undertaking other people’s situations just seemed natural.
I am of the camp that you should really do your very best to tell the truth in non-fiction. In non-fiction, you’re saying, this actually happened to me. I think the events that you’re writing about should be objectively true. Did she hike this trail when she said she did? Yes. Did she meet these people? Yes. These memoirs that have been uncovered to be fake have given memoir this bad rap. It really does muddy the waters of readers understanding what this form is: a highly subjective telling of an objective truth. I took great care in Wild to write what happened as I remember it.
Does non-fiction have more power as a genre? I don’t think so, not truly—I can be as moved by fiction as I can by non-fiction. But when it comes to marketing and publicizing, people tend to be attracted to true stories. I know this because when I was on tour for Torch, people would always ask about the non-fiction aspects. I think fiction is harder, at the outset, to sink into. Once I read that Frey was initially trying to sell that book as a novel, I felt a lot of sympathy for him. I can see how what happened to him ended up happening. Like many first novels, Frey’s book is very autobiographical in nature. There’s a writer said something like, “We used to have a different word for memoirs: a first novel.” I think that [Frey’s] agent couldn’t sell it as a novel, so they tried to sell it as a memoir. I also think, without knowing every little in and out about the book, that a whole lot of it is true. Here’s this book and it’s like, 82% true; the other 18 percent is exaggeration, composite characters and omissions. Let’s just let it be. Why should that emotional reaction change if a reader finds out that not everything is true? I’m not saying I condone lying, but I’m saying why not make room for this form? People think that [my first novel,] Torch is mostly a memoir. But no, it’s a novel. We always want to push our fiction toward non-fiction and our non-fiction towards fiction. Why can’t we have a novel that meets in the middle?
It wasn’t written as a retrospective, but I wanted to bring that to bear on the work. To me, [the past and present selves,] they can’t even be separated. Inevitably, the person I am now is the person who’s writing. That’s why I think it’s good that I didn’t write the story in Wild right after it happened—I let the story marinate, and by that point, I couldn’t even pretend to be the 26-year-old me. In the book, I don’t say much about my life now. I mention it a little in the penultimate paragraph of the book; there’s a thing where I leap forward and say, “Looking back…,” but everything else, I write it as if it’s right back then. I thought the inclusion of the older self would weigh down the narrative.
I was absolutely a fiction writer first. And I still think of myself as a fiction writer, but as a non-fiction writer, too. I didn’t find it hard to cross over because they’re very similar—I try to achieve the same things in both forms: make the sentences come alive. The only difference is, one toolbox has “what actually happened” plus “anything I feel like making up,” and the other toolbox only has “what actually happened.” They feel very similar to me; I move back and forth between the two. One of the things that’s funny about fiction, you’re in this genre where you have license to make up anything you want, but so often, the weirder things actually happen in non-fiction. If I put a crazy, real story into a novel, people would think it’s too much. It would seem contrived.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Rocky's Road
On the afternoon of Nov. 2, 2011, Rocky Huff was running late. It was a mild, cloudy Wednesday in Calgary, and he was to pick up his 13-year-old daughter, Keelee, from school. To her, the day seemed like any other. She was looking forward to ringette practice. Keelee and her older sister played on top-level volleyball, ringette and softball teams, and the family schedule was all sports, all the time. Rocky coached girls’ softball and volleyball, with weekends often consumed by out-of-town games. The softball team made nationals three years in a row. “Alberta’s best girls,” Rocky would boast, and the players and parents were equally fond of him. He seemed indefatigable.
Keelee waited for her dad. An hour passed, then another. Rocky finally pulled up in his 2003 Pontiac Sunfire. Keelee spotted her old LG cellphone on the seat in the car. Weird, she thought. It had stopped working a year prior. Rocky muttered something about getting it fixed.
He was acting strangely. That morning, he’d had a goatee. Now he did not. He told Keelee she couldn’t go to ringette today and they argued. After relenting and dropping Keelee off at practice, Rocky stopped at a liquor store for wine and beer. He called his wife, Debra. “Meet me at home,” he said. He was ready to tell the truth. The clothes he’d worn that morning, stained red, told part of it. He suspected his marriage would be over.
At their home in Auburn Bay, on the southernmost edge of the city, Rocky poured a glass of wine for Debra. He said he’d done something terrible and began to weep. Debra’s world began its implosion. Did he hurt somebody? He’s not violent; did he hit somebody while driving? The awful possibilities clattered around her mind. An affair?
That weekend, Debra composed an e-mail to be sent to family, friends, teachers and parents of kids Rocky had coached. “This is, without a doubt, the hardest e-mail I have ever written,” she typed. “The news is out—as some of you already may know—and it is the unfortunate truth. Rocky has been suffering from depression since his bout with cancer in 2006 and hit rock bottom on the morning of November 2nd. He robbed a bank.”
Rocky is now 47 and drives a tow truck for a living. His face is carved with deep lines. Although he looks like he’s led a hardscrabble life, he speaks with the thoughtful softness of a librarian. He moved to Calgary at age 19 to work in a cardboard-manufacturing plant after growing up in Medicine Hat and Burstall, Sask. Debra met him at a slo-pitch tournament where he was umpiring. He made a call she didn’t like. Debra kicked shale at him. “The rest is history,” Debra told me.
I learned of Rocky’s story unexpectedly this past January. I work with Debra, 49, at United Way of Calgary and Area, where she is an executive assistant. She’s the kind of person who ensures everyone on our team has a place to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, and if not, would they like to join her family for dinner? We assumed someone had quit when our team was summoned to a last-minute meeting one morning. That day’s Calgary Herald carried this headline: “Desperate, ill father pleads guilty to robbing bank.”
In 2006, after years of smoking, Rocky had received a bleak medical diagnosis: throat cancer. Subsequent radiation treatments destroyed his teeth, and he lived on Ensure, fed to him through a tube. Within months, he dropped from a beefy 255 pounds to a gaunt 156. He always felt cold and napped constantly. Sometimes he would sleep in the bathtub eight hours a day to stay warm, waking up briefly to add more hot water. Staff at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre informed Rocky and Debra of counselling options, but they never gave it any consideration. They thought they didn’t need it.
Despite his illness, Rocky dragged himself to Keelee’s and Casey-May’s games. He felt a little self-conscious, being so thin, but he wanted to be there. His own parents had divorced when he was three, and when Rocky played baseball as a kid he did so alone. “I think my mom came out to one game,” Rocky said. “I always resented that somewhat, because there was nobody to back me up. I think maybe that’s why I’ve gone overboard with our girls.”
He kept coaching, and in late 2007 it looked like the radiation treatments were successful. He gave his renewed energy to his daughters’ sports, starting a new volleyball club for girls who didn’t make other club teams. “The sports became almost an obsession,” said Debra. “He was very involved in a positive way, but that’s where he focused all of his attention. It was his escape. It was his happy place.” Parents valued Rocky’s passion but he was dedicated almost to a fault, as one family recalled later. How could you put that much energy toward youth sports and have anything left for yourself?
At home, Rocky was different. “Unless it had to do with sports, it almost seemed like there wasn’t really a purpose or drive for him to be part of it,” Rocky’s 17-year-old daughter, Casey-May, told me. “He was just tired all the time.” After the cancer battle, he wound down a promotions company that he and Debra had run for more than a decade. He worked from home, buying jewelry from American companies hit by the recession, and reselling it online. He had some success with this and other ventures, but his post-cancer work efforts never really took off. He lacked focus and had trouble concentrating. Debra noticed him becoming more withdrawn, lying on the couch for hours at a time. Rocky stopped going to church and no longer wanted to visit family friends. When Debra brought up his reclusiveness, he’d say everything was fine. “I denied it,” Rocky said. “I just thought I was lazy, and still sick to some extent.”
His behaviour annoyed Debra. She wanted to tell him: Get up and get going already. She figured he could cheer up if he chose to. “It was just that simple to me,” Debra said. “When I was growing up, if someone was depressed, we’d be like, ‘Come on. Shake your head. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Get off the pity pot.’ But it wasn’t that simple.” The couple had no language for what was happening.
Rocky started borrowing money rather than earning it, and he told Debra he had jobs he didn’t have. On weekdays, he woke up early and left the house until she went to work. Then he’d come back home, go to bed and sleep all day. Unbeknownst to Debra, the Huffs were going deep into debt. “I was on this self-destructive course,” Rocky said. “I was drinking every morning and covering up lie after lie after lie. Outside of softball, probably 90 per cent of my life that whole year was a lie.” Sports were his only truth, and in September 2011, after softball finished for the year, that was gone, too. He entered a deep darkness and saw no way out.
Keelee waited for her dad. An hour passed, then another. Rocky finally pulled up in his 2003 Pontiac Sunfire. Keelee spotted her old LG cellphone on the seat in the car. Weird, she thought. It had stopped working a year prior. Rocky muttered something about getting it fixed.
He was acting strangely. That morning, he’d had a goatee. Now he did not. He told Keelee she couldn’t go to ringette today and they argued. After relenting and dropping Keelee off at practice, Rocky stopped at a liquor store for wine and beer. He called his wife, Debra. “Meet me at home,” he said. He was ready to tell the truth. The clothes he’d worn that morning, stained red, told part of it. He suspected his marriage would be over.
At their home in Auburn Bay, on the southernmost edge of the city, Rocky poured a glass of wine for Debra. He said he’d done something terrible and began to weep. Debra’s world began its implosion. Did he hurt somebody? He’s not violent; did he hit somebody while driving? The awful possibilities clattered around her mind. An affair?
That weekend, Debra composed an e-mail to be sent to family, friends, teachers and parents of kids Rocky had coached. “This is, without a doubt, the hardest e-mail I have ever written,” she typed. “The news is out—as some of you already may know—and it is the unfortunate truth. Rocky has been suffering from depression since his bout with cancer in 2006 and hit rock bottom on the morning of November 2nd. He robbed a bank.”
Rocky is now 47 and drives a tow truck for a living. His face is carved with deep lines. Although he looks like he’s led a hardscrabble life, he speaks with the thoughtful softness of a librarian. He moved to Calgary at age 19 to work in a cardboard-manufacturing plant after growing up in Medicine Hat and Burstall, Sask. Debra met him at a slo-pitch tournament where he was umpiring. He made a call she didn’t like. Debra kicked shale at him. “The rest is history,” Debra told me.
I learned of Rocky’s story unexpectedly this past January. I work with Debra, 49, at United Way of Calgary and Area, where she is an executive assistant. She’s the kind of person who ensures everyone on our team has a place to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas, and if not, would they like to join her family for dinner? We assumed someone had quit when our team was summoned to a last-minute meeting one morning. That day’s Calgary Herald carried this headline: “Desperate, ill father pleads guilty to robbing bank.”
In 2006, after years of smoking, Rocky had received a bleak medical diagnosis: throat cancer. Subsequent radiation treatments destroyed his teeth, and he lived on Ensure, fed to him through a tube. Within months, he dropped from a beefy 255 pounds to a gaunt 156. He always felt cold and napped constantly. Sometimes he would sleep in the bathtub eight hours a day to stay warm, waking up briefly to add more hot water. Staff at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre informed Rocky and Debra of counselling options, but they never gave it any consideration. They thought they didn’t need it.
Despite his illness, Rocky dragged himself to Keelee’s and Casey-May’s games. He felt a little self-conscious, being so thin, but he wanted to be there. His own parents had divorced when he was three, and when Rocky played baseball as a kid he did so alone. “I think my mom came out to one game,” Rocky said. “I always resented that somewhat, because there was nobody to back me up. I think maybe that’s why I’ve gone overboard with our girls.”
He kept coaching, and in late 2007 it looked like the radiation treatments were successful. He gave his renewed energy to his daughters’ sports, starting a new volleyball club for girls who didn’t make other club teams. “The sports became almost an obsession,” said Debra. “He was very involved in a positive way, but that’s where he focused all of his attention. It was his escape. It was his happy place.” Parents valued Rocky’s passion but he was dedicated almost to a fault, as one family recalled later. How could you put that much energy toward youth sports and have anything left for yourself?
At home, Rocky was different. “Unless it had to do with sports, it almost seemed like there wasn’t really a purpose or drive for him to be part of it,” Rocky’s 17-year-old daughter, Casey-May, told me. “He was just tired all the time.” After the cancer battle, he wound down a promotions company that he and Debra had run for more than a decade. He worked from home, buying jewelry from American companies hit by the recession, and reselling it online. He had some success with this and other ventures, but his post-cancer work efforts never really took off. He lacked focus and had trouble concentrating. Debra noticed him becoming more withdrawn, lying on the couch for hours at a time. Rocky stopped going to church and no longer wanted to visit family friends. When Debra brought up his reclusiveness, he’d say everything was fine. “I denied it,” Rocky said. “I just thought I was lazy, and still sick to some extent.”
His behaviour annoyed Debra. She wanted to tell him: Get up and get going already. She figured he could cheer up if he chose to. “It was just that simple to me,” Debra said. “When I was growing up, if someone was depressed, we’d be like, ‘Come on. Shake your head. Quit feeling sorry for yourself. Get off the pity pot.’ But it wasn’t that simple.” The couple had no language for what was happening.
Rocky started borrowing money rather than earning it, and he told Debra he had jobs he didn’t have. On weekdays, he woke up early and left the house until she went to work. Then he’d come back home, go to bed and sleep all day. Unbeknownst to Debra, the Huffs were going deep into debt. “I was on this self-destructive course,” Rocky said. “I was drinking every morning and covering up lie after lie after lie. Outside of softball, probably 90 per cent of my life that whole year was a lie.” Sports were his only truth, and in September 2011, after softball finished for the year, that was gone, too. He entered a deep darkness and saw no way out.
Monday, April 8, 2013
GEO executive investigated in son's domestic-violence case
Thomas Wierdsma was asked by a Boulder attorney during a court deposition in 2011 if it was wrong to give false testimony to a federal agency.
The senior vice president for The GEO Group Inc., the largest provider of contract prison and immigration detention services for the U.S. government, lowered his head and thought for a few seconds before answering.
The GEO Group and his company's close connections with federal immigration authorities to have his former daughter-in-law deported after she reported his son, Charles Wierdsma, to police for domestic violence.
A jury in that civil case last year found Wierdsma guilty of outrageous conduct for the actions he took after his son was arrested and convicted of regularly beating his Hungarian-born wife, Beatrix Szeremi, for more than a year. Boulder District Attorney Stan Garrett's office is investigating Thomas Wierdsma for possible criminal culpability in the matter related to his interference with the victim.
GEO Group contracts with the U.S. government to run 111 for-profit, so-called "turnkey" facilities. They include the Aurora Detention Center that GEO Group operates for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The company also operates the Southern Peaks Regional Treatment Center in Ca?on City and five reporting centers for supervised detainees around the state.
Group's website as senior vice president of project development for a company that does more than half its business with the federal government and last year reported revenues of $1.48 billion.
Neither Thomas nor Charles Wierdsma's attorneys returned calls asking for comment.
Thomas Wierdsma's jump from behind-the-scenes corporate executive to defendant happened in the spring of 2011 after his then-daughter-in-law fled a beating in her home one morning and called Boulder police, according to a police report.
Szeremi, a Hungarian immigrant with a green card making her a legal resident, had married Charles Wierdsma a year earlier after the two met through the eHarmony Internet dating site.
According to police reports, Charles Wierdsma had repeatedly beaten and threatened to suffocate and drown Szeremi over the course of their marriage before she finally reported the abuse. She told family and friends about the beatings, and they had photographed some of her injuries, but she also told them and investigators that she had been afraid to go to police.
Charles Wierdsma was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, third-degree assault and false imprisonment. A restraining order banned him from having any contact with Szeremi.
Thomas Wierdsma became involved when he tried to evict her from the Boulder home where she and Charles Wierdsma had been living. The elder Wierdsma owned the home. He also pressured her in texts and phone calls to delete photos of her bruised face from her Facebook page, according to court documents.
After she refused, he sent her an e-mail complaining about that and stating: "I will be copying the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement with this and other information. As you know, I funded the legal work and processing fees for you to become a citizen but am now disappointed in your actions which now require legal proceedings."
A week later, the elder Wierdsma, from an Alaskan cruise ship, sent a letter to an attorney representing Szeremi. He wrote that he would be involving ICE, "with all relevant information, including her social media postings, legal actions required for her eviction and other information we possess regarding her application for citizenship."
In court-documented e-mail exchanges between Thomas and Charles Wierdsma during that time, the two discuss how deportation could be used to their advantage.
Charles Wierdsma wrote to his father that Szeremi's attorneys "have threats from our side to use the heavy hand of GEO to get Beatrix out of the country. This should be our bargaining chip going forward, not theirs."
Several weeks later, Thomas Wierdsma wrote: "Let's drop the immigration issue and particularly any involvement of Geo. If I elect to get in touch with immigration after she is evicted, that is my business and in no way related to what is currently going on."
After Thomas Wierdsma began his eviction proceedings against Szeremi, she filed a counterclaim alleging a laundry list of wrongs, including victim intimidation, abuse of process, outrageous conduct and civil conspiracy against Thomas Wierdsma, and assault, battery, false imprisonment, outrageous conduct and negligence against Charles Wierdsma.
That is when the details of the physical abuse as well as the abuse of power got a public airing, including a video of Thomas Wierdsma's threats and deposition admissions that Szeremi's attorney, John Pineau, posted on YouTube.
After a week-long trial, a jury in that civil case found that both Wierdsmas had exhibited outrageous behavior and awarded Szeremi $1.2 million. The judge later lowered the damages to $12,000, based on a state law that limits punitive damages.
Szeremi has appealed that ruling, a matter that is expected to take several more years to move through the court system.
Catherine Olguin of the Boulder District Attorney's Office said an investigator is working the case on the criminal end and that it would likely take several more months before a decision is made about criminal charges against Thomas Wierdsma. If he is charged, it could be tied to witness tampering, witness retaliation or witness intimidation.
The senior vice president for The GEO Group Inc., the largest provider of contract prison and immigration detention services for the U.S. government, lowered his head and thought for a few seconds before answering.
The GEO Group and his company's close connections with federal immigration authorities to have his former daughter-in-law deported after she reported his son, Charles Wierdsma, to police for domestic violence.
A jury in that civil case last year found Wierdsma guilty of outrageous conduct for the actions he took after his son was arrested and convicted of regularly beating his Hungarian-born wife, Beatrix Szeremi, for more than a year. Boulder District Attorney Stan Garrett's office is investigating Thomas Wierdsma for possible criminal culpability in the matter related to his interference with the victim.
GEO Group contracts with the U.S. government to run 111 for-profit, so-called "turnkey" facilities. They include the Aurora Detention Center that GEO Group operates for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The company also operates the Southern Peaks Regional Treatment Center in Ca?on City and five reporting centers for supervised detainees around the state.
Group's website as senior vice president of project development for a company that does more than half its business with the federal government and last year reported revenues of $1.48 billion.
Neither Thomas nor Charles Wierdsma's attorneys returned calls asking for comment.
Thomas Wierdsma's jump from behind-the-scenes corporate executive to defendant happened in the spring of 2011 after his then-daughter-in-law fled a beating in her home one morning and called Boulder police, according to a police report.
Szeremi, a Hungarian immigrant with a green card making her a legal resident, had married Charles Wierdsma a year earlier after the two met through the eHarmony Internet dating site.
According to police reports, Charles Wierdsma had repeatedly beaten and threatened to suffocate and drown Szeremi over the course of their marriage before she finally reported the abuse. She told family and friends about the beatings, and they had photographed some of her injuries, but she also told them and investigators that she had been afraid to go to police.
Charles Wierdsma was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence, third-degree assault and false imprisonment. A restraining order banned him from having any contact with Szeremi.
Thomas Wierdsma became involved when he tried to evict her from the Boulder home where she and Charles Wierdsma had been living. The elder Wierdsma owned the home. He also pressured her in texts and phone calls to delete photos of her bruised face from her Facebook page, according to court documents.
After she refused, he sent her an e-mail complaining about that and stating: "I will be copying the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement with this and other information. As you know, I funded the legal work and processing fees for you to become a citizen but am now disappointed in your actions which now require legal proceedings."
A week later, the elder Wierdsma, from an Alaskan cruise ship, sent a letter to an attorney representing Szeremi. He wrote that he would be involving ICE, "with all relevant information, including her social media postings, legal actions required for her eviction and other information we possess regarding her application for citizenship."
In court-documented e-mail exchanges between Thomas and Charles Wierdsma during that time, the two discuss how deportation could be used to their advantage.
Charles Wierdsma wrote to his father that Szeremi's attorneys "have threats from our side to use the heavy hand of GEO to get Beatrix out of the country. This should be our bargaining chip going forward, not theirs."
Several weeks later, Thomas Wierdsma wrote: "Let's drop the immigration issue and particularly any involvement of Geo. If I elect to get in touch with immigration after she is evicted, that is my business and in no way related to what is currently going on."
After Thomas Wierdsma began his eviction proceedings against Szeremi, she filed a counterclaim alleging a laundry list of wrongs, including victim intimidation, abuse of process, outrageous conduct and civil conspiracy against Thomas Wierdsma, and assault, battery, false imprisonment, outrageous conduct and negligence against Charles Wierdsma.
That is when the details of the physical abuse as well as the abuse of power got a public airing, including a video of Thomas Wierdsma's threats and deposition admissions that Szeremi's attorney, John Pineau, posted on YouTube.
After a week-long trial, a jury in that civil case found that both Wierdsmas had exhibited outrageous behavior and awarded Szeremi $1.2 million. The judge later lowered the damages to $12,000, based on a state law that limits punitive damages.
Szeremi has appealed that ruling, a matter that is expected to take several more years to move through the court system.
Catherine Olguin of the Boulder District Attorney's Office said an investigator is working the case on the criminal end and that it would likely take several more months before a decision is made about criminal charges against Thomas Wierdsma. If he is charged, it could be tied to witness tampering, witness retaliation or witness intimidation.
Monday, April 1, 2013
Meeting Philip Smart
Like King Jammy and Scientist, Philip Smart was a student of the late great Jamaican dub pioneer KING TUBBY, who gave him the chance to learn the art of sound engineering. At Tubby's he mixed classics like Johnny Clarke's "None Shall Escape the Judgment" for producer Bunny “Striker” Lee, who gave him the title "Prince Philip." But unlike Tubby's other students, Smart relocated to the U.S. in the late 1970s, taking classes in multitrack production and radio in New York. After working for various producers in Brooklyn and the Bronx, Smart established HC&F Studios in Freeport, Long Island, which rapidly became the center of New York's thriving reggae scene.
As I walked into the studio in the f-r-ee-zing NYC weather Philip Smart is laying on the couch taking the weight off his feet waiting for us to arrive. Unfortunately the drive down had taken a detour as the sattelite nav got confused with directions. After initially ending up on Freeport the 'street' in Brooklyn we finally made our way to Freeport the 'area' in Long Island!
But eventually we arrive and we’re really lucky to have caught Philip as his voice was super croaky. He soooo needs to be at home keeping warm and not hanging out in an air-conditioned studio with dancehalll beats on loop—in the middle of a session. But he's a man of his word and everything is irie.
Philip has a lot of knowledge to share but that doesn't mean he's automatically gonna give it all up. I am humbled at being at his legendary studio and frankly I think he sees this and decides to let me into his world—I feel privileged.
The first project recorded at HC&F was Monyaka's "Go Deh Yaka," a crossover hit that charted in the UK. JAH LIFE recorded many of his most important projects here including BARRINGTON LEVY's "Murderer" and CARLTON LIVINGSTON's "100 Weight of Collie Weed," which inspired hip-hop hits like BDP's "100 Guns" and JA RULE & FAT JOE's smash "New York."
New York dancehall was often viewed with a certain skepticism by reggae purists, but HC&F soon earned a reputation as the best studio in New York to get the authentic Jamaican reggae sound. Artists like SUPER CAT, SHABBA RANKS, and SHAGGY all made some of the most important music of their careers at Philip's studio.
That’s when you know what’s really up! I for one had no idea at age 12 what I was gonna be doing as an adult. Some of my fantasy career occupations have ranged from pharmacist (more parental pressure than fantasy) to Playboy Bunny (complete fantasy) but Philip was SMART from the get-go I guess, So listen up as one of the pioneers of the NYC reggae scene tells his own tale.
“My dear friend who has passed away now, Augustus Pablo, we got together and started to produce some songs... Pablo had his mobile disco; I had mine, and that’s how we got together and started to produce.”
“Pablo plays piano and melodica and he has a piano at home, so he worked out the songs at home—and we’re still in school, we’re in high school. Save up some lunch money, book a HALF an hour in those days.
''I had no idea. Cause when you’re in music, it’s a world by itself. We put so much time and energy into producing a song or learning how to mix a record or whatever it is that you don’t have time for anything else.”
“That would be a lesson to kids now: if you don’t start from early I don’t think it makes sense to start because if you’re 21 and you’re trying to get into the business it’s already late—unless you’ve got tons of money to push what you want to do through.”
''We started to take the mixes and then go over to Tubby’s and cut them on acetate to play them on the sound. That was the connection. I used to go there every evening and just stand there and watch. Until one day him say ‘Jackson, take that voice!’ So I had to just get behind the board and record the voice.
''Yeah I was scared when him say that. I never knew he would ever say that. He was also evolving. His business was expanding and he actually needed someone to fit in while he dealt with the business. So that’s where I came in. And I got behind the chair and started to do sessions.”
“He actually taught me to cut a dub. I broke a few number of needles, which made him mad—needles cost money and they were hard to get. But once I got it down we were cutting dubs like we were pressing records.”
“I got tired of working with just four tracks. I wanted to learn more about multi-tracking, and also about radio. I did a radio stint in Jamaica on JBC FM. I had a half an hour segment of the hottest American hits. I said ‘I like radio,’ so I came to America to do a class in radio for like three months and get my certificate. Plus my mother wanted me to get my green card before I got too old."
“So I came up, did that. And then I went back home and worked back for Tubs again. After that I said, ‘Bwoy, I still need to learn more.’ Plus I met my wife before I left in New York. So I came back up and got married.”
“I worked for various producers at various studios. I started building a clientele based on my credits. There was a record store in the Bronx named Brads. He used to produce a lot of records. He used to pick me up every night. Luckily the studio was close to my home in Brooklyn. And we did multiple albums. You ever heard of an album called Macka Dub? We did that one together.”
As I walked into the studio in the f-r-ee-zing NYC weather Philip Smart is laying on the couch taking the weight off his feet waiting for us to arrive. Unfortunately the drive down had taken a detour as the sattelite nav got confused with directions. After initially ending up on Freeport the 'street' in Brooklyn we finally made our way to Freeport the 'area' in Long Island!
But eventually we arrive and we’re really lucky to have caught Philip as his voice was super croaky. He soooo needs to be at home keeping warm and not hanging out in an air-conditioned studio with dancehalll beats on loop—in the middle of a session. But he's a man of his word and everything is irie.
Philip has a lot of knowledge to share but that doesn't mean he's automatically gonna give it all up. I am humbled at being at his legendary studio and frankly I think he sees this and decides to let me into his world—I feel privileged.
The first project recorded at HC&F was Monyaka's "Go Deh Yaka," a crossover hit that charted in the UK. JAH LIFE recorded many of his most important projects here including BARRINGTON LEVY's "Murderer" and CARLTON LIVINGSTON's "100 Weight of Collie Weed," which inspired hip-hop hits like BDP's "100 Guns" and JA RULE & FAT JOE's smash "New York."
New York dancehall was often viewed with a certain skepticism by reggae purists, but HC&F soon earned a reputation as the best studio in New York to get the authentic Jamaican reggae sound. Artists like SUPER CAT, SHABBA RANKS, and SHAGGY all made some of the most important music of their careers at Philip's studio.
That’s when you know what’s really up! I for one had no idea at age 12 what I was gonna be doing as an adult. Some of my fantasy career occupations have ranged from pharmacist (more parental pressure than fantasy) to Playboy Bunny (complete fantasy) but Philip was SMART from the get-go I guess, So listen up as one of the pioneers of the NYC reggae scene tells his own tale.
“My dear friend who has passed away now, Augustus Pablo, we got together and started to produce some songs... Pablo had his mobile disco; I had mine, and that’s how we got together and started to produce.”
“Pablo plays piano and melodica and he has a piano at home, so he worked out the songs at home—and we’re still in school, we’re in high school. Save up some lunch money, book a HALF an hour in those days.
''I had no idea. Cause when you’re in music, it’s a world by itself. We put so much time and energy into producing a song or learning how to mix a record or whatever it is that you don’t have time for anything else.”
“That would be a lesson to kids now: if you don’t start from early I don’t think it makes sense to start because if you’re 21 and you’re trying to get into the business it’s already late—unless you’ve got tons of money to push what you want to do through.”
''We started to take the mixes and then go over to Tubby’s and cut them on acetate to play them on the sound. That was the connection. I used to go there every evening and just stand there and watch. Until one day him say ‘Jackson, take that voice!’ So I had to just get behind the board and record the voice.
''Yeah I was scared when him say that. I never knew he would ever say that. He was also evolving. His business was expanding and he actually needed someone to fit in while he dealt with the business. So that’s where I came in. And I got behind the chair and started to do sessions.”
“He actually taught me to cut a dub. I broke a few number of needles, which made him mad—needles cost money and they were hard to get. But once I got it down we were cutting dubs like we were pressing records.”
“I got tired of working with just four tracks. I wanted to learn more about multi-tracking, and also about radio. I did a radio stint in Jamaica on JBC FM. I had a half an hour segment of the hottest American hits. I said ‘I like radio,’ so I came to America to do a class in radio for like three months and get my certificate. Plus my mother wanted me to get my green card before I got too old."
“So I came up, did that. And then I went back home and worked back for Tubs again. After that I said, ‘Bwoy, I still need to learn more.’ Plus I met my wife before I left in New York. So I came back up and got married.”
“I worked for various producers at various studios. I started building a clientele based on my credits. There was a record store in the Bronx named Brads. He used to produce a lot of records. He used to pick me up every night. Luckily the studio was close to my home in Brooklyn. And we did multiple albums. You ever heard of an album called Macka Dub? We did that one together.”
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