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Reese Witherspoon is partnering with a joint venture, between The Chernin Group and AT&T Inc. called Otter Media. They are forming a new multimedia company, called ‘Hello Sunshine’, which focuses on sharing stories about women. Witherspoon’s role in the partnership will be her production company, called Pacific Standard. The company has produced films titled, “Gone Girl” and “Wild”. They also have an upcoming series for HBO, titled “Big Little Lies”. Being a subsidiary of the Hello Sunshine Company, Pacific Standard will continue to produce films and TV shows, while also focusing on short produced digital content designed for social media.

In 2014, Media Executive Peter Chernin partnered with AT&T and formed Otter Media to capitalize on the popular streaming video industry. More than $500 million was invested to finance and/or launch new companies in the industry. This new venture will give AT&T the opportunity to get a share of a marketplace that is limited on content designed for women and by women. According to USC-Annenberg, only 28.7% of the speaking roles for films were female characters, and only 15% of the directors in the industry were women.

In 2012, Witherspoon partnered with producer Bruna Papandrea to launch Pacific Standard. Their goal was to have more women on both sides of the camera. Recently, Papandrea left Pacific Standard and started a new venture. The portfolio of Otter Media includes, social marketing agency McBeard, digital studio Gunpowder & Sky, and Fullscreen Media, the owner of Rooster Teeth digital studio. Some of Otter Media’s other investments include gaming space, which has a VRV and Crunchyroll video service, and Japanese anime. In the beginning of 2016, Otter Media acquired Barstool Sports, a sports media company.

Next year, AT&T plans to close on a deal to purchase Time Warner Inc. It was announced last week that Time Warner’s studio, Warner Bros. made a deal to purchase a competitor of Fullscreen, Machinima.

Since the day that people knew there was a Facebook, the company has been constantly changing and getting better. At one point, the social media giant was a place to meet people in your local area and beyond. You could find lost friends and make new ones. I still remember the day that my cousin told me about the platform. He showed a lady friend that he was able to get back in touch with and I decided to get an account of my own.

As time went on, Facebook began to incorporate sharing photos and videos. Next, you had groups formed on the program. Then, they gave us video games. Next, came the ads. Some look down on the ads, but it is a lot of where people learn about new products and events. With advertising, there are metrics involved for reaching your audience. This system provides a more realistic view of who is showing interest in your ad or video. This also goes for people that are randomly uploading videos.

Facebook began with a metric that was called, “video views to 100%”. It tracks the amount of video that is watched by a viewer. The ads team for Facebook felt that it was necessary to upgrade the metric to what they call “video watches to 100%” This takes it a step further to tracking the completed audio and the completed video. It is estimated that the count of watches will increase by 35%.

Adweek spoke with the head of Facebook’s ads engineering, Mark Rabkin, who had this to say about the upgrade: “When audio and video plays on the phone, sometimes the audio track and the video track get a few milliseconds out of alignment. Then you have to make a choice. When do you count the video as finished? Is it when the audio track ends? Or, when the video track ends?”

It is true that obtaining knowledge on managing your finances is key, but it is also important to devote time to managing your finances. The attitude that you have toward time will easily determine the success of managing your finances.

By dwelling too much on the present, future, or past, you may possibly make decisions that could be harmful towards your financial health; even when you know that you should do otherwise. It is ideal to have only happy memories, while setting aside time in the present to plan for your future. Whenever you fall out of pattern in either of those areas, some errors will occur in how you manage your finances. Stanford University’s psychology professor, Philip Zimbardo created a quiz that focuses on “time personality”. There were a total of 3,000 people, from six different countries (Germany, U.S., Brazil, etc.) that participated in the quiz.

Results from the quiz displayed that an individual’s time personality is very important in how well they manage their money, regardless of their financial know-how. An example would be a person that has the mindset of living for the moment. Normally, their financial health is sick. Another would be knowing the process of compound interest. The knowledge holds no value, if you constantly overspend your income. Another issue could be putting too much emphasis on the future. Whenever you are too goal-oriented, you limit the time to plan your financial options because you are harried by your career and similar obligations.

Overall, everyone has good intentions on managing their finances. You may have buying insurance on your to-do list or investing in your 401K. But when you don’t have any time to spare, you rush through it and make poor decisions. At the same time, you don’t want to be too financially conservative and neglect having any type fun on today.

Supermarket giant Asda has said sorry to customers after a major problem with card machines led to huge delays at the tills.
Shoppers immediately took to social media to complain about having to stand in large queues as they tried to purchase their groceries.
Asda has now issued an apology and said it has solved the problem in most of its stores.
Issues with card machines across a number of stores led to cashiers either having to use old-fashioned card-readers where customers must sign a slip, or saying that they were accepting cash only.
The issue came the day clocks went back an hour in the UK for autumn.
However, shopper Gordon Carr from Gateshead, tweeted: “Thanks very much Asda, I have lost my extra hour today waiting at Boldon store as tills stopped working! 45 minutes with no explanation.”
Another shopper said there was no back up system in place and customers were simply left standing “like cattle” waiting for the issue to be resolved.
Yet another tweeted: “Longest food shop ever thanks to Asda. No apology for having to wait in a queue for over an hour.”
Customers in many stores were asked to go outside to draw cash out from ATM machines before coming back to do their shopping. But that simply seemed to cause similar queues at the ATMs as customers tried to withdraw cash, with some cash machines running out of money because of the demand.
Some shoppers were reporting that they had spent an hour simply trying to pay for their goods. Others were saying they gave up after waiting long periods of time.
A spokeswoman for Asda said: “We’re continuing to process payments as quickly as we can but apologise to our customers for the inconvenience this has caused.”
The crash happened on a particularly busy day at Asda stores. While many shoppers were stopping at the store to buy goods for their Sunday roast, others were picking up last minute Halloween goodies or items needed as the school goes back after half term.
The Leeds-headquartered store is a wholly owned division of US firm Walmart.
Problems appeared to have been solved in most of the stores affected a short time before stores closed at their regular Sunday trading time of 4pm. Teams of technology staff will now be working to fix issues in other stores through the night before they reopen.

There is no denying the “feeling” you get, when you step foot into Ikea. It’s that feeling that leads you to buy. Everything, from a living room set to a computer desk, is at your reach. And, let’s not forget a slice of pizza. One of the reasons this is the norm is because Ikea offers some of the best deals. The only question is if everything is worth buying.

Some experts, in the home décor, place Ikea products in two different categories. First, the products that have the best deals. The second category is items that Ikea should never sell. When it comes to enhancing your shopping experience, your primary focus is the general items that the company offers. If you ever find yourself in Ikea and began to get “sucked in”, here is a list of items that you should stay away from:

Mattresses

The only reason you purchase a new bed mattress is for your bed or at least sleep. This is why you should look somewhere else for your next mattress. When you have mattresses as low as $80, it is difficult to overlook a deal this great. But, customers say the quality isn’t worth the price; whether it is $80 or not. The biggest complaint has to do with the mattresses’ springs. Customers can have back pain and discomfort, due to a mattress’ development of body impressions and sagging.

Accessories

Accessories used for decoration are only an issue, because of the mass production. By being mass-produced, it means that the items are mass-purchased. There is a great chance of knowing someone that has the same exact decorations in their home. It is recommended that you literally go the extra mile and find a one-of-a-kind decorative accessory for your home.

Dressers

There have been issues with the dressers that are sold by Ikea. The biggest issue is child safety. This year, there have been three child deaths, due to being toppled by an Ikea dresser. After the third child was killed, the company sent out a recall for millions of the dressers and quit selling their MALM line of dressers. The brand of dressers failed an industry stability test.

Closet System

It should be simple to spruce up your home with a new, inexpensive closet system. The downside is the closet system quality. Consumers reported having pieces missing and/or faulty parts. This came from the ALGOT line of closet systems.

There has been an on-going scandal that surrounds the Volkswagen Company, which involves diesel-emissions. But, nothing more has been said from the automotive giant.

At this year’s auto show in Paris, Matthias Muller, CEO of Volkswagen (VW) made a comment on the recent debacle, saying it is something “we currently need to cope with”. He also made mention how there have been a lot of changes within the company, over the past 12 months. Other executives for VW have dodged any attempts to speak on the subject, although sharing their apologies at auto shows and press conferences.

Wolfsburg has been dealing with diesel issues for quite some time. It has become a “no name” scandal that can cause a lot of problems. As criminal charges and fines continue to increase, the automotive company is being forced into a corner. This hasn’t prevented Volkswagen from making attempts to grow the company with new, aggressive sales strategies and new product plans.

While revealing their vehicles at the Paris auto show, the company also revealed their new tagline. “Think New.” The tagline applies to the new selection of completely electric vehicles, but it doesn’t stop there. The “Think New” also focuses on generating new ways to limit their loss in sales. This means they have enhanced the 2017 U.S. line of vehicles, which includes an updated e-Golf. The e-Golf is expected to be released next year and available in every state.

For immediate action, VW has increased their value by giving the Passat, Golf, and Jetta a lot more content, without changing or even lowering prices. One example would be their Golf hatchback. The vehicle is no longer available in two-door and four-door body styles. Now, the only option is four-door, which are priced at $20,715 (S model) and $22,415 (Wolfsburg Edition model). They both have options of a six-speed automatic or five-speed manual transmission.

The previous SEL model was priced at $28,245, but has been replaced by the Wolfsburg Edition. Although the new model is $6000 cheaper than the SEL, it has all of the extra and perks that the SEL offered. The Volkswagen has never been able to go beyond their cult following, in the U.S. market. These cultish vehicles are the GTI, the Beetle, and the TDI (which is no longer exists). The changes are beginning to show a little more success for the brand, which was initiated by the diesel crisis.

There was fresh misery for holidaymakers as the pound crashed by 8%, with analysts still struggling to explain the sudden drop.

While most of Europe was still asleep, the pound suddenly dropped against the dollar. The pound had been struggling following Prime Minister Theresa May’s announcement that she would be triggering article 50 by March next year to start to leave the EU.

That seemed to set analysts and investors on edge and the pound dropped to a 31-year-low. But, it still had further to go. The pound dropped on Friday from 1.26 against the dollar, to 1.1491 in just eight minutes in a market where even a single cent drop is considered a big change.

There were only a small number of trades made during that time, considering that most people were still asleep, so dealers are still unsure what caused the pound to suddenly fall off a cliff.

Theories include that computer-driven algorithmic systems were to blame, with computerised trading systems then causing the slide. As the pound dropped, automated systems kicked in to sell when it reached a certain level. Another possibility being talked about is that it was what is known as a fat-finger error when a mistake is made inputting data in the financial markets, meaning an order to buy or sell stock is placed of a far greater size than was originally intended.

Whatever really happened may never be known but traders and analysts said they had never experienced anything like it. Chief market analyst at Think Markets, Naeem Aslam, said: “What we had was insane. Call it a flash crash but a move of this magnitude really tells you how low the currency can really go.”

The dramatic drop will have hit both investors and companies hard. Sports Direct, which has already been troubled after facing criticism for the way it treats its staff, has already issued a profit warning, saying the company had lost £15m because of the flash crash.

The Bank of England has now launched its own investigation to try to shed some light on what really happened. It has also asked the Bank of International Settlements, which represents central banks across the world, to look into what sparked the fall.

The pound is expected to remain under pressure because of uncertainty which still surrounds Britain’s impending exit from Europe. Apart from the Argentinian peso, the pound was the worst-performing major currency in the world this week and is set to suffer further problems at least until an exit deal with the EU is made.