Austin, TX (PRWEB) August 30, 2012

LIVEO announced today that Chef Johnny Carino has signed on as featured talent for the cloud-based holistic, interactive social health and fitness network. Hosting LIVEOs live-streaming nutrition and cooking programs, Johnny will be an essential part of what makes the health and fitness network different from other online fitness tracking websites.

LIVEO integrates and interoperates with leading performance tracking devices and fitness applications while serving up proprietary fitness tools, performance tracking, wellness content, and social media support system to significantly improve the way individuals and companies manage healthier lifestyles and overall wellness. Top-notch talent such as Johnny Carino starring in live-streaming nutrition, health and fitness programming will help position LIVEO to become the whenever, wherever health and fitness destination of choice.

We are thrilled to have Johnny join us on our revolutionary mission to change the mobile health and fitness market, states LIVEO co-founder and president Danny Davis. His charisma and expertise will play a pivotal role in establishing LIVEO as the preferred way for people and corporations to manage health and fitness.

Carinos passion for cooking began in his Brooklyn kitchen at the age of 12, watching his Sicilian-born grandfather create great pasta and seafood dishes. A graduate of Johnson and Wales University with an Associate Degree in Culinary Arts, Chef Carino was first known for the restaurant named for him, Johnny Carinos Italian Grill (of which he is no longer affiliated). Since then, he has gone on to star in the top-rated cooking show Break Me Off A Piece of That, which recently wrapped its fourth season on PBS in the Texas market. He regularly appears at Flavors of Central Texas, and is known for his high-energy cooking classes at many locations of the world-famous Central Market.

A potentially demoralizing diagnosis of diabetes and other health-related issues have not slowed down the high profile chef, but provided a new direction in life through his volunteer efforts with both the University of North Texas Childhood Autism program and Big Brothers Big Sisters of North Texas. The former bodybuilder still works out daily and uses cooking to create a healthy lifestyle. His involvement with LIVEO is a natural fit.

ABOUT LIVEO LIVEO is transforming how the market perceives the mobile fitness application landscape, delivering a new, innovative solution that will not only significantly improve the way individuals and companies manage healthier lifestyles and wellness, but will change how the market is perceived. LIVEO is a holistic, interactive social health and fitness network accessible to consumers and corporations online through cloud-based software and a mobile application. It serves as a single source for unique, live-streaming content, capabilities and connectivity designed to help individuals and corporations significantly improve the way they manage healthier lifestyles and wellness. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the company was born from the combined vision of a group of passionate, experienced leaders and their unique mix of experience in both the business and the fitness industries. To learn more, visit liveo.com. For investment opportunities, please email info(at)liveo(dot)com to receive a business plan.

Link:
Chef Johnny Carino Partners with LIVEO

The art of artificial

Love the look of fake nails but hate the upkeep of constantly refilling? Turn to a Texas-based creation, Custom Nail Solutions (www.customnailsolutions.com). Available in five lengths: sport, active, fashion, glamour and stiletto, each nontoxic kit takes an impression of your nails that you'll send in for tips custom fit for you. And miracle of miracles, this DIY endeavor doesn't require any filling or drilling to the natural nails. $139.95.

Drip therapy

If your job has you awkwardly hunched over your laptop day and night, you'll relish the release from Little Drops of Rain, the brand-new treatment featured at Lake Austin Spa Resort (1705 S. Quinlan Park Road. 512-372-7300, http://www.lakeaustin.com). Soothing and therapeutic, the hot drops of essential oils sprinkled along your spine target your stress points, while the accompanying massage sends you blissfully away from your work woes. 50 minutes $165; 80 minutes with massage $215.

Sweat solution

Give sweat the swipe with Handana (www.myhandana.com), a high-performance athletic band. Created by local tri-athlete Katie Niemeyer, each soft lycra hand bandana slips on like a glove with your thumb in the center hole, and wicks away the perspiration from your brow and face. Washer friendly for easy upkeep. $15. Available locally at C'est Chic (5800 W. Slaughter Lane. 512-609-8728, http://www.cestchicaustin.com).

Emerald eyes

Blink and you'll miss out: This fall's trend in eye makeup calls for funky and bold colors that complement and define, like the new hues from Rochelle Rae. The three refillable eye shadow shades come in themes: Green with Envy, Extremely Violet and Turquoise Tantrum. $50 each. Available at Rae Cosmetics (1206 W. 38th St. 512-320-8732, http://www.raecosmetics.com).

Shifty business

A perfect office look for the stylish career set comes the tee shift dress from Ace & Jig. The rolled sleeves give this flat-front linen and cotton frock just the right amount of edge to go from business to casual, and the front pocket detail, weaved by artisans in India, creates an added pop of personality. $170. Available at Kickpleat (918 W. 12th St. 512-445-4500, http://www.kickpleat.com).

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Shine items: Fashion, 
beauty, 
health and fitness

Danny Sullivan dreams of gardening and spending time with his grandchildren, but that's just a fantasy. Retirement is out of his reach, at least for the foreseeable future.

The 62-year-old founder of a small catering company spends his days helping stock bars with beer and ice, wooing potential new clients and juggling the 20 to 30 different events his firm handles daily.

"I am so tired," he says. "I don't know that I'll ever be able to retire."

The weak economy has been tough for small-business owners across the board, with their total revenue inching up by just 3% since 2007 and declining in fields such as construction (-12%), real-estate services (-3%) and retailing (-2%), according to financial-software maker Intuit Inc. But for entrepreneurs in their 60s and 70s, the consequences have been particularly vexing.

Danny Sullivan has struggled to sell Arguello Catering. (Jason Henry for WSJ)Many of them are stuck in "business purgatory," unable to retire and forced to hang on for a recovery that economists say could still be a long way off.

Mr. Sullivan has struggled to sell Arguello Catering Inc., the Redwood City, Calif., business he started 21 years ago, at a price anywhere near the $850,000 or so he figures he needs to stop working. He reckons that about 70% of his nest egg is tied up in the 25-employee company.

Its annual revenue has fallen to roughly $2 million from $3 million before the recession, Mr. Sullivan says. He has tried, without success, to boost the business's value by branching into new markets, expanding hours of operation and adding healthier menu options. He says he got three offers for Arguello this year, but they were far too low.

Nearly half of the 799 small-business owners surveyed in August by The Wall Street Journal and Vistage International, an executive-mentoring organization, expect to retire after age 65, with 38% saying that their planned retirement date is later than they had predicted five years ago. In addition, 56% said most of their retirement nest egg is tied to their business.

Baby boomers, in many cases, were blindsided by the recession and its effect on their retirement plans, says George Vozikis, director of the Institute for Family Business at California State University in Fresno.

[More from WSJ.com: A Vacation Spent Shopping]

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'The Economy Stole My Retirement'

Here's your assignment: Gather up all of your retirement accounts and shape them into a portfolio that will supply you with the income you'll need during your retirement years. Oh, and one other tiny to-do: You'll also need to make sure you never run out of money, even though you don't know exactly how long you'll need it.

In the past, one simple and elegant solution to the above problem was to buy an immediate annuity that would pay you a stream of income for the rest of your life. But many investors don't like the loss of control that accompanies annuities. A more temporal problem is that today's ultralow interest rates mean that payouts from annuities are lousy right now, as I explored in this article (http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=332113).

One other intuitively appealing idea is to sink your portfolio into income-producing investments such as bonds and dividend-paying stocks and live off whatever yield they generate. That way you might never have to tap your principal at all. The big drawback, however, is that you're buffeted around by whatever the interest-rate gods serve up. When yields are up, you're living high off the hog; when they're miserly, as they have been for the better part of a decade, you have the unappetizing choice of scaling your spending way back or venturing into riskier income-producing securities to get the yield you need.

Given that each of those approaches has become more challenging in the current low-interest-rate environment, it's no wonder that so many retirees and pre-retirees have been receptive to another strategy: "bucketing" their portfolio for retirement. At its core, bucketing is a total-return approach in which you segment your portfolio based on when you expect to need your money. Money for near-term income needs is parked in cash and short-term bonds, while money needed for longer-range income needs remains in bonds and stocks. Financial-planning guru Harold Evensky was a pioneer of the bucket approach; he discusses the basics of the strategy in this video (http://www.morningstar.com/cover/videocenter.aspx?id=330323).

Aiming for the Buckets Why has bucketing become so popular? First, it bows to reality by acknowledging that all but very wealthy investors will need to tap their principal during retirement; it provides a sensible and easy-to-use framework for doing so. And given that many retirees will live for 25 or more years in retirement, the bucket approach provides a necessary dose of long-term growth potential, enabling a retiree to hold stocks as well as safer securities for nearer-term income needs.

Another big advantage of bucketing is that it's flexible. It can incorporate many of a retiree or pre-retiree's existing holdings, and a bucket plan can be readily customized to suit a retiree's own specifications. For example, an older retiree with an expected 10-year time horizon might have just two buckets--one for very short-term needs and another bucket earmarked for the medium term. A younger retiree with a longer time horizon, meanwhile, might have similarly positioned short- and intermediate-term buckets as well as a sizable equity bucket for long-term growth. The unifying theme among all bucket strategies is that the retiree sets aside a pool of cash for near-term income needs, thereby enabling him or her to ride out any volatility that accompanies the mid- and long-term assets.

To help illustrate what an actual bucketed portfolio might look like, let's assume we're building a portfolio for a soon-to-retire couple with the following attributes:

They have a $1.5 million portfolio.Their time horizon is 25 years, and they have a very high risk capacity.They plan to withdraw 4% of their initial balance in year 1 of retirement ($60,000), then inflation-adjust that amount every year.Given those variables, here's a sample bucketed portfolio employing some of Morningstar analysts' favorite funds. (Note that because this portfolio is geared toward risk-tolerant investors with a very long time horizon, it's quite equity-heavy, with a roughly 50% stock/50% bond asset allocation. This profile will be too aggressive for many retirees.)

Bucket 1: Years 1 and 2

$60,000: Cash (certificates of deposit, money market accounts, and so on)$60,000: PIMCO Enhanced Short Maturity Strategy(MINT)This portion of the portfolio is designed to cover living expenses in years 1 and 2 of retirement. Its goal is stability of principal with modest income production. Risk-averse investors who want an explicit guarantee of principal stability will want to stick with FDIC-insured products for this sleeve of the portfolio. On the flip side, investors comfortable with slight fluctuations in their principal values may steer less than a year's worth of living expenses to true cash instruments.

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A Sample Retirement Portfolio Using the Bucket Approach

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

The Newport Group, a leading provider of retirement and executive benefit plans, announced today that it has completed a year-long initiative designed to help companies and their employees better understand the true costs of their retirement plans.

One year ago, we told our plan sponsors and their advisors that the Department of Labor had issued final regulations for sponsor and participant fee disclosure, said Dennis Sain, Newport Senior Vice President, Retirement Services.

This was an initiative we supported fully and enthusiastically. For many years, Newport has led the industry in fee transparency, and our plan sponsors have consistently recognized this by naming us 'best in class' for both fee disclosure and fee fairness.

Sain noted that Newports year-long information campaign included regular legislative updates to plan sponsors and advisors as the Department of Labor (DOL) changed deadlines, clarified rules, and updated regulations and requirements. These updates included not just newsletters and sample disclosures but workshops and live and recorded webcasts featuring the firms legal experts.

These presentations proved so popular that some of our client and advisor firms requested individual sessions as well, Sain said. Throughout this year in particular, we received a great deal of positive feedback about the effectiveness of our approach. Although much of this was complex information about rules on deferrals, investments, restrictions, costs, and fees, Newport presented it in a way that could be easily assimilated and used by plan sponsors and financial advisors.

The deadline for providers such as Newport to disclose fees to their existing plan sponsor clients was June 29 of this year. Sponsors themselves are required to provide the initial full fee disclosure to their employees by August 30. Sain noted that although this second deadline has arrived, the DOL does not intend retirement fee disclosure to be a one-time event.

In accordance with these new regulations, Newport will be providing plan sponsors and participants with ongoing explanations of individual services and costs, he said. We believe that raising awareness of these issues is a positive development, and one that fits well with Newports long tradition of full disclosure and fee fairness.

About The Newport Group

Founded in 1984, The Newport Group is a leading retirement services firm specializing in the creative design and administration of retirement and executive benefit plans. Through its innovative and customized solutions, Newport is uniquely positioned to satisfy the distinct financial needs of employers and employees, and has done so for hundreds of the countrys largest and best-known companies.

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Newport Completes Year-Long Campaign to Help Raise Awareness of Retirement Plan Fees

The year you get your first full time job is the best time to start saving for your retirement. The power of compound interest will have much more time to work in your favor if you start investing as soon as you start making some money. However, most people in their 20s are way too busy to think about retirement.

Most of us have experienced the starving student lifestyle, and it was not fun. When your first paycheck rolled in, I'm sure you had a list of things to spend it on. Young people these days also have large student loans to contend with, and it's difficult to find any extra money to put toward retirement. I'm sure most new college graduates who just started a new job are not ready to even think of retirement. Most young people are focused on working and enjoying that money when they can.

Here are seven things 20-somethings can do to get ahead:

1. Avoid consumer debt. It's difficult to avoid debt at any age, but it's worth the effort to start out right. While young people often live in the moment and enjoy going out and having a good time, it is very important to spend less than you earn so you can avoid credit card debt. The interest will chip away at your income, and it will be much more difficult to save if you take on more debt.

2. Avoid lifestyle inflation. Most of us are unable to avoid lifestyle inflation after we start making more money. Who wants to drive an old jalopy around when a car dealer is offering a new car with a low interest rate? Spending money is fun and our consumer culture encourages that. However, it's difficult to reduce monthly expenses once they creep up. It's best to avoid lifestyle inflation as much as possible.

3. Grow your income. People in their 20s do not make as much money as older folks, but their compensation has a lot of room to grow. If you work hard, you should be able to get promoted and grow your income quite a bit early on in your career.

4. Sign up for a 401(k) account and start saving. A 401(k) account is a great retirement savings tool. Everyone should sign up even before their first paycheck rolls in if they can. That way your 401(k) contribution is automatically deducted from your paycheck and you won't see that amount in your checking account. This will help with lifestyle inflation because if you don't see the money, you won't be tempted to spend it. Start contributing right away and then increase this amount a little bit every year until you reach the contribution limit.

5. Open a Roth IRA. The best time to contribute to a Roth IRA is when you are in a low income tax bracket. The money invested in a Roth IRA is after tax, but you won't have to pay tax on any earnings.

6. Open a taxable brokerage account. It can be difficult to max out a 401(k) and Roth IRA. If you have any money left over after doing these two things, then consider opening a stock brokerage account. Investing in the stock market can be daunting when you are new to it, but you can start by investing in a low fee index fund. Once you learn more about investing, then you can branch out.

7. Buy income producing assets instead of a new car or other stuff that will break. Think about depreciation before spending money. If you buy a new car, it will be worth much less in a year. If you buy some dividend stocks instead, you will receive dividend income and the stocks might gain in value. Another example of an income producing asset is a house. You can buy a house and rent out some rooms to generate income to help pay the mortgage.

Link:
7 Ways to Prepare for Retirement in Your 20s

AvantiKumar | Aug. 31, 2012

Malaysian telecom Maxis reports steady first half year performance with 3.6 percent year on year revenue growth to US$1.4 billion.

PHOTO - Sandip Das, Maxis Berhad CEO presenting the company Q2 2012 Financial Results; seated: Nasution Mohamed, Maxis Chief Financial Officer.

New data products and services including personal cloud storage and online book stores, as well as a wide range of smart devices, helped Malaysian telco Maxis to record a steady first year with 3.6 percent year on year revenue growth to RM4.4 billion [US$1.4 billion]

Speaking on 30 August 2012, Maxis chief executive officer Sandip Das said the company's steady performance for its first half year results ended 30 June 2012 was helped by strong data and IDD (international direct dialling) growth.

"Since the start of this year, we have launched major market moves across product categories and are encouraged with the response we have received from our customers," said Das.

"As a result, our performance in the first half of the year has been steady despite the tariff wars in the market," he said. "We registered the highest prepaid net additions in five quarters on the strength of the new Hotlink plan launched in March, offered a wide range of globally contemporary data products such as personal cloud storage and online book stores, a wide range of smart devices and made definitive inroads into the migrant market with attractive international calling tariffs."

"Our continued efforts to grow a data-friendly ecosystem has resulted in non-voice revenues climbing up to 45.3 percent of mobile revenues with 62 percent of the revenue coming from Internet and data services," he said.

Original post:
Personal cloud storage, e-books contribute to steady first half year growth: Maxis

LONDON, August 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

A leading personal injury lawyer has blasted the insurance industry for regularly trying to settle claims directly with injured victims for inappropriately low and unfair amounts.

Karl Tonks, an equity partner with Fentons Solicitors LLP, said the practice of defendants and insurers contacting victims and trying to settle claims early for significantly less than their true worth - in many cases before they have even sought legal or medical advice - should be a cause for great concern.

"As a national personal injury firm we handle thousands of claims for people across the country every year," said. "We have noticed a worrying increase in the number of clients who tell us they have been approached by the defendants with what appears to be a very low offer within a few days of their injury. In many of these cases the defendant has subsequently sought specialist legal advice and gone on to receive several times the amount of compensation they were first offered. But it begs the worrying question as to how many other victims are accepting these 'low-ball' offers and being massively under-compensated for their injuries?"

Karl, who is also president of the not-for-profit group APIL (Association of Personal Injury Lawyers), said that at a time when accident victims and their solicitors were consistently being blamed by insurers over the spiralling cost of premiums, insurers need to look closely at their own actions. "It seems massively hypocritical to be constantly pointing the finger at claimants and their lawyers, when they are simultaneously trying to deny those same policyholders the right to a fair level of compensation when an injured person makes an honest, justifiable claim," he said. "People who take out an insurance policy should be able to have faith that when they are unfortunate enough to need to make a claim, the level of compensation will be calculated with their best interests in mind, and not simply the lowest amount that their insurer can get away with."

Following the reforms made to the way personal injury claims will be handled under the controversial Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Bill - which will come into force next year - Karl said he expects more and more cases to be settled earlier.

"The purpose of the reforms was supposedly to speed up the process of making a legal claim whilst reducing the amount it costs to do so," he said. "The reason for the need to do this was laid squarely at the door of accident victims and personal injury lawyers, with allegations of spurious claims and massive success fees making headlines.

"But I would ask the same insurance industry luminaries that are quick to censure lawyers to examine their own practices," he said. "Perhaps they should ask just how many claims they are settling before a victim has discussed their injury with a lawyer and been referred to a medical expert to assess their immediate and, crucially, their future needs."

He said that Fentons Solicitors was seeing a growing number of clients who might have settled their case earlier, but thankfully sought legal advice after they were offered what seemed like suspiciously low amounts of damages.

"In one recent case, a client was contacted by the defendant's insurer and was offered 500 to settle her claim in full," he said. "After engaging the services of a specialist lawyer, she settled her case for more than 37,000.

Read more:
Insurers Must Stop Trying to Settle Claims With Unfair "low-ball" Offers

WESTBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

ExaGrid Systems, Inc., the leader in cost-effective and scalable disk backup solutions with data deduplication, today announced that it has published over 300 customer success stories, which can be found on the companys website making ExaGrid the first and only backup vendor to reach this impressive milestone, and only IT vendor with 300 published testimonials for a single product solution. These published stories combined with customer video testimonials comprise a library of published customer endorsements, which is larger than all competitors combined. This further underscores ExaGrids superior product capabilities, value delivered, customer support model, and commitment to customer satisfaction. Each two-page customer success story includes the persons name, title, and a personal quote.

The University of Northern Iowa is the 300th customer to publicly share its selection of and success with ExaGrids disk backup with data deduplication solution. As a state-supported university of approximately 13,000 students, and ranked among the nation's top 650 undergraduate colleges and universities in the Forbes' 2011 annual ranking of top colleges, the universitys IT department understands the importance of maintaining records and data in a safe, secure and disaster resistant environment.

Prior to switching to ExaGrid, UNI had been backing up its data to a large, onsite magnetic tape library using a chargeback service model to the university system. The IT organization backed up data files, Oracle RMAN backups and Microsoft SQL backups for its clients using Symantec NetBackup, with an average of three months retention and the ability to restore the last 30 daily backups. With a goal of offering advanced services and increasing efficiency, the IT department needed to replicate data off-site for increased data protection. A recent reduction in IT personnel led UNI to realize its previous shuttling of tape to offsite locations was not possible. The IT department also realized that data stored at both locations could be lost in a disaster due to their proximity to one another. The university needed to send data offsite more frequently and move away from tape to improve business continuity.

After getting pricing from another vendor and discounting them due to sticker shock, the IT department chose ExaGrids disk backup solution with deduplication because of the scalability of its GRID-based architecture, fast restores and price.

Supporting Quotes:

About ExaGrids Technology:

The ExaGrid system is a plug-and-play disk backup appliance that works with existing backup applications and enables faster and more reliable backups and restores. Customers report that backup time is reduced by 30 to 90 percent over traditional tape backup. ExaGrids patented zone-level data deduplication technology and most recent backup compression reduces the amount of disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to as high as 50:1 or more, resulting in a cost comparable to traditional tape-based backup.

About ExaGrid Systems, Inc.:

ExaGrid offers the only disk-based backup appliance with data deduplication purpose-built for backup that leverages a unique architecture optimized for performance, scalability and price. The combination of post-process deduplication, most recent backup cache, and GRID scalability enables IT departments to achieve the shortest backup window and the fastest, most reliable restores and disaster recovery without backup window expansion or forklift upgrades as data grows. With offices and distribution worldwide, ExaGrid has more than 4,500 systems installed at more than 1,400 customers, and over 300 published customer success stories.

Original post:
ExaGrid First Company to Publish a Record 300 Disk Backup Customer Success Stories

By Peter Pham - August 30, 2012 | Tickers: AMD, AAPL, ARMH, INTC, MSFT | 0 Comments

Peter is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinions of our bloggers and are not formally edited.

Highly successful companies are not accidents. One does not just wish billions of dollars in revenue, high profit margins and streamlined operations into being. Intels (NASDAQ: INTC) management prides itself on being at the right place at the right time; from strategic decisions to rewarding and nurturing their employees, all of these details are prioritized. After reporting record annual revenue at the end of 2011 of $54 billion, Intel was quick to realize that the management should not be complacent but rather made decisions for promotions and rotations quickly.

But Intel is at a bit of a crossroads as their focus as chip designers has always been about producing more IPC (instructions per cycle). Their chips reveal a form of myopia that has them slightly behind the curve as the world of computing shifts away from discrete PC units to devices that are more an extension of us. While that transition takes place, however, Intel will rely on its core strengths of design efficiency and manufacturing to carry them while new products designed around power management are developed.

Mastering Management

The technology industry is so competitive and changes within it so rapid that it requires tremendous precision in making deals leading to mergers and acquisitions. This is one area that Intel has down cold. Developing strong partnerships and purchasing companies that they have worked in the past is Intels process. In essence, doing business with someone is the best form of due diligence. In this context, purchasing 15% voting rights in ASML was of great significance as it would help Intel lower the cost of manufacturing 450mm wafers, thereby streamlining production as the competition moves from 300mm to 450mm wafers.

Managements efficiency has allowed them to fend off the odd challenge by rival AMD (NYSE: AMD) over the years by using size to their advantage and executing at a consistent level, making AMDs margin for error very small. Moreover, the top management and executives encourage the middle management to seek ideas and suggestions from those closest to the market in order to develop products thatll help them acquire first mover advantage with each chip generation.

To develop specific solutions within a market a functional team is set up for the development of any particular product or venture in the pipeline. A functional team at Intel is made up of the technical departments needed for the job at hand. Having functional teams at the product development stage is designed to get the maximum out of the expertise team members have. But this structure retains the flexibility to form cross functional teams for more complex tasks. Product development and product ownership is the same thing at Intel in that the person that generated the idea becomes a part of the product development cycle. Allowing people to see their ideas through to the end is an important part of maintaining employee loyalty.

The Current Conundrum

Even though the management at Intel has worked exceedingly well in making the organization the giant in the chip manufacturing industry, management has not taken any backup measures considering the macroeconomic problems surrounding the economies across the world. There are a number of challenges on the horizon: rising costs resulting in margin erosion, shifting computing tastes which de-emphasize their x86 i-series Core CPUs in favor of ARM Holdings-based (NASDAQ: ARMH)SoCs.

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Managing Intel’s Way