If you are looking to experience a truly unique wearable, then you will want to sport the new Frodo adventure camera. Hailed as the “GoPro Slayer,” this device is very intelligent on many levels: it is a camera that actually edits videos for you. So, what’s your next adventure?
Verizon today announced that it’s improving its prepaid smartphone plans by offering more data, the announcement unsurprisingly comes a couple of days after T-Mobile announced new plans with more data per line. Starting May 15th, Verizon’s prepaid customers will get more data on their plans and for the first time, they will also get unlimited calling to Canada and Mexico with the carrier’s largest prepaid plan.
For $60 per month, Verizon’s prepaid customers can now get 6GB of 4G LTE data including 1GB of AutoPay Bonus Data, unlimited talk, and text in the United States as well as unlimited text and calling to Mexico and Canada. The previous plan had 3GB of data for the same price.
Customers who are looking to spend less on their plan can opt for the $45 per month option that brings 3GB of data instead of 1GB in the past, this includes 1GB of AutoPay Bonus Data as well as the unlimited talk and text.
Customers who have no need for mobile data, there are many who use simple phones even now, they can get a plan for $30 per month which brings unlimited talk, text, and mobile web. There’s even a plan for $15 per month that features 300 voice minutes, texts or multimedia messages in any combination plus unlimited mobile web.
These plans will be available starting May 15th to all new and existing Verizon customers.
Verizon Prepaid Plans Get More Data , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
If you’re a business, educational institution, or even a weekend
hobbyist looking to build your own server for storage, Backblaze’s DIY
Storage Pod might just be the answer. With the new 6.0 storage pod,
users can get up 480TB of storage space for as little as $0.036 per
gigabyte.
In the villages outside of Jaipur, India, the centuries old craft of hand block printing is making a comeback
Ghanshyam Ji block printing in Sanganer, a village near Jaipur, India.
Shari Keller has a calming presence. When I meet her in the company workshop after coming off the noisy, chaotic, smoke filled street of busy Jaipur, India, I am more than a bit frazzled. Not only is the heat stifling but as people scramble to get errands done before the real heat of midday, the bustle of the city is overwhelming with its sounds and vibrant colors, constantly catching the eye. Shari, in contrast, wearing a beautiful kaftan, warmly welcomes us into the quiet hum of their production facility, offering chai tea. Over the course of the next ten days, as we visit and document her work at Mehera Shaw, an artisinal textile and fair trade manufacturing company in Jaipur, and at Sanganer, a village outside the city with the block printers of the region, I realize that her natural calm matches the beauty of the work they all do: measured, precise, intricate and thoughtful.
Shari Keller and Nandalal Ji testing new block prints
Block printing is an ancient Indian heritage craft practiced by highly skilled artisans in mainly the Jaipur region. Unfortunately, as is the case with many other artisanal crafts in India, block printing is being replaced by screen and digital printing – faster, mechanized forms of garment production – and the influx of low cost textiles from China. Companies like Anokhi and Shari’s company, Mehera Shaw, are preserving the technique and employing some of the last artisans who know the work. They are striving to ensure its future by developing block printed modern style products and with the promise of employment, generating interest among younger populations to learn the technique. Now, with its integration into the home goods and clothing market in India and abroad, block printing is seeing a new life.
Shari recently took time out of the company’s busy production schedule to answer a few questions about her work, the craft, their hopes and challenges, and her take on being a female entrepreneur.
I have a long family connection to India dating back to my grandparents and have been visiting India since I was a child.
I had previously worked and lived in India as a young adult. My husband Mark owned a jewelry business and manufactured in Jaipur so he knew Jaipur well and I had a background in Indian textiles. India is my other home so it made sense to us to keep the business in India.
We had started our Mehera Shaw brand working with another manufacturer in Jaipur in 1999 and worked specifically with block prints which are a speciality of the Jaipur region. We had set up our clothing label initially because we each had a love of Indian textiles, pattern making and working with artisans in India through research I did as graduate student and wanted to continue working with artisans in India. I also had a love for the block prints native to Jaipur.
Carver Mohammed Aamid tracing a pattern to be carved into a wood block
Our purpose behind manufacturing in India was never about outsourcing, but rather working with the people we know and supporting a craft we love.
We first developed a women’s clothing brand and as we went along, we felt the overwhelming need to be our own manufacturers so that we would know first hand how everyone was being treated, who was working for us, understand the conditions and so we could say with full transparency that we are fair trade and know every step of the process.
We are a fair trade, full service garment manufacturer in Jaipur which means we source fabric (typically certified organic cottons), dye and block print, do pattern making, grading, fit samples, production samples and small to medium-scale garment/homewares manufacturing and finally exporting of the same. We have two facilities, one is our dyeing and block printing unit in Sanganer and the other is our garment manufacturing unit in Jaipur. We employ 35 people in total currently. We partner with like-minded suppliers who work specifically with GOTS certified organic cotton, handloom cotton or silk. We also work with customers who share our philosophy about sustainability, fair trade and slow fashion.
We’ve been in business as fair trade manufacturers since 2007. Some of the highlights have been the positive market reception to our block printed fabrics and to our East/West style.
The Mehera Shaw Team
Other highlights have been the amazing team of people we work with in India – they are the ones who make Mehera Shaw and work together every day for this shared dream.
I am currently living in Jaipur with my family so I work at our garment production studio every day and make frequent trips out to our dyeing and printing unit. A typical day includes customer service emails involving pricing, fabric choice, pattern grading, color matching, labels etc., checking on how our current manufacturing and sampling orders are going, on dye and print orders, discussing next collections with our pattern master, working on moodboards and textile print design with interns and customers, overseeing our up cycling project, and checking on our accounts and logistical matters.
In the next year we will be developing our women’s brand in the Indian market and launching our wholesale line of upcycled products, homewares, sarees and block printed fabrics. In the next five years we intend to establish ourselves solidly within the Indian market as a retail brand with a positive humanitarian vision for a more sustainable future. We also look to establish ourselves as leaders in the hand printed organic cotton market internationally.
The new upcycling program recently launched at Mehera Shaw working with women from a nearby village
What do you think is the biggest issue for female entrepreneurs?
My situation is perhaps different from other female entrepreneurs working in the developed world. I work in Rajasthan which is a male dominated society. I work in Hindi which is not my native language and I work almost entirely with men. In these circumstances, I find my biggest challenge is to gain the respect of those I work with and find the right balance between being ‘the boss’, i.e., upholding company policy and making those tough choices, and being generous, understanding, patient, accepting.
It is a balance between being heard and listening.
I find one of my own personal challenges is to set aside what others may think of me and worries that they might not believe or listen to me and focus instead on being the most fair-minded, respectful person I’m able to be under all circumstances.
Members of the women’s group in the upcycling program
Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
I admire every mom and school teacher out there who is taking care of their kids, taking the extra minute to smile and encourage someone, to give them a hug and make them feel loved. For every child that feels loved and feels happy the world is a better place. For me, it is that ‘behind the scenes’ leadership that counts the most.
What brands do you admire and suggest others check out?
I admire the Swedish brand Gudrun Sjoden because I love the artistry and color in her brand, the fact that she is personally involved in every step of the process, forms long-term relationships with her suppliers and has stayed true to her artistic and philosophical vision throughout her rise to success. I also appreciate Eileen Fisher as another women entrepreneur who has upheld her vision and has sought to ‘do good’ and form long-term relationships with suppliers, provide a high quality, highly wearability product and whose brand ethos sends a positive message about women.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned in your career to date?
To withhold judgement and try to understand the full picture first in every situation. We work with artisans and face many issues outside our control on a daily basis so it is vital to understand what is happening before making decisions or coming to conclusions.
You can visit the Mehera Shaw Website at www.meherashaw.com
You can visit Project JUST at projectjust.com
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
An Amazon Prime subscription offers access to a variety of services now, including but not limited to music and video streaming, but it started out as a two-day free delivery service for members who paid an annual fee. Amazon Prime still offers that for $99 per month and now retail giant Walmart is taking aim at the online behemoth by launching a $49 two-day shipping service.
Walmart started experimenting with a three-day shipping service called ShippingPass last year. Members have to pay $50 per year and they’re provided free three-day shipping on their orders, but Walmart has made a change that makes it directly take on Amazon Prime.
Walmart’s website offers a selection of more than seven million items to customers out of which more than one million items are ShoppingPass supported, the retailer will obviously cover more items under this program down the road. ShippingPass now promises delivery in two days or less while there are no minimum requirements to be eligible for this free shipping service, free returns are supported too.
The retail giant hasn’t opened up ShippingPass to everybody just yet, those who are interested in trying it out can sign up here for the pilot program. Walmart has been testing this service since last year and so far it hasn’t disclosed how many people signed up during that period or how revenues from ShippingPass have contributed to the company’s bottom line.
Walmart Takes On Amazon Prime With $49 Two-Day Shipping Service , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Lights turning on and off as you enter or leave a room? Knowing for sure whether or not you remembered to turn off the coffee pot? Kasia Smart Home System allows users to monitor and control their home environment remotely. Find out what else it can do for you.
This post was written jointly by Emma Saloranta and Julia Wiklander. Julia is at the Nordic Midwifery Congress, representing Girls’ Globe and The Mom Pod.
The Nordic Midwifery Congress (NJF) is taking place in Gothenburg, Sweden, 12-14 May 2016. The Congress brings together hundreds of midwives mainly from the Nordic region – Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland and The Faroe Islands – to share experiences, lessons learned, innovations and stories about midwives, birth, maternal and newborn health, sexual and reproductive health, breastfeeding, and more. The Congress is a great opportunity for people in the field of midwifery and maternal and newborn health to learn from each other, network and make new connections that enable them to become even better and more efficient in ensuring that mothers and babies not only survive, but thrive through pregnancy, birth and postpartum period.
The theme of this year’s Congress is #Midwives4All. In the Nordic countries, pretty much every pregnant woman has access to a skilled and trained midwife – and most uncomplicated, low risk pregnancies and births are routinely handled by midwives, from prenatal care through labor and during postpartum. Nordic countries therefore have a great deal of experience to share, that can be useful not only between the Nordic nations but also for other countries who aim to reach a similar level of midwifery and maternal and newborn health coverage for their mothers and babies. There is a long history of partnerships and sharing lessons learned between health practitioners in these countries, which has enabled them to develop healthcare systems that, while not perfect, are able to reach almost every single mother and baby, despite their socio-economic status, location, ethnicity or other such factor.
Yet, midwifery and sexual and reproductive health and rights is under pressure in the Nordic countries. Hildur Kristjánsdóttir, President of the Nordic Federation of Midwives spoke at the opening ceremony about the important role that midwives have to influence politics and make their voices heard. Kristjánsdóttir mentioned that midwives need to be in leading governmental positions to be able to fight medicalization of childbirth.
Kristina Ljungros, President of RFSU, spoke passionately about the challenges that Europe and other parts of the world is facing to access of sexual education and safe and legal abortion. She encouraged Nordic midwives to unite and stand up for the human rights of women and adolescents.
“There is no place for complacency!” says Frances Day-Stirk, President of the International Confederation of Midwives, who showed that even some of the Nordic countries are seeing an increase in maternal deaths. She also spoke about the challenges that midwives face in their work in the three major cities in Sweden, where midwives are overworked and leaving their jobs, and she encouraged midwives to lead for change.
Day-Stirk mentioned the importance of capitalizing on the opportunities with the Sustainable Development Goals and that midwives have a very important role to be able to reach these goals. “2016 is a pivotal year for midwives. We must be informed, we must use our knowledge and we must raise our voices to lobby for change.”
There is substantial evidence indicating that a midwifery-led care model towards pregnancy and birth yields benefits for both mothers and babies. Findings from multiple studies (see here and here, for example) indicate that mothers whose pregnancies and births were attended to by midwives experience less preterm births, less need for an epidural, and less medical interventions, instrumental births and episiotomies than births handled by obstetricians.
Promoting women’s access to midwives, and ensuring that midwives and nurses have opportunities such as the Nordic Midwives Congress to learn from each other, update their knowledge and skills, share lessons learned and experiences and work together as a global community of midwives yields benefits for health professionals, mothers and babies. Expanding such gatherings to other parts of the world and ensuring that the lessons and solutions coming out of NJF reach as wide of an audience as possible is crucial for ensuring that mothers everywhere in the world have access to trained, skilled midwives and that mothers and babies continue to not only survive through pregnancy and birth, but thrive as well.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
It was reported last month that Google is working on adding support for “3D Touch” in Android. We expected that the company would unveil support for native pressure sensing displays in Android N at the Google I/O 2016 developers conference earlier this month but a new report suggests that the feature won’t be ready in time and that Android N is going to have support for it at launch.
Recode reports that Google has decided to delay the launch of this feature due to reasons not known to the scribe, it does mention that this feature will most likely be released as part of a later maintenance update which might very well be Android version 7.1.
Google baking support for this feature right into Android could spark a surge in devices that come with native pressure sensing displays. The technology enables the OS to respond to taps of varying force differently, as the display is able to recognize how much force is being put into a tap.
Apple calls this technology 3D Touch and it’s already available in the current flagship iPhone. Huawei and ZTE have launched Android-powered devices that have similar features, they just had to create their own APIs for it to work since Android doesn’t have native support for now, but it most certainly will in the future.
Android N May Not Have ‘3D Touch’ Support At Launch , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Store bought ice cream is typically loaded with all kinds of obscure ingredients that are surely not good for you. There is hope on the horizon though. Coming soon from Chef’n is the Sweet Spot ice cream maker that allows you to make your own fresh ice cream in minutes.
Where would you turn for eco-friendly fashions produced by ethical businesses that actually cared where their products were coming from, who made them and how they were produced? Britain’s Ethically Clothed has the answer. Discover whose lines they carry, where you can get them and how PETA is connected.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
