Single-tasking has been a hallmark of mobile. But Facebook Home lets you chat in an overlaid drop-down window as you use Google, Yelp, Maps or any other app, bringing the productivity of the desktop to the small screen. Home's cover feed and responsive design are nice, but you could call them mediocre. Chat multi-tasking, though, merges the communication and computing sides of the smartphone.
It seems he's at it again. Biz Stone, one of the co-founders of Twitter and the Obvious Corp., tweeted on Monday that he's venturing back into new startup territory with his latest project called Jelly. (Of the fish variety, not the peanut butter one.)
https://twitter.com/biz/status/318750465850499072
In a blog post titled, "What is Jelly?" Stone didn't actually explain much what Jelly is, but did hint at a mobile-oriented startup.
Business leaders need insights to remain competitive, which is driving them to prospect for big data "gold." But they need help filtering the signal from the noise and don’t want to waste time on standing up the hardware, configuring the software and manually coding point-to-point solutions. They want to get data in and out of Hadoop, or any other big data target, as fast as possible without needing a complement of data science experts on staff.
Electronic health records provider Practice Fusion is bringing in some new blood. On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based company said it made its first major acquisition in purchasing 100Plus, a personal health prediction startup.
Founded in 2011, 100Plus last month launched a mobile app that combines data analytics and game mechanics to encourage people to engage in healthy activities.
In the acquisition, 100Plus' five-person team will join Practice Fusion’s data and product development teams, with Chris Hogg, co-founder of 100Plus, becoming the associate vice president of data science.
Over the past week, my girls and I have perfected the art of snowflake-making. We’ve notched diamonds and triangles into meticulously folded pieces of paper and unfolded them to reveal lacy creations that will grace the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary School’s new building.
A continent away, there’s not much tangible that we could offer in the form of support for the students who watched or heard shooter
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration halted operations of the country’s largest organic peanut butter processor Monday, cracking down on salmonella poisoning for the first time with new enforcement authority the agency gained in a 2011 food safety law.
FDA officials found salmonella all over Sunland Inc.’s New Mexico processing plant after 41 people in 20 states, most of them children, were sickened by peanut butter manufactured at the plant in Portales and sold by Trader Joe’s grocery chain. The FDA suspended Sunland’s registration Monday, preventing the company from producing or distributing any food.
The food safety law gave the FDA authority to suspend a company’s registration when food manufactured or held there has a “reasonable probability” of causing serious health problems or death. Before the food safety law was enacted early last year, the FDA would have had to go to court to suspend a company’s registration.
Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, said the agency’s ability to suspend a registration like this one is a major step forward for the agency.
“Consumers can be assured that products will not leave this facility until we determine they have implemented preventive measures that are effective to produce safe products,” Taylor said.
Sunland had voluntarily closed its plant after a September outbreak and planned to reopen its peanut processing facility on Tuesday, with hopes of selling peanut butter again by the end of the year. Sunland’s Katalin Coburn said FDA’s decision to suspend the registration was a surprise to the company and Sunland officials had assumed they were allowed to resume operations.
The company now has the right to a hearing and must prove to the agency that its facilities are clean enough to reopen. Coburn said Sunland is cooperating with FDA and company officials hope they can be up and running again soon.
Sunland is the nation’s largest organic peanut butter processor, though it also produces many non-organic products. The company recalled hundreds of organic and non-organic nut butters and nuts manufactured since 2010 after Trader Joe’s Valencia Creamy Peanut Butter was linked to the salmonella illnesses in September.
In addition to Trader Joe’s, Sunland sold hundreds of different peanut products to Whole Foods, Safeway, Target and other large grocery chains.
During a month-long investigation, after the outbreak linked to processor Sunland and to Trader Joe’s, FDA inspectors found samples of salmonella in 28 different locations in the plant, in 13 nut butter samples and in one sample of raw peanuts.
The agency also found improper handling of the products, unclean equipment and uncovered trailers of peanuts outside the facility that were exposed to rain and birds.
The FDA said that over the past three years, the company shipped products even though portions of their lots, or daily production runs, tested positive for salmonella in internal tests. The agency also found that the internal tests failed to find salmonella when it was present.
FDA inspectors found many of the same problems — including employees putting their bare fingers in empty jars before they were filled, open bags of ingredients, unclean equipment, and many other violations — in a 2007 inspection. Similar problems were recorded by inspectors in 2009, 2010 and 2011, though government officials didn’t take any action or release the results of those inspections until after the illnesses were discovered this year.
In a statement issued earlier this month, Sunland’s president and chief executive officer, Jimmie Shearer, denied the company knowingly shipped tainted products.
“At no time in its 24-year history has Sunland, Inc. released for distribution any products that it knew to be potentially contaminated with harmful microorganisms,” Shearer said in a statement posted on the company’s website. “In every instance where test results indicated the presence of a contaminant, the implicated product was destroyed and not released for distribution.”
A separate peanut butter outbreak in 2009 not related to Sunland was linked to hundreds of illnesses and nine deaths.
