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Una presentación sobre Big data: retos y oportunidades para el turismo.
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Of course, competitive eating is not for everyone, even those who really, really, really like eating delicious foods such as bacon.
But it was all in a day’s greasy work for competitive eating champion Matt “Megatoad” Stonie, who crammed a world record amount of bacon into his stomach in just five minutes during a contest sponsored by Smithfield Foods in Dayton, FL recently, reports WXIA.
The event kicked off the Smithfield Pig Out Chase, which is an amateur eating competition with various events leading up to an “ultimate eating showdown” that will take place in November at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The previous bacon record was set in 2010 with just 54 pieces of bacon in five minutes.
“I’m a huge bacon fan, so I jumped at the chance to team up with Smithfield to set the bacon-eating world record,” our brave hero says. “As one of the youngest competitive eaters on the circuit, I’m always looking to push myself so I aimed to eat 150 slices, but when I passed that and got to 182 slices, I knew it must be because I’m fueled by bacon!”
His stomach has been tested before and won accolades for making room for other foods, as well. According to Major League Eating, Megatoad is ranked second overall and has the record for eating the most gyros, birthday cake, frozen yogurt and pumpkin pie.
Man eats 182 slices of bacon in one sitting [WXIA]
Instead of going to traffic court, California lets people make their plea in writing: it’s called a trial by written declaration. However, this isn’t the equivalent of hiring a lawyer. When you pay a site like TicketBust.com, you’re effectively paying for some expensive form letters.
That’s what CBS Sacramento learned when a truck driver who used the site to get a red light camera ticket dismissed worried that he was paying $250 for something that couldn’t possibly help. The site promises a partial refund of $100 if a customer’s ticket isn’t dismissed, but keeps the $150 “document processing fee.” That fee goes toward…hitting “print” on a computer, apparently, since the site admits that what they do is choose from a “library of stock defense templates” and send the appropriate one to the court. They aren’t lawyers, but also claim that they don’t represent themselves as one.
The problem, consumer reporter Kurtis Ming points out, is that the company brags that it has helped more than 50,000 drivers on its website. Yet they don’t actually keep track, and have no way to know how many customers they’ve really helped.
Call Kurtis Investigation: Can Websites Fight Traffic Tickets? [CBS Sacramento]
An Atlanta-area woman named Tess says she recently had her car stolen and smashed into a tree as the thieves made off with it.
That same day she went into a Warby Parker store to pick up her new glasses and mentioned the theft of her vehicle.
Then, according to Tess, she got the above note and gift card to use at a popular bar in Atlanta.
“We were so sorry to hear about your car,” reads the note. “Since you probably won’t be the designated driver any time soon, here’s a round on us!”
Of course, since this is reddit, there are a number of people claiming that this is a plant from Warby Parker intended to go viral; in spite of the fact that Tess has been posting on reddit for two years, including the above-referenced post about her stolen Jeep. And while a number of these eagle-eyed cynics pointed out things like the clean photography, the inclusion of the logos for Warby Parker, the bar, and the name of a particular type of eyeglass frame — some of them managed to miss the fact that Tess is not a “him.”
Obviously Warby Parker and every other retailer that does something like this is hoping that the customer will share their story. That’s the whole point of making generous gestures to customers — that they will be so happy they feel compelled to tell others. Before the Internet, that was called “going above and beyond,” now it’s automatically labeled as viral marketing.
Back in 2013, multiple reddit threads accused an Olive Garden customer of being a corporate shill for posting a photo of a receipt for a meal that had been comped by the restaurant after learning of a family tragedy. In the end, it was all much ado about nothing, as the receipt turned out to be the real deal.
“I posted the receipt on the Internet, and the Internet is a highly skeptical place,” the customer told us at the time, “so I can’t really blame anyone for thinking the receipt was fake.”
At the center of the case are three patents owned by Smartflash that deal with data storage and payment management, reports the Wall Street Journal. The company alleged that a patent co-inventor shared his ideas back in 2000 with a man who is now a senior director at Apple.
Smartflash doesn’t make its own products, but claimed that Apple infringed on the patents by using the technology to manage apps sold through the iTunes store, like “Coin Dozer Pro” and “Grub Guardian,” all developed by outside companies. Two of those companies were also defendants before being dismissed from the case.
The jury said that Apple had willfully infringed on all three patents, and that it hadn’t proved the patents were no longer valid. Though $532.9 million is a hefty sum, Smartflash had been seeking even more in damages — $852 million.
“Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented,” said an Apple spokesperson, adding that Apple would be appealing the decision.
“I would expect Apple to say they will appeal as part of Apple’s standard operating procedure,” said Brad Caldwell, lead counsel for SmartFlash. “However, Smartflash believes the facts and the law support the jury’s verdict.”
Apple isn’t the only target Smartflash had in its sights — it also filed similar lawsuits against Google and Samsung Electronics.
Apple Is Ordered to Pay $532.9 Million in Patent Case [Wall Street Journal]
The “Scoffee” Cup is intended to promote the chicken chain’s launch of Seattle’s Best Coffee at KFC eateries in the UK. It was developed by food scientists at a company called The Robin Collective, creators of things like edible terrariums and a margarita that changes colors.
The cups consist of a cookie (or “biscuit,” as they inexplicably say in England) wrapped in sugar paper that is lined with heat-resistant white chocolate.
“We’ve infused different cups with a variety of ambient aromas including ‘coconut sun cream’, ‘freshly cut grass’ and ‘wild flowers’,” says a member of the Robin Collective to the Telegraph. “These scents were used in our recipes as they have a natural ability to evoke the positive memories we associate with warm weather, sunshine and summer holidays. Things that make everyone smile.”
A KFC UK brand manager says the company has been experimenting with edible packaging “to see if it could be a feasible product to bring to market in limited quantities.”
The Scoffee Cup is still in development, but KFC plans to bring them to a limited number of stores later this year.
While the cup might look yummy in the above photo, this image posted to Instagram by the model in the photoshoot shows that the reality may be less appetizing:
Passengers will get one rewards point for each dollar they spend on Uber rides, reports the Associated Press, while guests staying the night at a Starwood hotel will earn two to four points per dollar spent, depending on the level of their status with the hotel chain.
But it’s not like everyone who takes a ride with Uber will automatically start bringing in the Starwood points — passengers won’t be eligible to rack up points on rides until they’ve spent at least one night in the calendar year at a Starwood hotel.
It takes at least 3,000 points to get a free night in a Starwood hotel at the lowest tier of hotels, and as high as 35,000 points a night for upscale properties. That’s a whole lot of Uber rides.
This is the first such global deal that rewards ground transportation passengers with hotel points, and could give Uber a boost in cities where it’s competing fiercely with established taxi companies and other car services.
Neither company revealed the terms of the deal.
“Our guests get to us in many different ways,” says Mark Vondrasek, Starwood’s senior vice president of loyalty and partnership marketing. Through these partnerships, “we’re trying to get members to concentrate their stays with us.”
Uber partners with Starwood, giving hotel points for rides [Associated Press]
Walmart claims that there is no way this card, found by a man working at an Alabama fast food restaurant, could have more than $1,000 on it.
The man, a college student at the University of South Alabama, says he was recently sweeping the parking lot while working at a Captain D’s eatery when he came across the card. Checking the balance on the register inside the restaurant, he claims it showed a balance of $10,446.88 on the card.
He initially was overjoyed, especially since he needed a new car, but he ultimately decided that the right thing to do was turn the card over to Walmart and hope someone there could identify the rightful owner.
And so the man took the card to a nearby Walmart and turned it over to a customer service rep.
Here’s where things get strange.
When the man went back to inquire if the owner of the card had been found, the store pleaded ignorance.
When AL.com asked the Walmart manager, he said the store didn’t have the card and directed questions to Walmart HQ.
The corporate office gave a response that was even more baffling, claiming that not only was no one able to locate the card but that it’s not possible for the card to have more than $1,000 on it.
“So it is basically my word against a big company like Walmart,” says the man who found the card.
We think some of the confusion with Walmart HQ might lie in local media reports’ reference to the card as a “gift” card. The actual Walmart store reloadable gift card does have a maximum allowable balance of $1,000, but the card shown in photos shared by the man who found it does not appear to be a standard gift card.
It looks like the card is a Walmart MoneyCard, the store’s co-branded reloadable Visa debit card. These cards can have significantly more than $1,000 on them. The only limit stated in the terms of the MoneyCard [PDF] is a maximum daily reload limit of $2,999.
We’ve contacted Walmart HQ to ask for clarification regarding its claims of a $1,000 maximum balance. This post will be updated if we hear back.
The airline notified the FAA on Tuesday that the planes had missed a required maintenance check on their standby hydraulic systems, and voluntarily moved to ground the Boeing 737-700 jets.
Southwest then conferred with Boeing and the FAA to work out a plan, announced in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, that allows these planes to keep flying for up to five days while the inspections are completed.
Tuesday’s halt resulted in about 80 Southwest flights being canceled and grounding all 128 planes for even a day or two would have wreaked havoc on one of the nation’s busiest carriers. Because of the FAA’s green light to continue flying, the airline hopes that there will be minimal impact over the next few days as it pushes through these overdue maintenance checks.
Southwest is already in the hotseat with the FAA regarding repairs. Last summer, the regulator said the airline could face upwards of $12 million in fines over years of allegedly improper repairs to its fleet. A few months later, the agency sued Southwest for failing to pay those fines.
