Daily Archives: February 28, 2020

The Dog House Cocktail Bar, Westgate Arcade: Adam Leon - frontman with the band Leon will be performing some original music. His songwriting ideas are influenced by great modern artists (Coldplay, Ed Sheeran), but he also sees his roots in timeless pieces of his personal favourites like Queen and U2.

The Solstice: Loco with resident DJs Luke & Jake Roscoe Baines from 9pm with various Guest DJs throughout the evening from 9pm until 4am Entry is free before 11pm.

The Ostrich, North Street: EMBRACE - a place for the people by the people of the LGBTQIA+ community. 9pm until 2am.

The Ruddy Duck, Peakirk: 8.30pm, 1

Charters, Town Bridge: 8pm, free, 20 bar tab prize for winning team,

The Crown, Lincoln Rd: THE OVERDUBS from 9pm. Top Peterborough party band, playing chart hits through the decades - free admission.

The Yard of Ale, Oundle Road, Woodston: The Mighty and High.

Blue Bell, Werrington: Live music every Friday. Tonight: Brotherhoods Roundabout - awesome prog rock songs you wont here anywhere else!

Queens Head, Queen Street: Live music every Friday, from 7.30pm.

Charters, Town Bridge: Vinyl Night with resident DJ Derek Gibson, playing new wave, indie. Punk, glam rock, 60s thru to 00s. Not a disco - but dancing welcome.

The Solstice: Mischief - 3 rooms of music from 9pm with house & dance anthems in SolGarden + Club Classics and Essential R&B in The Solstice plus party anthems in Harrys Bar Caf. Resident DJs on the night include: Alessandro Vacca, Jake Baines & Robbie H. Entry is free before 10.30pm 5/7 after.

Sawtry Club: Rock and roll night, 8pm to 11.30pm

The Falcon, Whittlesey: No Silence Sounds disco, 8pm

Parkway Club, Maskew Avenue: Parkinsons Quiz night from 6pm

The Yard of Ale, Oundle Road, Woodston: Dirty Rumour.

The Crown, Lincoln Rd: THE MONEY SHOT from 9pm. Top Peterborough party band, playing pop, rock and dance chart covers - free admission.

The Bluebell, Dogsthorpe: TIGER CLUB from 9pm. Peterborough Supergroup, playing soul, funk, pop and rock covers - free admission.

Burghley Club, Burghley Road: THE GANGSTERS (pictured) from 9pm, and free entry for all.

Parkway Club, Maskew Avenue: Kenny & The Motives from 7pm.

The Deeping Stage, Market Place, Market Deeping: Live music every Saturday.

Spanglers Country Music Club:The amazing country star LEE JACKSON will be on stage at the Indoor Bowls Club, Burton Street. It is 5.50 on the door, 7.30pm-11.30pm. More from Jennifer 01733688324.

Peterborough Conservative Club, Broadway: Nite Owls from 8.30 - 11.30pm.

Charters, Town Bridge: Charters & Eclectic Ballroom presents Leeroy Thornhill with support from guest DJs Nick Slater (Shades of Rhythm), Jim Norton & Zed Malik (Eclectic Ballroom). Sold Out.

Brewery Tap: The Get Down with Resident DJ Eddie Nash 9pm late, free entry.

The Solstice: Saturday Sessions - with four rooms of entertainment. There is Commercial Chart & Dance in the Solstice, House & Dance Anthems in the SolGarden, Pure Urban Flavas in the Lit Room & Party Anthems in Harrys Bar Caf. Entry is free before 10.30pm more after.

Mama Lizs, Stamford: EHS Funk / Hip Hop / Reggae / Groove 9pm Free

Geneva Bar, Geneva Street: Kushty Karaoke, 9pm to 2am, free

Voodoo Lounge, Stamford: DR Gumbos Soul Funk Stew Funk N Soul N Cheese N Roll 9pm Free

Charters, Town Bridge: Bon Rogers live in the bar from 3pm family friendly free entry.

Parkway Club, Maskew Avenue: Organist Matthew Bason from 7pm.

Brewery Tap, Westgate: Oakham Mic Night 6pm late. The areas finest open mic night, all performers receive a complimentary drinks voucher.

The Solstice: LIVE! HD! Sports throughout the day on the big screens followed by karaoke with a chance to win 250. Entry is free.

Carpenters Arms, Coates: 8pm

Blue Bell, Werrington: Free pub quiz starts 8pm prompt.

The Crown, Lincoln Road: Quiz Night, Maximum teams of four, Pub Quiz 8pm, Cash Bingo 9:30pm

Blue Bell, Werrington: Popular local monthly open mic run by Stacey Lowth

The Solstice: Monday Club - with live HD sports shown on the big screen.

Conservative Club: Quiz Night make a team of four starts at 8.30pm.

Solstice, Northminster: Poker, Texas Holdem, every Monday, 7pm, all welcome.

The Ploughman, Werrington: CPL Bounty Hunter Poker plus access to DTD Finals. 13 week league, register by 7. 45pm for extra chips. Starts at 8pm every week.

Ex-servicemens Club, Fletton: Quiz, 2 per team of four and the winner wins a gallon of beer

Pizza Parlour and Music Cafe: Open mic session hosted by Anna Radford from 7pm to 10pm.

Charlies, Woodston: Karaoke every Tuesday from 7.30pm to 10pm called Some Mothers do ave em Night and welcomes the LGBT community of Peterborough.

The Solstice: TuesGay - Cambridgeshires biggest gay friendly midweek club night from 9pm until late.

Hungry Horse, Halcyon, Westwood: Quiz night and play your cards right,

The Rose and Crown, Thorney: Texas Hold em Poker, membership and entry free, beginners welcome, 01733 270546

The Ostrich Inn, North Street: Texas Holdem, from 7.30pm.

Conservative Club: Poker league, registration closes at 7.45pm.

Frothblowers, Werrington: Free silent pub quiz, from 7pm to 8pm. Teams of 4 max. 3 prizes.

The Solstice: Starts with RockNRoll Bingo and then its eyes down for the big cash prize.

, entry is 1 per person from 9pm.

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The best nights out in Peterboroughs pubs, clubs and bars this week - Peterborough Telegraph

People kept having the idea for Facebook long before Facebook ever came around. First there was sixdegrees; then there was Friendster; then there was MySpace. On college campuses like Stanford, people were digitizing their printed facebooks as early as 1999. When Mark Zuckerberg was in high school at Exeter, a classmate of his named Kris Tillery built a database of student headshots and put it online along with their phone numbers. The project, which the school eventually gave its blessing to, was called Facebook.

Of all those projects, though, only Mark Zuckerbergs is still around. The reasons why are explored at length in Facebook: The Inside Story, Steven Levys mammoth new account of the social network from its founding until the present day. Levy had access to Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and many of their top lieutenants and other employees over the past three and a half years, and the result it a revealing look at what the past 16 years have looked like from the offices in Palo Alto and Menlo Park.

The broad outlines of Facebooks story are well known. But Levy adds a lot of color to subjects including Zuckerbergs early life, his monomaniacal focus on growing the user base, and the gradual shrinking of his inner circle over time. Levy also has the best account yet of the Cambridge Analytica fiasco hes appropriately skeptical of the motives of everyone involved, and lays out in great detail how Facebook sowed the seeds for that particular comeuppance.

We gave Mr. Levy wide access to our executives, who were forthcoming about the most painful moments in Facebooks past, the company told me over email today. While we dont agree with everything he said, we also dont deny the challenges he describes and are actively working to solve them.

As you might expect from the subhed, The Inside Story leaves out the voices of almost everyone who doesnt work there. While it gestures broadly to all of the major criticisms Facebook has received over the years, the book is not a referendum on surveillance capitalism, antitrust, or hate speech. But if you want to know why Facebook is the way it is how its leaders think, what their blind spots are, and why the companys plans have so often gone awry The Inside Story is an excellent starting place. I expect to be referring to it, here and elsewhere, for some time to come.

Tomorrow Ill share some of my favorite moments from the book, which you can buy here. But first, I wanted to ask Levy about the project and what hes taking away from it. We spoke this week over email.

Casey Newton: Facebook has had no shortage of press coverage in its first decade and a half. And yet the first rough draft of history sometimes get things wrong. Was there a part of Facebooks story that turned out to be different than you assumed once you dug into it?

Steven Levy: I wouldnt say the early accounts were wrong, but telling the history with benefit of hindsight I was able to identify decisionsusually Marks decisionsthat would wind up costing Facebook (and in some cases us users) dearly. We all know Mark wanted to connect the world. But by understanding his thought process and goalsand particularly his competitive instincts and his drive for growthI felt I was able to freshly account for how Facebook as we know came about. I also found tons of wonderful, previously untold or under-covered stories, like the ill-fated Facebook phone, the Twitterization of the News Feed, and the Analog Research Lab, a silk-screen operation which churned out those propaganda posters you see all over Facebook HQ.

The book opens with Zuckerberg getting peeved in Nigeria when he discovers that the teens there dont like Facebook as much as they like Instagram. Later, you recount how Mark came to starve Instagram of resources, eventually driving its founders out of the company.

This feels like an uncharacteristically emotional decision from Zuckerberg. Why did Instagrams success bother him so much?

I think that the Instagram people are still baffled by that. (For the record, when I asked him directly, Mark would not concede he was jealous of Instagrams success, though people on the IG team thought otherwise.) Perhaps because in this timeframe Mark was conceiving his Private Messaging pivotwhich would basically cut out the founders as the key decision-makers and make Instagram more integrated into Facebookhe felt that it was necessary to purge those founders. He told me he saw it as freeing them to do great things elsewhere. If you look at it that way, its not so much an emotional decision but a strategic one.

Theres a great moment in the book where, in 2019, you ask Sheryl Sandberg her own signature question: what would you do if you werent afraid? She gives you the absolute most sanitized non-answer imaginable. (What I would do if I wasnt afraid is try to be the Facebook CEO and grow this business and say Im a feminist.)

Its consistent with almost all of her appearances in this book, where it seems like she is trying to avoid discussing whatever the topic at hand is in any real detail. What do you think Sandberg is actually afraid of?

As Sheryl herself writes in her own book, she likes to be in control of her environment, and believes that if she works hard enough and smart enough she can accomplish anything. I wasnt surprised that she was cautious in answering that question. I felt I did see a very genuine Sheryl in hour two (!) of our final interview, when it was clear how much the fall in Facebooks reputation pained her, even more so because she understands that her own shortcomings contributed to this. It got pretty raw.

Zuckerberg, on the other hand, strikes me as refreshingly straightforward in this book. Since childhood he has always wanted to grow and manage a giant civilization, and now he has! Everything else is just tactics, and the ends almost always justify the means.

At the same time, hes slow to trust people, and over the past few years most of his top lieutenants have left him. How deep do you think Facebooks bench is these days? When the current generation of deputies leaves, are there new stars waiting?

No question theres still talent at Facebook. But, as I think youre implying, Mark likes to give key jobs to people hes known and trusted for a while, and that bench is getting thin. (Andrew Boz Bosworth for instance, has come off the bench a couple times to take on big important missions, most recently hardware, AR/VR.) I think the critical departure was Chris Cox, who in my view was the person who would have taken over if Mark suddenly decided hed reached retirement age. Of those execs who joined relatively recently, I notice that David Marcus, who left PayPal in 2014 to head Messenger and now is leading Libra, seems to have earned a lot of trust from Mark.

Youve previously done book-length dives into Apple and Google. How does Facebooks internal culture compare to those giants? And could the company survive for very long if Zuckerberg ever left?

Facebook has always operated in Zuckerbergs image. It matters that he dropped out of college and created a culture based on the speediness of web development and the brashness of the dorm. (Google, while no less ambitious, was more grad school and science; Apple revered design.) Sandberg professionalized Facebooks culture to some degree, but the engineering mindset and the move fast ethic both explicitly touted by Mark are still in effect. The company would not disappear if Mark were to leave the advertisers would keep buying but it would be a different place under whoever his successor was. And maybe the political ads policy would change.

Finally, I have a lot of questions about Amazon. Could you write your next book about them?

Get your questions ready for Brad Stone, hes on this.

Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech platforms.

Trending up: Facebook is providing $2 million in grants to support independent research on misinformation and polarization on social media.

Some app developers say Apple wields its enormous market power to bully, extort, and sometimes even destroy rivals and business partners. They say the App Store is a case study in anti-competitive corporate behavior. And theyre fighting to change that by breaking its choke hold on the Apple ecosystem. Will Oremus report at OneZero:

According to the analyst App Annie, Apple customers downloaded 32 billion iOS apps in 2019, spending a total of $58 billion, and thats before you get to the billions in ad revenue those apps brought in. The App Store has become a major global industry unto itself.

But critics say that gauzy success tale belies the reality of a company that now wields its enormous market power to bully, extort, and sometimes even destroy rivals and business partners alike. The iOS App Store, in their telling, is a case study in anti-competitive corporate behavior. And theyre fighting to change that by breaking its choke hold on the Apple ecosystem.

Apple investors are voting on a new proposal that could force the company to disclose details of censorship requests from China and other nations. The proposal came after numerous allegations of Apple appeasing Beijing by blocking apps from being used by Chinese customers. (William Turvill / The Guardian)

Thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts have launched a coordinated campaign to spread alarm about the coronavirus. The campaign has disrupted global efforts to fight the epidemic, according to US officials. (AFP)

Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon lost more than $238 billion in value yesterday, as part of a broader market dive due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus. Apple is the tech giant most exposed to the economic threat of the virus, because much of its supply chain is in China. Heres Cat Zakrzewski from The Washington Post:

Apple said last week that the coronavirus would cause it to miss its revenue goals in the current quarter. The company warned investors that iPhone production was resuming more slowly than expected even as Chinese factories reopened, and it also saw a dampening in consumer demand for its products in the country.

Amazon has said little publicly about how it anticipates coronavirus will impact its bottom line.

Amazon is trying to stop sellers from raising the price of face masks, as the coronavirus spreads. Some say theyve received messages from the company that their face masks are too expensive and they could get kicked off the site. (Louise Matsakis / Wired)

Conspiracy theorists on Facebook and YouTube are blaming the coronavirus on 5G, with no evidence. Members of a group called STOP 5G U.K suggested the recent coronavirus outbreak in Italy is linked to the fact that 5G has been rolled out there. (Alex Wilkins / Metro)

Bob Iger stepped down as CEO of Disney. Hell be replaced by Disney Parks, Experiences and Products chairman Bob Chapek, effective immediately. Iger will stay on as executive chairman through the end of 2021, with a focus on creative endeavors. (Julia Alexander / The Verge)

Levy talked to Facebook critic Kara Swisher in a fun, flinty episode of Recode Decode this week.

A North Carolina TV reporter accidentally switching on Facebook Live filters before going on air, as seen in a now-viral video.

In the one-minute clip posted by WLOS ABC 13, Hinton can be seen reporting on snowfall in Asheville, completely oblivious to the fact that hes being digitally outfitted with googly eyes, a wizard hat, dog ears, barbells and more.

The Emmy-winning journalist only became aware of his animated makeover after reading the flurry of viewer reactions on Facebook. Wait, Misty, did I have a weird face? a flabbergasted Hinton can be heard asking a colleague off-camera. After a long pause, he adds, Oh, there are special effects on the phone.

No media format is more stale than TV news. Face filters could be just the thing that this industry needs to be relevant again.

Send us tips, comments, questions, and your favorite moments from Facebook history: casey@theverge.com and zoe@theverge.com.

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Facebook: The Inside Story author Steven Levy on how the company compares to Apple and Google - The Verge

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg speaks during an event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland January 23, 2019.

Reuters

In her first interview since the publication of Steven Levy's "Facebook: The Inside Story," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg defended herself against claims in the book that she's overly controlling, obsessed with her public image and prone to yelling at her employees.

"I'm a demanding boss, and I'm a tough boss. I think I'm a very fair boss. But I'm demanding," Sandberg said in an interview with "Byers Market," the new NBC News podcast that made its debut Thursday.

In the 50-minute conversation, recorded at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Sandberg also weighed in on her relationship with Mark Zuckerberg, addressed the damage that's been done to her public image and whether she can rectify it and said she was committed to staying at the social media giant for the long term.

"I wish so much that the world could see the Mark I know," Sandberg said. "Mark is an enormously, enormously talented guy. He has a great product sense. ... People think he doesn't understand people. That's just clearly wrong.

"We don't spend that much time worrying about our public image," she added. "The issue is not what people think of me or Mark personally. The issue is how are we doing as a company? How do we provide a great service, and how do we prevent some of the harm?"

Sandberg also offered her most robust defense to date of Facebook's business model and its vast collection of personal data, which she said was necessary to offer users a better content and advertising experience.

"There is growing concern, which is based on a lack of understanding, that we are using people's information in a bad way. We are selling it. We are giving it away. We are violating it. None of that's true. We do not sell data," she said. "Here's what we do: We take your information and we show you personalized ads ... [to give you] a much better experience."

More from NBC News: Facebook, Amazon and Google met with WHO to figure out how to stop coronavirus misinformationBloomberg is going after Trump on his home turf: FacebookTwitter is testing new ways to fight misinformation including a community-based points system

Sandberg also revealed that she will be defending the company's business model in a speech later this year. The move to publicly embrace Facebook's collection of user data marks a shift for a company that has historically downplayed the extent of its data collection practices.

"This is actually one of the most important things I want to do this year," Sandberg said. "I'm going to give a big speech next month. And I'm working on an op-ed. We need to go out and explain the business model clearly."

Sandberg defended Facebook's decision not to fact-check political advertising and talked about its efforts to combat Russian election meddling.

She also addressed a major recent development in her personal life: her engagement to her boyfriend, Tom Bernthal. And she talked at length about overcoming her grief after the loss of her late husband, Dave Goldberg, in 2015.

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Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg defends her company and her reputation in wide-ranging interview - CNBC

A cease fire-of-sorts between Kim and Cornelius is in the works

PREVIOUSLY:

A temporary truce was declared today in the battle between Eureka City Councilwoman Kim Walford Bergel and her longtime antagonizer Cornelius Loewenstein.

Bergel and Loewenstein, after speaking in a closed courtroom with Judge Kelly Neel, agreed to try settling their differences out of court. Bergel has been seeking a restraining order against Loewenstein, and the hearing was expected to resume this afternoon.

The parties have agreed to continue the hearing until March 19 so they can see if this is a matter they can resolve privately, Neel announced when the courtroom reopened.

For two years Loewenstein, enraged over Bergels support of a needle-exchange program for addicts, has been sending her angry Facebook messages daily, sometimes multiple times a day. He has called her obscene names and threatened she was going to get hers one way or another.

Loewensteins attorney, Arlie Capps, responded that all of Loewensteins messages were political, not personal. And Loewenstein has argued, in Facebook posts, that he has the right to free speech.

Outside of court, Bergel said shes willing to work with Loewenstein but the harassment has got to stop.

No one should have to deal with the magnitude of what Ive been walking through the last two years, Bergel said. She also said she has no intention of sitting down with Loewenstein himself.

Im willing to meet with his attorney, Bergel said, but he cannot be in the room. Im not interested in meeting with him at all.

Loewenstein referred reporters to his attorney, who said his policy is to refrain from commenting on ongoing cases.

Ill hold those comments until after were done, Capps said.

The next Eureka City Council meeting is Tuesday night. Loewenstein usually attends.

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Actually, Councilmember Kim Bergel and Facebook Activist Cornelius Loewenstein are Going to Try and Work It Out Outside of Court - Lost Coast Outpost

Many people know Geppetto as the fictional carpenter that brought a wooden puppet to life. The puppet who we know as Pinocchio can sing, dance, and feel sadness and love.

At Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Geppetto is a data-driven system for designers to create robots that can interact with emotions. With only changes to the speed, body angles, and gait, designers can create walking spiders that show happiness, anger, or excitement.

Other animals, such as puppies, dinosaurs, and centaurs, have also been, ironically, robotized to life.

The Geppetto project was founded by Ruta Desai, a research scientist at Facebook Reality Labs, (a research component at Facebook), and her team at CMU and Autodesk. Desai lectured at the UW Design Use Build on how this technology can democratize the robot design process for non-technical designers.

[These tools] can empower novices, these are the people without any robotics or engineering backgrounds, to build and design robots for their own needs, Desai said. We can empower everyone to play a part in shaping our future.

By normalizing robotic technology for the common people," robots will no longer be the exclusive property of large companies and research institutions. Desai envisions a future where people can obtain robot-building tools, which are software and gadget used to assemble robots, online or at a local store.

Robots will be integrated into daily human life just as smartphones are today making our life better, Desai said. Maybe have a Robot Now service just as we have [Amazon] Prime Now today, and thats really the vision of this project.

However, designing a functional robot is skill-intensive and requires high-level knowledge in engineering. It also doesnt have a live demonstration while the robot is being built, which can be frustrating whenever the system fails.

Imagine you want to build a robot now, Desai said. To do this, you have to first design the mechanical structure based on the task, [you] also [have to] think about the necessary electrical subsystems held together, and finally program this behavior to do the task that you want the robot to do.

As Desai explained, robot construction is built on three main axes: electrical subsystems, mechanical structure, and behavior. Since electrical subsystems are becoming more accessible, Desais research focuses on innovating the structure and behavior design of the robots.

Desais first research was a drag-and-drop robot design tool that allows users to easily ensemble wire, legs, and wheels within minutes. Showing a graphical interface allows the designer to see if there is enough space for all the components to fit together.

In her usability testing, the process not only significantly saves time but also increases the success rate of every iteration.

While her early work was predominantly used for articulated and non-articulated robots, Desais latest research, Geppetto, investigates semantic design to create expressive robotic behaviors.

Geppetto, in a way, brings life to a robot and that is why we named it after the famous Disney wood crafter, Desai said.

Current robot-building tools fall into two categories: animation and robotic tools. The former has great editing controls and the latter has great, but hard-to-use, simulation capabilities. To bridge the gap, Geppetto allows users to create and edit behaviors using physical simulation.

Desai displayed the interface to the audience to visualize the software. In the center is an area for users to design the robot; on the left is a slider panel where they can change the expression parameters; and on the top is a gallery of sample motions to inspire users of possible outcomes.

Desai explained that the gallery feature addresses the black slate issue. This is when novice users dont know what constitutes an expressive robot. For example, when users see an angry spider spiking its legs and knuckles, they have a better visualization of their own design.

Geppetto has a data-driven framework to help designers create different kinds of expressive robots. However, this also depends on how similar the robots are. An existing dataset for a four-legged walking robot might not easily translate to a six-legged walking robot.

Desai talked about her future work on redefining human-computer interaction to human-computer understanding. In robotic engineering, she pointed out how users still don't know the functions of a system while the systems can't predict what the users want.

Desai addresses this disconnect by creating multimodal features, such as images, sketching, and natural language processing, that can capture the users intent and preferences.

Achieving this technology can lead to opportunities in generative design. This is when the user specifies conditions to the system, which creates design options that satisfy these constraints. Its the technology that Tony Stark uses to design the time machine in Avengers: Endgame.

Wouldnt it be great if the user could just say I want to create a desk that can support a monitor model X? Desai said.

At Facebook Reality Labs, Desai is working on building computational methods that enable contextual and adaptive interaction. In simpler words, this is when a device can detect and react to users intent.

Robotic technology has been the showstopper of big tech companies and science fiction, but with innovative tools that allow non-technical designers to build their own expressive robots, people will be seeing more robotic animals gleefully dancing to the sound of music

Reach reporter Anh Nguyen at science@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @thedailyanh

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Facebook Reality Labs researcher designs software that allows novice designers to build expressive robots - Dailyuw

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio -- Digital platforms and tools have changed how small businesses operate and succeed. Companies like Facebook, Google, and many more help my family run our restaurant, connect with customers, and grow the business. However, the rhetoric in Columbus and Washington, D.C., about breaking up or changing the way these companies operate should concern every small business owner in the Buckeye state.

Three generations of the Scaffidi family work together. Our goal is to run a local neighborhood restaurant serving homemade Italian food in a comfortable, relaxed environment. We arent pretentious or fancy; nor are the ways we use digital technology.

We use Google Ads and we optimize keywords, so that customers find us in search results and in video ads on YouTube. Facebook and Instagram help us reach countless new customers in fun and engaging ways. We post pictures and videos of my grandmother and aunts making fresh pasta and homemade tomato sauce. When the weather is nice, we advertise our new outdoor patio. We spend only a few dollars, but we know quickly whether an advertisement is successful.

Digital platforms provide remarkable data and analytics that empower us to reach customers in ways we had never imagined a decade ago. For the first time, the platforms have made sophisticated marketing available to small businesses with even smaller budgets. Previously, small businesses advertised in the Yellow Pages and used coupon mailers and hoped that people would see their ads.

Our digital technology is so much more than advertising. Gmail and Google Docs cost very little, but they are essential to how we run our business and communicate with employees and customers. We use Quickbooks to manage the books, ADP for payroll, and Sling to help with employee scheduling. These tools are relatively inexpensive, and they enable our neighborhood restaurant to compete with franchises and chains that have million-dollar IT and advertising budgets.

However, we are concerned that this might not always be the case. The Ohio Senate has held hearings about whether large internet companies are anticompetitive. Lawmakers may rewrite the laws to make it easier to break up tech companies, and Attorney General Dave Yost is part of an investigation into tech companies.

Do policymakers understand that if they force these companies to break up or change significantly, that would almost certainly mean fewer free or low-cost tools for small businesses? Advertising prices will skyrocket, tools like G Suite will get expensive, and countless small businesses will be punished.

Frankie DiCarlantonio and his family operate the Scaffidi Restaurant Group in Steubenville, Ohio.

There are so many industries where a few big players control more essential items than digital advertising just think about health insurance, airlines and gas stations. Why isnt there an effort to break up these conglomerates or change the laws to improve opportunities for new airlines, insurance companies, or oil companies?

Digital platforms like Facebook and Google are not perfect. But for our restaurant, the good far outweighs the bad. Our elected officials, whose campaigns use lots of digital advertising, should know better than anyone that these tools are inexpensive, effective and essential. Elected officials know that regulating the digital economy will have consequences far beyond big tech. They need to be sure that small businesses that rely on digital platforms are not collateral damage of these investigations or legislative efforts.

Frankie DiCarlantonio and his family operate the Scaffidi Restaurant Group in Steubenville, Ohio. DiCarlantonio also serves as the Jefferson County Democratic Party chairman.

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* Email general questions, comments or corrections regarding this opinion article to Elizabeth Sullivan, director of opinion, at esullivan@cleveland.com.

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Overreaching laws on Google and Facebook ads will hurt Ohio small businesses like ours: Frankie DiCarlantonio - cleveland.com

A Big Lebowski promotion at Green Top Grocery was meant to make customers smile and maybe buy some milk. Instead, its gone viral and spawned two spinoff events this weekend.

The staff at the Bloomington grocery store cooperative recently put up a sticker on the milk cooler: 10% Off Milk When You Shop In Your Bathrobe. Its a nod to The Big Lebowski and lead character Jeff The Dude Lebowski, who had an affinity for White Russians (made with cream). In the cult classic's opening scene the robe-clad Dude shops for half-and-half at a Ralphs grocery store.

One of Green Top's farmers, Jeff Hake from Funks Grove Heritage Fruits & Grains, posted a photo of the sticker on Facebook. The image has since gone viral online, popping up on Lebowski fan pages andmaking the coveted front page on Reddit.

And yes, its a real promotion. The store has had quite a few people show up in their bathrobes to get the discount, said Michael Talley, marketing coordinator at Green Top Grocery.

We had one woman who drove an hour to come and buy milk in her bathrobe. And she doesnt even drink milk. She just wanted to be part of it, Talley said.

One guy even sent in a photo of himself trying to buy milk in his bathrobe at his local grocery storein Italy. (They did not honor the discount.)

After the big response to the promotion, Green Top Grocery is hosting a Dude Abides Robe Contest this weekend. Shoppers are encouraged to post photos of themselves (in robes, at the store), and the public will vote for a winner who will get a $50 gift card and a bag of Green Top goodies.

Green Top is also co-sponsoring a Dude Abides Road Party on Saturday at Fat Jacks. White Russians (of course) will be $3.50.

The promotion may be silly, but the thinking behind it is very real, said Talley. Ever since new general manager Christa Kramer arrived in 2018, Talley said the store has increased sales, owners, and the number of local farmers it works with. Most importantly, he said, prices have decreased.

I think people have the opinion that were this fancy grocery store, Talley said. But were really just a community-owned coop who wants to provide good, healthy food to our community, whether youre wearing a bathrobe or a suit.

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At Green Top Grocery, 'Big Lebowski' Promotion Really Ties The Store Together - WGLT News