Showstopper targets global buyers through online store

The store houses items from a total of 37 designers, all of which will be available to buy online. PHOTOS: PUBLICITY

KARACHI: 

Designers are going to great lengths to expand their retail business in order to keep up with the demands of consumers. Consumerism is the main reason why standalones and multi-designer brand stores keep popping up every now and then. Jumping on the e-retail bandwagon, multi-designer brand store Showstopper has forayed into the world of online shopping.

The store, which has maintained its prominent presence on the third floor of Park Towers Mall, Karachi, since 2012, inaugurated its e-store ‘showstopperdesigners.com’ on Tuesday. “Having a web presence is the only way to go these days,” co-founder of Showstopper Sabera Tapal told The Express Tribune. “We wanted to reach audiences worldwide in this era of globalisation.”

Showstopper stocks items from a total of 37 designers, including shoes and bags. Tapal’s love for clothes and accessories led her to invest in the project along with co-founder Farkhanda Bawany. “My sense of fashion along with her [Bawany’s] sense of entrepreneurship works wonders,” exclaimed Tapal. “It’s a next step for our venture. People can now buy clothes and accessories from us online.” Tapal added that the evolving fashion trends in Pakistan, which are moving towards fusion clothing, are ideal for online retail. “People are more interested in fusion wear. A buyer from Australia [for example,] can also go for our clothes as our variety has become so diverse.”

Showstopper is all for showcasing upcoming talent in the fashion industry alongside big, established names. “We have always been supportive of newcomers in the fashion industry,” Bawany said. “First-time designers like Aisha Alam and Shaista Barry will get the chance to showcase their clothes in the same store in which Iman Ahmed’s Body Focus Museum will. This place is an amalgamation of qualified designers offering excellence, and those who are new. Showstopper is a platform meant to encourage everyone equally.”

At the store, one spotted Shahida Masood’s digital print leather handbags, Ali Fateh’s clutches, Uzma Javeri’s silver jewellery, Body Focus’ collection of digital prints and Misha Waheed’s net collection, among others. These items will also be accessible to buyers online.

Shedding light on the variety, which will be available on the site, Bawany said, “The clothes online will be the same as those available at Showstopper’s outlet. Other than that, we will offer some exclusive, online-only pieces that won’t be restocked once they run out.” In order to cater for a greater fraction of online buyers, Bawany informed that ‘showstopperdesigners.com’ will also stock plus sizes.

Bawany found it difficult to ascertain the global diversity of the online clientele, but said that the store frequently receives clients from countries like the United Kingdom and Bangladesh, and is expecting that the online store will have more orders coming in from the same countries. “We promise to deliver the order in seven business days to any place in the world,” she added.

One of the jewellery designers currently stocking at the store, Ambreen Ghazanfar, owner of jewellery brand Sterling, believes online retail is the best way forward. “Going online is very important, especially for the multi-tasking women of today, who find it difficult to find the time to go shopping while holding full-time jobs.

Goal Sources: United’s key player rejects contract talks | Football at One Place

Manchester United have started their season below the standards they have set in the past specially in the premier league, but for judging in terms of individuality some players have worked hard and their forms have been shockingly better. Chris Smalling had a below par last season but he has looked solid and reliable playing this season. Similarly Wayne Rooney had a poor season under his belt despite of contributing to the goals and assists.

Rooney was unable to influence games on his own and often looked lackluster losing possession on so many occasions. The games against Everton and Swansea were a horror show for him last season but this season, Rooney has been none less than a machine.

He has looked the only United player with hunger and desire to win. Obviously United don’t want to lose him especially in the form he is in but Goal.com today reported that Wayne Rooney has rejected any talks of contract extension and will seek an exit next summer after almost 10 years of service for Manchester United.

United are willing to offer the forward a four-year deal which could see former Everton player pocket a sum of £52m in wages over the course of his new contract. According to the speculated figures, the Red Devils are not offering any improvement on his current wage of £250,000-a-week.

“Wayne is resisting any and all attempts from the club to talk about his contract situation. He knows, more than anything, that with his contract running down and in the form that he is in, he holds all the aces,” a source told Goal.com.

Rooney and his representatives are exploring all possible opportunities and are well aware of interest from other clubs in England as well as Europe with Chelsea, Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain reportedly showing interest in acquiring his services during the summer transfer window.

AT&T: Now you pay less for a no-contract phone plan

Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 comes with a lower-priced data plan at AT&T -- if you skip the contract.

(Credit: CNET)

AT&T is finally providing its no-contract customers with a break on its plans.

The company said Thursday that it is tweaking its mobile share plans, changing around various parts to give customers a break. The savings apply to customers who pay full price for their phone, bring a compatible phone to the network, or participate in its monthly installment plan, AT&T Next. Customers can sign up for the new plans on Sunday.

By reducing its prices, AT&T is finally addressing the biggest knock on its prior no-contract plans: the lack of a discount that should come from not accepting a subsidized phone. T-Mobile and Sprint both offer no-contract options that offer discounted phone plans, and AT&T's previous insistence on keeping the same subsidy-based rates with the debut of Next was the reason why many derided it as a poor deal.

The move comes amid intensifying pressure in the wireless business. In the last quarter, AT&T posted results that revealed pressure with more budget-minded feature phone customers, even as T-Mobile boasted animpressive number of new smartphone customers.

T-Mobile, which kicked off the no-contract craze in a splashy event earlier this year, has benefited the most from the shift in the industry, although Sprint has quickly matched it with a similarly attractive plan.

AT&T, for its part, denies that its policy change is a reaction to competition.

"We see competitors on our left and on our right," said AT&T representative Mark Siegel. "We're really focused straight ahead on what our customers are asking for."

He added that the company was hoping to attract new customers and widen its base with the new plans.

AT&T's mobile share plans are a confusing mix of data, phone, and line costs, so this is how it is broken down. The data plans only see a marginal change, with 300 megabytes of data costing $20 a month (the same as before), 1GB of data costing $5 more at $45, and 2GB also costing $5 more at $55. The biggest savings come as you get more data -- 10GB of data is $100, or $20 less than before, while 20GB is $50 less at $150. The supersize data plan of 50GB is $125 less at $375 a month. All of the plans include unlimited text and voice calls.

(Credit: Chart by Roger Cheng/CNET)

The biggest change is in the charge per device. Previously, there was a sliding scale of monthly fees attached to the device that was included in the plan -- part of the subsidized model found in contract plans. Device prices ranged between $30 and $50 depending on your data plan.

Under the new plan, with a no-contract smartphone, either through AT&T Next or paid upfront, the fee is $25 a month. For a single user, a standard 2GB plan would cost $80 a month, or $25 for the phone and $55 for the data. Tablets can be added for $10 a month.

For contract customers, the monthly cost to add a smartphone to a plan goes to a flat rate of $40 from the previous sliding scale, which means customers who have multiple phones or subscribe to a higher data plan end up paying more, as they previously only had a $30 fee. A smartphone customer with a 300MB plan would get a $10 break though.

While AT&T's plans are lower than they traditionally have been, they aren't a better deal than what T-Mobile or Sprint offer.

T-Mobile's closest equivalent plan, which includes 2GB of data and unlimited text and voice calls, costs $60 a month. An unlimited plan costs $70 a month. Sprint offers its unlimited data and monthly installment One Up plan for $65 a month.

It's no surprise that AT&T will position this as a better deal than Verizon Wireless' own no-contract program, called Edge.

The break, while not as significant as those of its two smaller competitors, is a concession that AT&T's existing plans weren't in keeping with the shifting industry dynamics.

The company, meanwhile, also introduced another program, dubbed Next 18, which allows customers to stretch their monthly payments for the smartphone over 26 months, while still providing the option to upgrade after 18 months. Next previously required customers to pay for the phone over 18 months, allowing for an upgrade after a year.

With AT&T shifting its prices, that leaves only Verizon keeping its plans unchanged despite the no-contract option. The ball is in its court.

Apple and Samsung devices go $0 down at T-Mobile

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

T-Mobile is making it a little bit more affordable to buy an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy S4.

Certain Apple and Samsung products will drop down to no money down at T-Mobile starting Wednesday, the company said today.

An iPhone 5S will go for $0 down and 24 monthly payments of $27, while the theiPhone 5C is $0 down and 24 payments of $22.91. A Galaxy S4 can be had for 24 monthly payments of $29.50.

The same offer applies to the iPad Air andGalaxy Tab 2 10.1.

While T-Mobile is easing the upfront payment, customers still end up paying the same amount, as the difference is spread across the monthly device payments over two years. Customers still have to meet certain credit requirements to qualify for these plans.

NSA said to use Google cookies to track surveillance targets

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

The same Web browser cookies used to track consumers on the Internet are being used by the National Security Agency to track surveillance targets, according to a Washington Post report.

The cookies -- bits of code that allow advertisers to track consumers' Web activity to deliver more-targeted ads -- are being used by the NSA to help identify targets for government hacking and surveillance, according to internal NSA presentation slides provided to the newspaper by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The NSA is particularly fond of using a Google tracking mechanism called a PREF cookie, which contains a unique numeric identifier rather than personal information such as a user's name or e-mail address. While the cookie doesn't allow the agency to identify suspicious behavior, it does allow for pinpointing of a subject already under investigation for "remote exploitation," the newspaper wrote.

The cookie is part of Google's "Safe browsing" service, which aims to protect consumers from malware and phishing attempts. Google says the PREF cookie is also used to store users' Web browser preferences, such as preferred language and number of search results.

The documents also showed that the NSA is using location data gathered by smartphone apps and mobile operating systems to pinpoint mobile devices around the world, the newspaper reported. The Post said the information collected is more specific than the 5 billion location tracking records the agency reportedly collects on a daily basis.

Google cookies have been linked to NSA tracking activities before. Documents leaked by Snowden to the Guardian in October show the agency used ad networks like Google's AdSense to locate and identify users of the US-based Tor Project, which is devoted to providing a system that lets people use the Internet anonymously.Representatives for the NSA and Google declined to comment on the report.

The collection of behavioral data via cookies has long riled privacy activists and consumers alike. Proponents argue that tracking people as they visit different sites on the Web allows advertisers to provide more targeted marketing.

After the US Federal Trade Commission requested a mechanism to block online tracking, Mozilla offered Do Not Track technology to prevent Web pages from tracking people's online behavior for advertising purposes. However, efforts to make it a standard have stalled over disagreements about how to enable it. An alternate proposal submitted by several advertising groups was rejected this summer by the Tracking Protection Working Group, a standards group that includes representatives from browser makers, advertisers, and privacy groups.

A federal judge recently dismissed a class-action lawsuit that accused Google and three other online advertising companies of having "tricked" plaintiffs' Web browsers into accepting cookies that enabled Google to serve the plaintiffs targeted advertising. While agreeing that the companies bypassed the browsers' privacy settings, the judge in the case found that the plaintiffs did not demonstrate that they suffered harm as a result of their personal information being collected and sold.

Sprint CEO: 2014 is our comeback year

Dan Hesse says Tuesday that the company must go through some short-term growing pains, but should start to see network improvements by the middle of 2014

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse speaking at IFA 2013 in Berlin.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

NEW YORK -- Sprint CEO Dan Hesse believes that 2013 was Sprint's rebuilding year, but he sees the company making a turn around by mid-2014.

Speaking at an investor conference in New York on Tuesday, Hesse told an audience of analysts and investors that it has been personally painful for him to watch the company lose customers as it rips out its old network infrastructure and replaces it with new gear as part of its Network Vision program and its new Spark enhanced LTE network upgrade.

"What we are going through right now is a massive buildout that is causing some short-term pain for long-term gain," he said. "This is personally painful for me. We have worked so hard to improve customer satisfaction."

"What's been frustrating is when we come out with something like 'unlimited data for life,' and then we have network issues," he said. "Unfortunately, we have to go through this hard period of time, so we face a headwind that our competitors don't have."Hesse said that regardless of consumer-friendly policies, such as unlimited data for life, the fact that the network has not been performing up to snuff has hurt the company in the short term.

But Hesse said that the Network Vision program that basically replaces equipment throughout Sprint's network and replaces it with upgraded and more flexible hardware is paving the way for the company to have a stronger and better performing network in the future. He said when the company completes this transition, Sprint's network will be faster, more reliable, and more future-proof than its competitors' networks.

Hesse likened the transition to the story of the "Three Little Pigs." Sprint is building a house of brick while its competitors are using straw and stick. And even though Sprint's network is taking a longer time to build the network, it will last longer. And he said that customers will soon see the fruits of this labor.

"We believe that what we are building is something that is worth waiting for," he said.

Still, he acknowledged that Sprint has been losing customers and will continue to lose customers as the network is built out in 2014. But he said that the pattern in customer losses has been a predictable one, and he expects that Sprint will actually end up gaining more customers than it started with once the network is complete. He used Chicago as an example of this. It was one of the first large markets where Sprint launched Network Vision and Spark, and it was a market in which Sprint switched equipment vendors in building out this new network.

Hesse said that as the company ripped out its old infrastructure, it saw voice quality degrade. Customers experienced more dropped and blocked calls, and as a result, frustrated customers left Sprint. But as soon as the upgrade was 70 percent complete in certain neighborhoods, voice services dramatically improved and the churn rate slowed. And as the network neared completion in certain areas of the city, subscribership started to come back, even to levels higher than they were before the upgrade.

"We will see churn get worse as we build Network Vision," he said. "And then it starts to improve and will improve to a level that is much better than where we started when it's over. So we have to go through the short term pain to reach the long term gain."

He said that much of the Network Vision network should be built out by the middle of 2014, and that's when he expects to see improvements in subscriber numbers.

To show just how ready Sprint is for its new and improved network, Hesse showed off the Samsung Galaxy S4, its latest Sprint Spark LTE handset, which uses a tri-band radio that can access all three swaths of spectrum-- 800MHz, 1.9GHz and 2.5GHz-- that Sprint is using for its LTE network.

Sprint plans to deploy Sprint Spark in about 100 of the largest cities in the US over the next three years. Today, it's available in five cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tampa, and Miami. By the middle of 2014, Sprint 4G LTE service is expected to be available to approximately 250 million Americans, and Sprint expects 100 million Americans will have Sprint Spark or 2.5GHz coverage by the end of 2014.

A corporate spokesman issued a statement following Hesse's talk stating that the Samsung Galaxy S4 with Sprint Spark will be available for $199.99 (excluding taxes) with a new line or eligible upgrade and two-year service agreement after a $50 mail-in rebate.

Ubuntu Touch OS wins its first smartphone partner

Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

PARIS -- Ubuntu Touch has its first customer, CNET has learned.

Canonical has just signed its first deal to supply a smartphone with its mobile operating system, Canonical founder and product strategy leader Mark Shuttleworth revealed in an interview here at the LeWeb conference. He wouldn't say which company has agreed to use the Linux-based OS, but said it will be offered on high-end phones in 2014.

"We have concluded our first set of agreements to ship Ubuntu on mobile phones," Shuttleworth said. "We've shifted gears from 'making a concept' to 'it's going to ship.' That has a big impact on the team."

And, he said, Canonical is in board-level discussions with several others: "We are now pretty much at the board level on four household brands. They sell a lot of phones all over the world, in emerging and fully emerged markets, to businesses and consumers."

It's significant progress for a nine-year-old company that has specialized in the Ubuntu version of Linux. But it's a very long way to making even a small dent in the dominance of Google'sAndroid and Apple's iOS.

Shuttleworth knows he's got big incumbent powers to reckon with, along with smaller mobile OS players such as Windows Phone from Microsoft, Tizen from Samsung and Intel, and FirefoxOS from Mozilla and a host of carrier partners. He thinks Ubuntu Touch, with a flexible programming foundation beneath and an immersive services-first interface on top, will find a place, though.

"Volume is important. We want to do stuff that people use every day," he said. He doesn't want Ubuntu to occupy only a small niche of the mobile market.

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So how will Ubuntu Touch make it to the big leagues? Partnerships with those who offer services -- partnerships with companies like LinkedIn, Baidu, Facebook, Evernote, and Pinterest is one way. Those with online services see Android as a vehicle to drive people to Google services, and they're looking to back an alternative that will give them top billing, Shuttleworth said.

Ubuntu Touch puts those services front and center in a rich way that elevates them beyond mere app icons.

"The look is fresh and clean. It's much more usable than any of the other new phones," Shuttleworth said.

A second part of the sales pitch is that Ubuntu Touch is open, something that appeals to some business partners. It's based on the open-source operating system also at the core of the Ubuntu product for personal computers and servers. And it can run apps written for that Linux kernel, for a Java layer on top that's not far removed from Android's app underpinnings, or Web apps that are the lifeblood for Firefox OS.

It's hard to imagine that Android developers will eagerly to produce a sister version of their apps, no matter how easy the developer tools make it, unless Ubuntu Touch spreads widely. Shuttleworth believes they will, though, since they already have to reckon with a fragmented Android device market and Ubuntu Touch isn't far removed.

"We make no claims for Android compatibility, but we make it super easy for you to target both at the same time and super cool for you to do so," Shuttleworth said.

Another part of the sales pitch is carrier support. He's won Ubuntu Touch endorsements from Vodafone, 3, EE, KT, SK Telecom, Verizon, Deutsche Telecom, T-Mobile, PT, and more, he said. And the final piece: software written natively for Ubuntu Touch will also work on Ubuntu-based PCs and, someday, Ubuntu-based tablets and TVs.

Shuttleworth founded Canonical in 2004, back in the day when Linux on the desktop was, if not exactly a contender, at least a more widely discussed alternative to Windows PCs than it is today. Since then, the company expanded to the server market, with a major focus on cloud-computing infrastructure such as Amazon Web Services' EC2.

Mobile came next -- but so far profits have not followed for the company. Shuttleworth sold Thawte Consulting to Verisign in 1999 for $575 million and and has enough wealth for space tourism -- he became a cosmonaut on a Russian Soyuz trip in 2002. And he's been willing to subsidize Canonical while it grows a business.

If he wanted, the company could become profitable on its PC and server business right now by dropping the mobile work. But for now, it invests in its future because Shuttleworth thinks dumping mobile would cut the company off from a major part of computing.

"It would give it a lifespan measured in years," Shuttleworth said. "Not decades, years."