Category: News

Tick Data’s management is buying the company and receiving funding from Tactex F1 Private Equity Fund.  Neal Falkenberry, Tick Data’s president, and Thomas Myers, Senior VP, will have two-thirds, while Tactex will have one-third, a spokeswoman says. Tick Data, which is headquartered in Great Falls, Virginia, provides time data for the equities, options and futures markets.

PRESS RELEASE

GREAT FALLS, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Tick Data, Inc. (www.tickdata.com) is pleased to announce the corporate buyback of the firm by its long-time management team, led by Neal Falkenberry, CFA, and Thomas Myers, with additional funding from the Tactex F1 Private Equity Fund. After eight years of ownership by Penson Worldwide, Inc., and a brief acquisition by Desjardins Group, Canada’s leading cooperative financial group, as part of Nexa Technologies, Inc., ownership and operations once again belong to the individuals who built the company from a niche provider of historical intraday U.S. futures data to the leading provider of research-ready global futures, index, equity, and options historical intraday data.

“Our management team is energized to once again own Tick Data”

“Our management team is energized to once again own Tick Data,” said Neal Falkenberry, CFA, President of Tick Data, Inc. “While the firm has grown and prospered as part of Penson, we believe that, in order to become the world’s central repository of historical intraday time series market data, Tick Data must be owned and operated by the entrepreneurs who passionately built the company and understand its clients.”

“As we began to integrate Nexa with Disnat, we realized Tick Data does not share common customers, infrastructure, or priorities,” said Laurent Blanchard, VP and General Manager, Online Brokerage, Disnat. “The two companies are best run independently, and I am confident that Tick Data’s customers will benefit from the renewed focus and energy the management team will have now that the company is back in their hands.”

 

Tick Data will hit the ground running under its new ownership by adding an additional New York-based salesperson and continuing to expand its considerable offering of historical intraday market data. Tick Data’s product line currently includes historical trade and quote data for 195 global futures and index symbols, all U.S. equity and index options, and all listed equities traded in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, London, Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, Amsterdam, Brussels, Lisbon, Paris, Tokyo, and the recently added Mexican, Hong Kong, Korean, and Australian stock markets.

“When the opportunity arose to re-acquire the company, it was a logical decision,” continued Falkenberry. “Our commitment to our clients has never been stronger. Tick Data will continue to provide research-ready historical intraday market data to the world’s finest traders and quantitative analysts for many years to come.”

About Tick Data, Inc.:

Founded in 1984, Tick Data, Inc. provides clean, reliable historical intraday time series data for the equities, options, and futures markets. Tick Data employs proprietary data validation, price-filtering, and ticker symbol mapping processes to produce robust, research-ready historical data. From efficient data collection and distribution to seamless integration with third-party analytical software, Tick Data removes the frustration of building and maintaining sets of historical intraday data.

About Tactex:

The Tactex F1 Private Equity Fund is a Canadian investment fund that focuses on direct investments in cash flow, positive small cap entities or start-up firms through a combination of debt, preferred shares, or common shares. The Fund is available only to select qualifying investors. The Fund is managed by Tactex Asset Management Inc. who is registered as a portfolio manager with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, the Ontario Securities Commission and the British Columbia Securities Commission and as an Exempt Market Dealer and Investment Fund Manager with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers and the Ontario Securities Commission.

The post Tick Data Announces Management Buyback appeared first on peHUB.

Wonder Woman is still expected to show up on the CW, network officials say, even though they didn’t order the pilot episode this season.

Studio execs say they are still very interested in a small-screen adaptation of the popular comic, they just want a new writer to take over.

“It is being redeveloped, we’re waiting for the script to come in; we haven’t seen it yet,” network president Mark Pedowitz said. “We are preparing to pilot it off-cycle should the script be what we want it to be. We do not want to produce something that doesn’t work for that particular character — it is the trickiest of all the DC characters to get done.”

With comic book stories sweeping movie theaters and raking in millions, it’s no surprise that television execs want to cash in on America’s love for their favorite characters. The problem is finding a way to do it that remains true to the hero, yet translates to t.v. in a way that isn’t completely, horribly cheesy.

The character summary for the show reads as such:

[She comes from] a secluded country where she was raised as a solider in a brutal environment. Now a stranger in a strange modern big city, she’s a fierce warrior with the innocent heart of a romantic and she will fight to the death to make the world safe.

The writer who has taken over the script is Aron Eli Coleite, whose credits include “Heroes” and “The River”.

With atmospheric carbon dioxide recently hitting a record 400 parts per million, the discovery of alternative renewable energy sources has taken on added urgency. One effort is the so-called “artificial leaf,” a photosynthetic system that uses light energy to split water molecules and produce hydrogen. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have recently published details of their new nanowire-based system that mimics the way plant chloroplasts transport charged particles.

The artificial leaf’s titanium dioxide and silicon nanowires are arranged in an array that actually resembles a microscopic forest of straight pines. The key to achieving good solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency is the integration of the components — the nanowire semiconductors that absorb light, an interfacial layer, and co-catalysts for the water splitting reaction — in a structure that resembles and functions like a chloroplast.

Plants are so efficient at turning sunlight into sugars partly because of what is termed the “Z-scheme”: the daisy chain of molecules that deliver a charged electron from a chloroplast to molecular energy production in the cell. The artificial leaf uses the Z-scheme, too, but with the silicon nanowires responsible for the hydrogen generation and the titanium dioxide nanowires contributing to the formation of by-product oxygen. The use of two semiconductor materials allows for a large part of the sunlight spectrum to be harnessed (the silicon works off visible light and the titanium dioxide uses UV), while the forest-like array of nanowires increases the surface area for the solar-to-fuel reactions, which are helped along by embedded catalysts.

The artificial leaf has a conversion efficiency of 0.12 percent, comparable to that of natural photosynthesis. To be commercially viable, the efficiency number will have to get into the single digit percentages, and companies like MIT spin-off Sun Catalytix have already chosen to refocus their efforts away from artificial leaf tech. Replacing the current-limiting titanium dioxide anode in the system is the Berkeley researchers’ next target for improving conversion efficiency.

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Although it may have been the first big release of the Summer Movie Season–no offense to Michael Bay and his Pain & Gain offering–Marvel’s Iron Man 3 has thrown down an impressive arc reactor-powered gauntlet down for the other summer tentpole titles to look up to as their respective release dates approach. While some may be almost dubious to Marvel’s first follow-up to the incredibly successful The Avengers–if the movie was honest, it would’ve been called The Adventures of Tony Stark Without the Iron Man Armor, but I digress–that has not stopped moviegoers from throwing down their hard-earned cash to see Robert Downey, Jr once again shine in what is now his fourth turn in the Iron Man suit.

So much so, in fact, that according to Variety, the third installment in the Iron Man series is expected to break the $1 billion mark sometime this week. It should be noted, however, that this total is a worldwide mark, and not just in the United States. That being said, Iron Man 3 is already number 16 on the all time worldwide box office list regarding box office earnings, as pointed out by Box Office Mojo. For what it’s worth, The Tony Stark Movie has earned almost $300 million in United States.

When you consider how much more is involved to push a movie close the billion dollar level, it just goes to show that, even though Iron Man 3 featured very little of, well, Iron Man in it, the movie is still very much a global-level hit. For me, the question is, is this because the audience loved the movie that much, or did the afterglow of The Avengers mean such a value for the first Marvel Studios movie to follow the second-highest grossing movie ever was pretty much guaranteed, especially when it features Robert Downey, Jr?

This afternoon, David Simas sent the message below to the White House email list, asking people to speak out in favor of the health care law. If you didn't get the email, be sure to sign up.

Hi all —

Today, Republicans in the House of Representatives are going to come together, cast a vote, and try to repeal the Affordable Care Act just as they've done nearly 40 times before.

Don't expect much to come of it.

The health care law was passed by Congress, signed by the President, and upheld by the Supreme Court. It's been the law of the land for more than three years. It's not going anywhere. We know that, and so do the lawmakers on Capitol Hill. But instead of creating jobs and growing the economy, some of them want to make yet another gesture of protest — even if it's meaningless.

So we're responding with a little gesture of our own, and we need your help.

We're asking people like you to speak out, to let us know if you're one of the 85 percent of Americans who've already benefitted from the health care law, and make a public stand in support of Obamacare.

Lend your name now.

read more

Samsung’s marketing Death Star isn’t just hovering over the United States — it has designs on conquering the entire world. Per Barron’s, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry thinks that Apple may have a tougher time in India than other markets because BlackBerry and especially Samsung have already blanketed the country with ads touting their smartphones as elite products that consumers simply see as less expensive versions of the iPhone. Because of this, he says that the companies have created “an environment where they tend to mentally enslave the consumer to buy their products.” Chowdhry says this is particularly true of Samsung, which he says airs TV ads once every 15 minutes in India.

Good relationships represent the foundation of business and personal success. Developed through a mix of extrinsic and intrinsic factors quality relationships can last a lifetime and lead to new career and personal paths. World renowned influence expert, Dale Carnegie, famously identified ways in which people can move into spheres of social and business recognition in his seminal book, How To Win Friends And Influence People (1936). The fact that 78 years on his sophist tract is lauded, and referenced by millions surely implies that there is longevity in his approach.

Determining factors such as the chemistry of interests, good rapport, appropriate behaviours and genuine concern generate relationships which build in strength over time for the benefit of all parties. Taking his advice as a starting point, here are four ways in which interactions in the socially dominant multi-connected world can deliver influence beyond initial effort.

1.Make Initial Contact

Making that first gesture of connection and friendship can often be the hardest part. Unless people are naturally extrovert then it requires an extra effort on individuals part to break the ice. Something as innocuous as enquiring about the weather or someone’s experience of a particular environment can lead to subjects of real interest which keep both parties communicating and eventually socialising. In business discovering those core needs and interests is often the first step in generating mutually lasting and beneficial outcomes. This in turn creates loyalty, sustained social interactions and grows the sales pipeline.

2. Mind Your Ps &Qs

Mind your Ps and Qs is an English expression which means to “mind your manners”, “mind your language” and “be on your best behaviour” or equivalent. Parents educate their children that it a sign of politeness and good upbringing to remember to say ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ in public interactions. It takes little effort but achieves maximum impact when this two little words are deployed. Businesses can go far, and even the extra mile, when they acknowledge customers across their chosen channels in this fundamental manner.

3.Engage With Real Interest

Many conversations meander. Once past the ‘welcome’ and initial ‘supply’ of information communication can dip and weave erratically. A quality interaction can often be abandoned after the necessities have been taken care of. In order to successfully move through the ‘impart and acquire’ level of communication there usually needs to be some interesting information which hooks the listener, or offers more depth in insight that the original enquiry expected. When companies interact with their customers they can do so by understanding exactly what the issue is and how to truly address it to make it a win-win conversation. After all the interaction should not be just about the business rather also about the customer’s needs and desires.

4. Deepen The Quality Of Connection

Deep connections transform the mind, body and spirit. Deep connections have the stamp of trust on them. As with anything, for example as where a focused level of skill is attained, they can take years to build. Shallow and infrequent contact is likely to alienate many people as they may not believe you appreciate them or else are in contact simply to extract something. The keys to getting from occasional contact to deep trust lie in some simple yet highly effective strategies. These include delivering unique, first-hand knowledge regarding certain situations, memorable story telling, retelling experiences gained from known associates and giving out hard data. Then there’s the extra personal level such as remembering anniversaries, birthdays, Milestones and family particulars.

The better and deeper the knowledge imparted and details of the contact and customer base the greater the likelihood of influence and of solid engagement. Ultimately engagement binds people – and brands – together. It shows a shared vision and commitment to long-term goals and demonstrates a sense of trust. Getting to ‘trust’ via influence is the nirvana of brand-building organisations which wish to operate in the era of the social media associate. Reaching out to prospects, fans, peers and publics via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media platforms honestly, frequently, and with real interest is already becoming a strong marketing method for those firms of all sizes wishing to gain more advocates and evolve loyal enthusiasts. No doubt Dale Carnegie himself would have approved if he were around today.

Well, we’re winding things down here are BlackBerry Live 2013 and on behalf of the entire BlackBerry social media team, I would like to say thank you so much for tuning in and following along with all of our coverage. For a rundown on all the news watch our wrap-up video below and checkout the keynote highlights post from earlier in the week.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

You’ll also definitely want to check-out what attendees onsite here at the show had to say about all the excitement and energy, here at BlackBerry Live 2013.

Melanie here, jumping into Donny’s blog post. Donny, Alex and Luke did a great job summarizing the week in the wrap video, but I think there’s one element they didn’t mention – the behind the scenes. Thanks to BlackBerry Story Maker, I was able to grab some videos and pics we made throughout the week that is just too good not to share. Check out BlackBerry Live through the eyes of the Social Media Team.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

There you have it — a BlackBerry Story Maker video showcasing BlackBerry Live 2013 from the social media team’s perspective! Let us know how we did in the comments — Thanks for a great week, we’re signing off!

Private equity group HgCapital has put on ice a sale of Schleich, the German company that makes high-quality miniature animal figures and Smurfs toys, sources told Reuters.

(Reuters) – Private equity group HgCapital has put on ice a sale of Schleich, the German company that makes high-quality miniature animal figures and Smurfs toys, three people familiar with the matter said.

The people close to the sale process said that HgCapital’s price expectations had been too high.

HgCapital had hoped to get 200 million euros ($257 million), a valuation above that of Schleich’s larger rivals, while bidders had offered about 160 million euros, one of the people said.

“Schleich has developed well and the question is when will buyers acknowledge that adequately,” a person close to HgCapital said, adding no specific time had been set for a possible relaunch of the sale.

HgCapital had appointed Goldman Sachs in October to look for a buyer. HgCapital, Schleich and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

The private equity group bought Schleich, based in Schwaebisch-Gmuend in Germany, in 2006, at an enterprise value of 165 million euros.

The company, founded in 1935 by Friedrich Schleich, started out as a maker of plastic components. In the 1950s it introduced its range of Schleich figurines, that now includes Smurfs, Snoopy, The Muppet Show characters as well as dinosaurs, domestic and wild animals.

It employs 350 staff and has annual sales of roughly 100 million euros.

Rival toymakers Mattel and Hasbro trade at 8.7 and 10.5 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBIDA), respectively.

Schleich in 2012 saw core profit or EBITDA fall to 18 million euros missing a 30 million euro target, as the company struggled with a revamp of its sales force.

“We see encouraging trading activity in the new year as sales force productivity improves,” HgCapital said in its 2012 annual report.

The post HgCapital Pulls Sale of Smurf Maker Schleich – Sources appeared first on peHUB.

WASHINGTON D.C. — IER President Thomas Pyle released the following statement concerning the proposed federal regulations for hydraulic fracturing announced today by the Department of Interior:

“This regulation places an unnecessary additional burden on American energy producers, and ultimately on …

One of the biggest gripes about Google Glass has been it doesn’t have any apps. Well, some of the biggest app developers and content providers in the world have decided to rectify that problem. On Thursday, Facebook, Twitter, Evernote and CNN along with a handful of other content providers announced that they have already created or are in the process of developing apps — dubbed “Glassware” — for Google’s new headgear.

In a blog post, Twitter said you can now tweet photos from Glass to your feed — the update will include the hashtag “#throughglass” — and see your other tweets by turning on in-Glass notifications. The service is now available and users can activate the Twitter app on Google’s MyGlass portal.

Facebook’s Glass implementation is also live, though for now you can only share photos, not post status updates or view your newsfeed. You can, however, set privacy levels and add descriptions to photos you post using Glass’s speech recognition features.

Evernote doesn’t yet have an app per se, but it is integrating with Glass’s sharing menu, allowing you to capture a picture or short video and save it as a note in your Evernote account. It is also giving users the option of sending notes (from its web app) to the Glass timeline so your grocery list or crib notes are right in your line of vision.

At I/O Google revealed three other companies taking up shop on Glass. CNN’s app will put news alerts in front of your retinas. Elle is providing content from its magazines that can be viewed in the Glass display or read aloud. Tumblr lets you post content to your personal blog and get updates from Tumblrs you follow.

These companies join Path and the New York Times as the only official third-party apps on the Glass. For now Google is being rather conservative in its Glassware efforts, placing restrictions on the level of access to platform and banning ads or any other monetization scheme.

Still, once Google fully opens up Glass, it likely won’t have any shortage of interest. Smaller developers are already clamoring to get on board. For instance, Open Garden wants Google to expose Glass’s networking functions so it can link the headgear to its crowdsourced mesh network.

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Anonymous has a bone to pick with the oil industry.

Via various Anonymous related YouTube channels, the hacktivist group announced Operation Petrol this week. As the name implies, Anonymous will be targeting the oil industry. What’s interesting about this particular operation is that it’s not being contained to one country or area. Anonymous is calling on members worldwide to target local oil companies.

If you can’t watch the video, here are the relevant bits:

It has been a long time coming, operation petrol, will be engaged on the 20th June 2013.

This operation will include the U S, Canada, England, Israel, Saudi Arabia (only Government), China, Italy, France, Germany, Kuwait (only government) and Qatar (only government).

Saudi Arabia you have betrayed your fellow believers with your cooperation with these greedy foreigners causing much pressure on families from around the world, you allow this to happen.

You may not already know, but in the future, electronic transfer of money will be the governments ideal preferred way of all transactions by 2020.

What you do not know, is when this occurs, just like in Syria, your government will be able to have access to your funds and retirement money at anytime they wish to steal it.

The U S is known for creating war for the purpose of stealing Gold, stealing Oil and stealing Opium which they are doing in Afghanistan still to this day, but you are not aware of this, because your media are not allowed to tell you because of the censorship ban inplace about this.

If the Governments succeed with a NO PAPER MONEY system, they will have no need to steal gold, oil or opium, they will have no need for war because they will have, trillions of dollars at their finger tips, and there will be nothing you can do about it.

The pastebin release in the description further describes #OpPetrol as a predominantly Mulsim-run operation that will primarily target Middle Eastern countries that export oil. It lists a number of grievances, including claims of the government turning their backs on Islam in favor of money.

As it’s stated above, #OpPetrol will begin on June 20. We’ll keep an eye out to see if Anonymous actually attacks anything. Previous threats have often returned empty.

[h/t: The Hill]

An Illinois man this week is all smiles after finding a winning lottery ticket stashed away in an old cookie jar.

According to the Illinois Lottery, Ricardo Cerezo had some old lottery tickets sitting in a cookie jar and decided to look through them. When he scanned them at a convenience store, he found out he had won $4,850,000. The quick pick ticket was for the February 2 Illinois Lottery drawing.

Cerezo was in disbelief, saying that he couldn’t believe that much money was sitting on his kitchen counter for months. He stated his intentions to pay off his mortgage, give money to his church, and give money to charity.

“It is very important to us that we use this money to help others,” said Cerezo.

This happy turn of events contrasts with recent troubles Cerezo and his family have faced. According to a report from an NBC news station in Chicago, Cerezo and his wife had last year made the decision to take their 14-year-old daughter off of life support. The girl, named Savannah, died as a result of seizures. The Cerezos had also fallen behind on their mortgage payments and were facing foreclosure before the cookie jar lotto ticket solved their money problems.

(Image courtesy the Illinois Lottery)

As student debt levels reach new highs – the total outstanding debt just topped $1 trillion – it’s hard to argue that the current model of financial aid isn’t in need of a fix.

In the past couple of years, startups like Pave, Upstart, Campus Slice and CommonBond have started promoting crowdfunding platforms that give students a way to solicit microinvestments from friends, family and even strangers.

But those approaches tend to target older students (in college or graduate school) who have already made — and potentially eliminated — college options based on their financial situation. And, in some cases, those startups require students to give up “equity” in themselves (which works like a loan, sometimes with interest), a model that may work for companies but has yet to prove itself when it comes to supporting individuals.

Raise Labs, a San Francisco-based startup backed by the Imagine K-12 ed tech accelerator, is bringing another model into the mix: Instead of targeting students who have already made their college decision, it offers college hopefuls microscholarships they can earn over the course of their high-school careers. The money would come from colleges, corporations and foundations.

“We’re rethinking how students access financial aid for college. The system is really complicated… And it happens at the end of high school, when it can be too late,” said founder and CEO Preston Silverman.

Through Raise Labs, high-school students can set up an account and then earn scholarship money every week through school and community achievements. Sponsors, including corporations, universities and foundations, can award microscholarships for accomplishments like perfect attendance, community service, demonstrating leadership and improvement in grades.

High-school students can obviously already earn scholarships and financial prizes that can help them pay for college. But Raise Labs gives students and sponsors a centralized platform for learning about and promoting awards while making more scholarships accessible to a larger pool of students.

While Silverman declined at this time to provide specifics on the size of the microscholarships, he said the goal is to help students earn thousands of dollars. But given the rising cost of a college education, depending on where a student goes, a few thousand dollars may only make a small dent in the total cost.

For the students, opening up the conversation earlier could motivate them o set goals for themselves and potentially achieve more. For the sponsors, it provides opportunities for cause marketing (for corporations) and enables more engagement and relationship-building with students.

For now, Raise Labs is offering the program to a total of 20,000 students at range of schools. But it plans to open up the service to students nationwide this fall. Earlier this year, the company won a $100,000 grant after winning a top prize in an ed tech challenge sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Facebook, and it said that, so far, it’s secured $30 million in scholarship commitments.

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You have always been able to tag users in Instagram posts, but two weeks ago Instagram announced that soon, you would be able to tag people in the photo itself.

The feature, called “Photos of You,” was given a two-week long soft launch period in which users could opt-in if they so chose. Today it has been turned on for everyone.

“We wanted to take a moment to remind you that – if you haven’t turned it on already—your Photos of You section on Instagram will become visible today to those who can currently see your profile. Remember, you can easily adjust your settings so nothing appears on your profile until you approve it,” says Instagram.

Instagram said that “many” users have already opted to turn the feature on, during the two-week soft launch.

All of the photos that you’re tagged in will now appear in a special new profile section, aptly titled “Photos of You.” As Instagram says, you’ll have full privacy control over this. You can adjust your settings to make sure Instagram asks you to approve any photo before it appears in the section.

Besides the creation of the new Photos of You section, this new feature clears up an irksome problem with Instagram tagging. Before, there was really no way of telling whether a photo’s @ mention was there to direct users to it, or if it meant that the user was actually present in the photo.

Millenial Media, a leading mobile advertising platform, is out with another Mobile Mix report. It shows Amazon’s tablets gaining share in the mobile content market at a fairly dizzying clip. The Mobile Mix report is based on billions of monthly ad impressions and it offers an interesting glimpse of emerging trends in mobile content consumption. Perhaps the biggest bombshell is that Amazon is now hogging 28% of ad impressions served to Android tablets; just marginally behind Samsung’s tablets that get a 35% share. No other Android vendor has achieved double digits. The cheapo Kindle tablet strategy has helped Amazon to already vault to the top tier of the U.S. tablet market when it comes to content consumption.

Continue reading…

Following their bilateral meeting this morning, President Obama and Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey held a press conference in the Rose Garden this afternoon.

The President highlighted three areas of focus the two leaders discussed: expanding trade and investment between the U.S. and Turkey, mutual security, and the issue of Syria.

Read the remarks here or watch the press conference below.

read more

There were a record number of solar panels installed in the U.S. on rooftops and on ground-mounted systems in 2012. Now both traditional financing companies and new types of investors are starting to get in on the trend of providing the funds for the high upfront costs of installing solar panels, in exchange for making some money back several years down the road. But the potential to make money in this way has only just started.

On Thursday solar installer SolarCity announced that it has signed up Goldman Sachs, and other investors, to create a $500 million fund to support leases for solar panels for home and business owners. With that much money, SolarCity can install some 110 MW worth of solar panels.

Solar leases are a contract between the building owner and SolarCity, whereby SolarCity pays the upfront cost of installing the system, owns and maintains the panels, and the building owner pays for the monthly electricity for the power from the panels over around 20 years. As Ucilia noted on GigaOM Pro today, the residential solar leasing market alone is expected to grow from $1.3 billion in 2012 to $5.7 billion in 2016, according to GTM Research.

Some banks and even companies like Google have been willing to put hundreds of millions into these types of funds. SolarCity has been able to raise $1.7 billion in funding over its lifetime to finance installations from groups like U.S. Bancorp, Google, PG&E and Credit Suisse. Other solar financing companies — and the competition is now getting fierce — include Sungevity, OneRoof Energy, Sunrun and Clean Power Finance.

There’s such a demand for solar leases and financing that even some companies are falling behind on getting funding for these businesses. SunPower said earlier this month that demand for its residential solar leases is far greater than the money available to finance them. Power company NRG Energy also wants to retry getting into this space, after trying out this market awhile back.

It’s not just banks and corporate do-gooders that want the opportunity to make a decent return — some 10 to 12 percent in some cases. Crowd-funding is starting to appear as an interesting blip on the radar. Startup Solar Mosaic says that it’s now raised $1 million from its crowd-funders for its solar panel systems, which offer around a 4.5 percent annual yield. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that commercial‐scale solar panel systems can reach returns of 8 percent to 14 percent in states like Hawaii, Texas, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

As big power players, upstart solar financiers and even everyday crowd-funders grow these funds and receive the returns, this market will start to expand significantly. As a boom of solar panels continues to hit the U.S., various parties can make significant money off this transition. Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects that residential solar panels could be installed on 2.4 percent of U.S. houses by 2020.

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Will Smith and his son Jaden were in Miami to draw attention to their attempt to capitalize on the apocalyptic movie craze watch LeBron and his Miami Heat dispatch the Chicago Bulls. While Smith is famous for, among other things, a song dedicated to the city of Miami, the Fresh Prince of Hollywood was wearing a grey Philadelphia 76ers hat. Smith’s haberdashery choices were rendered moot, however, once sideline analyst/best dressed person on the planet Craig Sager decided he wanted to photobomb Smith and his son, all while the TNT cameras looked on. The result, as you see in the lead image, is pretty tremendous, if, for nothing else, Sager’s incredible suit.

Here’s a better look at what Sager was wearing below, courtesy of Twitter user extraordinaire, CJZero:

As you might expect, there’s also a gif format said Sager photobomb, because that’s the way of things when it comes to modern sports reporting:

It would be wrong of me not to mention the Tumblr dedicated to Sager’s fantastic fashion sense. This means if the above suit got your juices flowing, there’s plenty more where that came from. And just because you asked for it, here’s Smith’s “Miami” song, which is fitting when you consider that the Heat did, in fact, finish off their series against a game but injury-plagued Chicago Bulls:

Recent reports have indicated that Google+ has struggled to keep brands engaging. It’s not exactly the first place fans think of for engaging with celebrities either typically (unless perhaps they’re trying to engage with Wil Wheaton or look at photos of Hugh Jackman).

Some celebrities just rehash the stuff they’re sharing on Facebook or Twitter. That doesn’t go for Rose McGowan. I think it’s safe to say she’s an active Google+ user – one of the 390 million Google boasted this week as it launched a slew of new features.

If you want to see McGowan showing off her “fish face,” you’re going to have an easier time finding it on Google+ than you are on Facebook or Twitter.