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Chicago-based C. Cretors & Company, established in 1885, announces they will be hosting a special reception for media, government, community leaders and influencers to celebrate their 125^th anniversary on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010 from 5:00 pm until 7:00pm at their manufacturing facilities located at 3243 N. California Avenue, Chicago.

C. Cretors & Co [cretors.com] is a leader in the over $10 billion U.S. concession industry business, and is widely credited as being the catalyst for the creation of the modern concession industry.

Founder, Charles Cretors, while renting an apartment after the great Chicago fire, unveiled the world’s first commercial popcorn machine at the Columbian World Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. Cretors continues to strive, and is now run by the 5^th generation of the Cretors family.

“We take pride in the part our company and employees have played in the creation of the modern concession industry, and are excited to share this with Chicago,” said Andrew Cretors, president of the company.

After two world wars, during one of which [World War II] Cretors provided machine parts for the U.S. Military, and the Great Depression, Cretors survival is truly a remarkable story, and a benchmark for longevity and prudent business operations in dire economic conditions. Cretors’ history is an inspiration to entrepreneurs when it comes to persistence of ideas, ambitions and corporate values.

About C. Cretors and Company

Established in 1885, C. Cretors and Company is the leading designer and manufacturer of food processing and concession equipment providing a complete range of innovative food service solutions to companies around the world.

Cretors is a renowned industry innovator, who in 1893 introduced the first patented steam driven popcorn machine that popped corn in oil. In 1967, Cretors’ Food Processing Division introduced a patented continuous production line featuring a hot air fluidized bed oven for high-volume popcorn production, ranging from 80 to 5,000 lbs. per hour.

Over the company’s long and storied history, its Foodservice Division offerings have expanded to include machines that produce and/or dispense cotton candy, nachos, caramel corn, and hot dogs, topping and dispensing equipment as well as warming and display cabinets.

Today, Cretors union operation with over 75 employees continues to reinvest in research and development to ensure constant improvements in everything from equipment manufacturing to customer responsiveness to distributor network communications.

For more information about Cretors’ services and products, please visit cretors.com.

MEDIA CONTACT:

A.C. McLean, 312-373-1778
[email protected]

After being replaced by Tom Sykes and Chris Vermeulen in the Paul Bird Motorsport Kawasaki team, Makoto Tamada confirmed he will remain in the World Superbike Championship after signing a deal with Pro Ride Honda, newcomers to the series. The switch comes after two difficult seasons for the 33-year-old Japanese rider, who was unable to report any notable performances.

On the other hand, the Italian team, run by Marco Nicotari tried to take part in last year’s championship with Gregorio Lavill… (read more)

American manufacturer Ford announced today it will keep offering the taxi and car rental packages for the Mondeo, S-MAX and Ford Galaxy "free of charge". The offer already existed, as it was launched in October 2009, but is now extended "until further notice". The offer is valid for the two taxi and car rental packages offered by Ford in collaboration with the Oldenburg Company INTAX Innovative Automotive Solutions.

For taxis, Ford is offering roof sign pre-installation wi… (read more)

La version européenne du RVR sappellera donc ASX. Mitsubishi a comuniqué des photos et quelques renseignements supplémentaires sur son petit nouveau, qui sera présenté au prochain salon de Genève, en mars.

 –>L’ASX est un 4×4 5 places, mesurant 4,30m. de long, dont la commercialisation commencera au printemps prochain au Japon sous le nom de RVR. Le nouveau vient prendre place dans la gamme du japonais sous l’Outlander. Chez nous il aura fort à faire avec le Nissan Qashqai restylé, mais surtout avec le très attendu Renault/Dacia Duster.

-L’ASX héritera de la motorisation prévue sur le RVR, un 1,8l. essence MIVEC, mais surtout recevra un 1,8l. turbo diesel (euro5), associé à une boite manuelle 6 rapports et à un système stop&start.

-Esthétiquement le RVR/ASX adopte la calandre commune à tous les modèles de la gamme et les différences de la version européenne avec la japonaise sont quasi-insignifiantes. Pour les différencier dans la galerie ci-dessous, voir les barres de toit: avec = ASX, sans = RVR.

-Peu d’informations supplémentaires pour l’instant, puisque Mitsubishi n’a rien communiqué d’autre.

Nouveau: pour profiter facilement et rapidement des notifications de nouveautés sur le site, pensez à vous abonner via Twitter. Chaque modification, nouvel article ou nouvelle vidéo sur notre chaîne Youtube, fait l’objet d’un Tweet immédiat!

Ten years ago, Doug Van Sandt made a bet with the authors of a best selling book called Dow 36,000 that after a decade the Dow would be closer to 11,000 than it would to 36,000.

Now that the Dow is linger in the ten thousands, lower than it was when the bet was made, he says it is time for authors James Glassman and Kevin Hassett to pay up. He wants them to send the money to the Salvation Army.

On Monday morning he sent a letter to Glassman asking for them to pay up. We obtained a copy of the letter.

Dear Mr. Glassman: I am writing to confirm that the Dow did not get halfway to 36000, so that under the terms of our Atlantic Monthly wager, you and Kevin Hassett owe $1000 to the charity of my choice, which is the Salvation Army. I should add that it’s a good thing that I was not required to come up with a predicted Dow level, as I would never have guessed that the level would actually have fallen in ten years (who did ?).

In looking you up on the internet, I discovered that we have a common educational experience. I too worked on the Crimson in the early 60’s with Joe Russin , Andy Weil, Peter Gann and a bunch of other really smart guys. I also graduated cum laude with a Government concentration, in 1964. Judging from your career path, we share a conservative bent. Since graduation , law school and an Air Force term, I’ve been defending doctors and hospitals against malpracticwe suits here in Stockton, California. Sincerely,

J. Douglas Van Sant
Kroloff, Belcher, Smart, Perry & Christopherson
[Redacted] (Main)
[Redacted] (Fax)

There’s been no word yet from Glassman or Hassett.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Authors Of Dow 36,000 Just Lost A Ten Year Old $1,000 Bet
• The Guy Who Called The Lost Decade For Stocks Just Told Us We’re Now Set For A Decade Of Slow Growth

Poor ol’ John Hodgman. He’s always been beleaguered and sad-looking – from his first appearance in the Get a Mac ads back in ought-six to his most recent in October 2009. He always looks like he needs a hug, a nice pair of comfortable jeans, and a low-fat, no sugar coffee drink.

However, if you can’t get enough of his frumpy corduroy, AdWeek has all of the commercials, in series, for your pleasure. You can doot-doot-doot along to the soundtrack while smilin’ Justin Long and Mr. Grumpy Hodgman keep you amused and informed while, essentially, telling you what hunk of code to buy. Isn’t the 21st Century great?

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This crazy guitar is actually an open source MIDI system using a sexy touchscreen with multi-touch and reactive fretboard. The result? Let’s just say while you probably won’t get much cherry pie playing this thing, the guys at Information Society will definitely invite you into their trailer at the Iowa State Fair this year.

Called the Misa Digital he fretboard has 144 note buttons, runs Gentoo Linux and, friends, has an Ethernet port with SSH server. Now you can truly hack the Gibson.

via Giz

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Amazon’s lopped $50 off the price of the 4.7-inch Magellan Maestro 4700, which includes Bluetooth, voice command, and predictive traffic features. You can get it for $140, today only.

Other features include a built-in AAA TourBook, 6 million points of interest, highway lane assist, spoken street names, and 3D landmarks “such as stadiums and bridges.”

Magellan Maestro 4700 4.7-Inch Widescreen Bluetooth Portable GPS Navigator [Amazon.com]

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Mornin’ Crunchers — Did you know that today is National Popcorn Day? Grab your favorite movie and Happy Popping!

-Tiger Woods is allegedly seeking treatment for sex addiction in a Mississippi treatment facility….

-Another sign of the times: The New York Times is close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website…..

-Speaking of The Times, you would think such a reputable news organization wouldn’t have missed the memo about Dexter star Michael C. Hall and his recent cancer diagnosis. Somehow, the news fell through the cracks resulting in this Twitter snafu and a subsequent apology…..

-A sneak peek at Jean Paul Gaultier’s upcoming guest collection for Target….

-Who wants to see Ivana Trump in her underwear?

-Taco Bell founder dies @ 86…..

-Mo’Nique au naturale on the red carpet…..

-A nightclub in Singapore is offering free drinks to women according to bra size. “Fill My Cups” Nights have become all the rage at OverEasy Nightclub in recent weeks and are promoted with posters promising “Booze for your boobs.”

5 years ago I wrote a prediction about RSS here on ReadWriteWeb. I proclaimed that "in the not too distant future, more people will subscribe to topic/tag/remix feeds than feeds of actual people."

I think it’s fair to say that I was totally wrong on that prediction. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, in particular, many more people ’subscribe’ to people than topics (subscribe a.k.a. ‘follow’ or ‘friend’). And I’m glad my prediction didn’t pan out, because the social graph of people is much more interesting to follow than a bunch of keywords. But it begs the question: what happened to all the promise of tracking topics using RSS?

Sponsor

While many of us use Google Alerts and apps like LazyFeed to track keywords and topics, that’s still a relatively geeky thing to do.

In a follow-up post in January 2005, entitled Why Topic/Tag/Remix Feeds Are The Future of RSS, I wrote that "tools will evolve to let people easily set-up personalized searches for information relevant to them and subscribe to the results [using RSS]." I wasn’t suggesting that conversations or people are unimportant. On the contrary, as I explained in ‘05, "topic/tag/remix feeds will make it even easier to find the conversations that matter to you and indeed you are more likely to meet new people and discover new points of view."

That has certainly happened, but not so much due to RSS – more because of Facebook and Twitter. While RSS did expand over those 5 years, social networking services became much more popular as ways to track information.

Also, online media has matured a lot over the past 5 years. Nowadays people commonly subscribe to blogs and other news media across a variety of niches – and that’s how they keep up-to-date on topics of interest to them. For example, I subscribe to NPR All Songs Considered and Pitchfork (amongst other sites) to get the latest alternative music news.

Both of these trends (the rise of the Social Graph; and maturing of professional niche media) have made topic feeds from the likes of Google Alerts less attractive than I thought they’d be 5 years ago.

However, I still believe in the promise of topic-based RSS feeds. Indeed I currently use a number of services to track a set of topics of interest to me. One is Google Alerts, which I have set up as RSS feeds in Google Reader. Plus I use a couple of services that launched just recently, LazyFeed and Regator.

Sadly, the promising services of 2005 – such as PubSub and Feedster – haven’t made it as far as 2010 (although last year PubSub was born again under new management).

It’s possible that LazyFeed and Regator won’t last either, but let’s hope that a startup soon finds the key to unlock the potential of topic feeds.

In the meantime I’m curious to know if you subscribe to topic feeds? If so which tools, if any, do you use to track topics? Please leave a comment. I’ll write a follow-up post later this week, highlighting the best apps that are mentioned.

Image credit: shizhao

Discuss

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Is nothing sacred? Could fanboys just leave some small section of Earth unexposed to their partisan antics? Apparently not, as even this innocent Nerf basketball hoop has been reconfigured with a PowerMac G5 case backboard. [Cult of Mac via TUAW]

To no one’s surprise, Jon Corzine signed New Jersey’s medical marijuana bill into law yesterday, on his last day on the job as the state’s governor.

That makes 14 states that have legalized medical marijuana. But as both the WSJ and the New York Times note this morning, research into the medical uses of the drug remains rather limited.

That’s partly due to the fact that it’s not easy for researchers to study the drug, the NYT suggests. The article cites the case of a University of Massachusetts researcher who has been trying for nine years to get federal approval to grow and study marijuana plants but has yet to be allowed to proceed, despite a favorable ruling from the D.E.A.’s administrative judge. (The D.E.A. says it follows the lead of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is part of NIH.)

So what has research shown about medical uses of marijuana? It appears to help with neuropathic pain, which is caused by certain types of nerve damage, the WSJ says. There’s also evidence to suggest it eases nausea and improves appetite in some types of patients, including people who are getting chemotherapy for cancer. Of the many other possible uses suggested for the drug, evidence is hard to come by, according to the article.

Nelson Piquet Jr. is really taking his future NASCAR career seriously, as the Brazilian seems to make use of every chance he can get his hands on to get accustomed to driving stock cars or endurance prototypes.

Earlier today, we have reported to you that Piquet Jr. has successfully completed his second NASCAR test with Red Horse Racing and was really hopeful of a 2010 programme with the team in the Camping World Truck Series. Hours later however, on his official website, the Brazilian driver … (read more)

The real-time web has been one of the biggest trends of 2009 and one that is likely to play an important role in 2010. Yet, even as everyone agrees on its importance and that it is growing, very few people have actual numbers to back up these assumptions. Twitter would be one, of course, but apart from saying that it’s seeing one o… (read more)

The following Xbox 360 games are now ready for direct download from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace:

Content: Brave- Warrior's Tale
Price: Check pricing for your region
Availability: Australia, New Zealand and North America
Dash Text: (Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB) This game supports English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish. Download the manual for this game by locating the game on http://marketplace.xbox.com and selecting “See Game Manual". The exciting coming of age story of a young native american, set in a fantastic world of magic and mythology! Re-live the tales of your elders, and learn the skills you'll need to defeat the evil Wendigo. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

Add Brave- Warrior's Tale to your Xbox 360 download queue

Content: skate.
Price: Check pricing for your region
Availability: Not available in Australia and Japan
Dash Text: (Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB) This game supports English only. Download the manual for this game by locating the game on http://marketplace.xbox.com and selecting “See Game Manual". The authentic skate experience. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

Add skate. to your Xbox 360 download queue

Also, Xbox LIVE members in Japan, can now purchase A-Train HX

January 2010
Issue 1.10

Welcome to the winter issue of Transitions.

The purpose of this irregular electronic newsletter is to bring to readers’ attention some of the many new projects and developments informnig the current system of scholarly communication, with emphasis on new products and programs, the open access movement, and other alternative publishing models. Scholarly communication refers to the full range of formal and informal means by which scholars and researchers communicate, from email discussion lists to peer-reviewed publication. In general, authors are seeking to document and share new discoveries with their colleagues, while readers–researchers, students, librarians and others–want access to all the literature relevant to their work.

While the system of scholarly communication exists for the benefit of the world’s research and educational community and the public at large, it faces a multitude of challenges and is undergoing rapid change brought on by technology. To help interested members of the UI community keep up on these challenges and changes we plan to put out 4 issues per year of this newsletter.  Please visit our web site, Transforming Scholarly Communication, to find out more about this topic.

This newsletter is designed to reflect the interests of its readers so please forward comments, suggestions and entries to include to [email protected].

Visit our newsletter to read the articles:

Public Access to Federally Funded Research – Public input
University Press survival… through open access
Compact for Open Access Publication Equity (COPE)
PLoS One to be indexed by Web of Science
Optical Society of America – a pioneer in scholarly publishing innovation
Nobel Prize-winning scientists urge Congress to act
Open Access Encyclopedias
Who will pay for Arxiv?
Studies on Access – a review
Medical Schools Quizzed on Ghostwriting
Scholarly and Research Communication, a new OA journal
Wellcome Trust calls for greater transparency

(Editor’s note: Will Herman is an entrepreneur who has founded or held senior roles at several tech companies. This column originally appeared on his blog.)

I’m fortunate that I get to work with many startups, both independently and with TechStars where I’m a mentor.  There is no better way to learn than through teaching (learning is the most fun you can have, at least for a sustained period) and there are few better students than entrepreneurs.

Good entrepreneurs always want to know why they should do something and not just what they should do.  They test, challenge and refuse to take anything for granted. They’re highly motivated, smart and understand success is not about them as an individual, but about the team they can build. And they strive not only to make their first venture a success but also to become strong, solid leaders and managers that can build many great companies.

So, with all these qualities, it shocks me how often entrepreneurs choose a mentor because they’re the loudest guy in the room.

You know that person, the one who likes to talk incessantly about all of his or her accomplishments and is quick to give advice on any and all subjects.  The person who speaks before listening and has never had any failures.  Yeah, that guy.

Somehow, in the sponge-like desire that good entrepreneurs have to vacuum up every morsel of knowledge, they often attach themselves to the first person that sounds like they know anything.  Unfortunately, that’s usually the one who brags the loudest.

So, here’s a simple three-step plan on how to avoid adopting Mr./Ms. Know-it-all as your savior:

• First, recognize that you’re your only savior; everyone else is there merely to supply data, offer up some wisdom and, maybe, hold your hand.
• Second, put yourself in a situation where you can get access to many mentors.  You can do a load of legwork or sign up for a service where mentorship (and a boatload of mentors to choose from) is the core of the program.
• Finally, ask questions.  Don’t grill a potential mentor; after all, you’re looking for free help.  Instead, have a conversation and learn about what the person has actually done – how they’ve succeeded and how they’ve failed.  Make sure they have real accomplishments and real failures (you learn more from failures than successes) and can communicate what they learned in a way that works for you.  If hubris is what you hear, try somewhere else.

I’m no psychiatrist, but the loud braggart in the room is probably making up for something else (get your mind out of the gutter, I was referring to some business deficiency) or has had too much to drink.  Either way, they do you no good.

Be selective. Find someone with both good advice based on things they’ve actually done plus the ability to communicate they way that works best for you.  You’ll be much happier and, quite likely, more successful yourself.

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We probably pour far too much time into dissecting the latest ThinkPad model or superphone, so to balance things out here’s some positive news coming out of Intel regarding its laptop distribution programme for the developing world. Still a for-profit venture, the Classmate PC project seems to have been developing rather well, which has led the chipmaker to announce it’ll be overhauling the case designs and internals of the machines it has on offer. Coming later this year, the new netbook models will offer Atom N450 and N470 Pineview CPUs as well as integrated 3G and WiMAX connectivity. Yeah, that’s pretty decent gear by anyone’s standards, so it’s no surprise that Argentina, Brazil and Turkey have signed up for a total of 426,000 units between them, adding to the two million devices already shipped globally. Maybe someone should tell the UK government about this netbook craze before it’s too late.

Intel Classmate PC is not forgotten, gets Pine Trail and WiMAX overhaul originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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