Category Archives: Evolution

If you wanted to look at how far Liverpool have come under the management of Jrgen Klopp, you only have to look at the competitions they have won and continue to compete for these days, compared with when he was first appointed. The German did remarkably well to guide the side he inherited to the League Cup and Europa League finals in 2016, but the Reds have far bigger targets in mind now.

But in terms of how they have advanced this far, clearly there have been many factors. Perhaps most importantly, the clubs recruitment has been outstanding over an extended period, with players brought in who fit perfectly with how Klopp wants his team to play.

But perhaps most vital of all has been an ability to turn what was arguably the Reds biggest weakness of their current managers reign into a strength. That takes serious hard work, and we have seen evidence of it in the recent victories over Everton and Villarreal.

READ MORE: Jrgen Klopp contract just the start as three Liverpool dilemmas might just have become clear

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Much was said regarding Klopps style of heavy metal football when he was appointed and the impact of that was seen from day one. Theres a famous image of Adam Lallana almost collapsing in his managers arms when he was substituted in Klopps first game in charge, a 0-0 draw at Tottenham. The Reds were now a high pressing team and determined to prove that whether home or away.

However, opposition managers are not dumb. How do you stop a team that thrives on winning the ball high up the pitch to create goalscoring opportunities? Give them the ball and challenge them to break down your deep-lying defence.

Liverpool were repeatedly set this test in 2015/16 and then Klopps first full season at the helm, and repeatedly they failed it. In those two campaigns, the Reds had 10 league matches in which they had at least 70 per cent of the possession, and they won just three of them. Even then, one of the victories saw Hull City receive a first-half red card, so when playing against 11 men who had no interest in having the ball, Liverpool usually struggled.

But theres no interest in having the ball, and then theres what Everton served up at Anfield last weekend. The Reds recorded the second highest possession figure seen in a Premier League match since 2003/04 (when records began) in the latest edition of the Merseyside derby. Yet despite attempting 82.4 per cent of the total passes, Liverpool were still able to force six high turnovers.

These are defined by Opta as sequences that start in open play and begin 40m or less from the opponents goal, and they give a good indication of pressing in-or-just-outside the final third. While the Reds total of six against Everton was down on their seasonal average, it was a decent effort in light of Evertons play dead tactics. And more importantly, one of the high turnovers led to Liverpools opening goal.

The Blues were unable to play their way out of defence thanks to the close attention of multiple men in red, Fabinho recovered the ball and the sequence leading to the goal was underway. It was the seventh time Liverpool have scored from a high turnover in the league this season, more than any other team in the division. Klopps men may not have been as productive in an attacking sense from pressing high against Villarreal, but they still set a new benchmark for 2021/22 with their efforts.

Where once possession-averse teams confounded Liverpool, they can now have majority ownership of the ball and still win it back. This means it works from a defensive standpoint as well as from the more obvious attacking perspective, and that was very evident against Unai Emerys side.

Villarreal simply could not get out from the back, so swarmed were they by Liverpool players. The Spanish side completed just six open play passes into the final third all evening; Trent Alexander-Arnold alone was successful with three times as many. While they had been under pressure for much of their quarter-final tie with Bayern Munich, they were still able to break out and have a total of 16 shots in the 180 minutes. At Anfield, they had just one, and that from a set-piece situation.

The tables from five years ago have been well and truly turned for Liverpool. Where they were once clueless when having lots of possession, their opponents are now hopeless in both attacking and defensive terms when they do. Klopp famously once said that no playmaker in the world can be as good as a good counter-pressing situation, but his side have perhaps proved that no defensive midfielder can be as good going the other way either.

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Liverpool have discovered the ultimate playmaker to confirm Jrgen Klopp evolution is complete - Liverpool.com

NEW YORK This is what Jeff Gorton and, later, Kent Hughes clearly wanted all along.

As the Canadiens continued piling up lopsided losses under Dominique Ducharme in December, first with a roster decimated by COVID-19 but then after the pause to bring the outbreak under control, Ducharme kept his job. It was only when things got so bad that it was clearly becoming damaging five straight regulation losses in which the Canadiens gave up 33 goals and scored 12 did Gorton and Hughes step in, firing Ducharme and hiring Martin St. Louis, just about the most outside-the-box hire they could have made.

By that point the Canadiens were 8-30-7, and what was finally confirmed Wednesday night had seemed somewhat inevitable. No matter the new-coach bump the Canadiens would experience under St. Louis, the hole was too deep to avoid claiming the ultimate prize: last place in the NHL and the best odds at picking first at the draft Montreal is hosting in July.

A run of injuries for Arizona made this end goal tighter than it seemed it would be in February, but Montreal clinched finishing with the worst record in the NHL when the Coyotes erased a three-goal deficit and beat the Dallas Stars in overtime Wednesday, not long after the Canadiens had defeated the New York Rangers 4-3 on a last-minute goal by Jeff Petry.

The Canadiens win at Madison Square Garden was only their 15th regulation victory in 81 games this season. Think about that for a moment. And honestly, the Canadiens record under St. Louis at 13-19-4, a points percentage of .417 is not exactly great.

But Gorton and Hughes are scouting the world under-18 championships for a reason, because this draft pick is vitally important to the future of the Canadiens, a future they hope will look somewhat like the one the Rangers have created for themselves ever since Gorton embarked on a rebuild in New York in 2018.

The Rangers kept most of their best players out of the lineup Wednesday which takes some of the shine off this last-minute Canadiens win but when looking at the list of scratches that included basically the entire core of Artemi Panarin, Adam Fox, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Jacob Trouba, it is worth noting that Gorton acquired every one of those players for the Rangers except for Kreider.

But the Rangers success this season is highly predicated on Kreider suddenly becoming a 52-goal scorer and winning the franchises first Mr. Ranger award before the game, an award named for the late Rangers great Rod Gilbert.

And Kreiders breakout season at age 30 he had never scored more than 28 goals before this year is highly relevant to what the Canadiens are trying to do and what role St. Louis will play in it.

Because though Gorton and Hughes are surely happy to have the best odds in the draft lottery this year, they have no intention of this becoming a regular occurrence.

When Kreider was an impending free agent approaching the 2020 trade deadline, Gorton signed him to a seven-year contract worth $6.5 million a year. The Canadiens were on the ice practicing that day, Feb. 24, 2020. When Brendan Gallagher came off the ice, I told him about the contract that took Kreider off the trade market.

What did he get? he asked.

Seven years, I responded.

No, Gallagher said, how much?

When told the AAV, Gallagher nodded his approval.

He and Kreider were seen at the time as very similar players with similar numbers and similar impact. Gallagher was a year away from his contract expiring and was likely to enter into negotiations that offseason. As it turns out, eight months later, Gallagher signed his six-year extension with the Canadiens.

And the AAV was exactly $6.5 million.

But now Gallagher is not performing, or at least not producing. In the game Wednesday, only Michael Pezzetta got less ice time than Gallaghers 12:27, and he was basically a nonfactor.

Gallagher is fully aware of how disappointing his season has been, how bad it looks in the first year of that contract, and he is determined to make things right this offseason with proper preparation and determination.

Saturday night in Ottawa, Gallagher was asked about trusting his shot a bit more and attempting more shots from distance than he normally has.

I still have to be around the net to score the majority of my goals, I know that, and I know I havent been scoring this year, Gallagher said. But its a good chance for me to grow my game a little bit. It doesnt mean Im forgetting about the success Ive had and where it was, but there are opportunities you can find to get in those areas. I had some good looks tonight, didnt beat the goalie.

St. Louis is asking Gallagher to adapt his game, to evolve. And that word evolve came up a lot Wednesday. Because St. Louis once played with Kreider in New York, and the player he sees now is not the player he played with in a Rangers uniform.

I think Chris has evolved as a player, St. Louis said. I think Chris always had a fastball, you know, coming down the wing and getting behind. I think hes learned a few other pitches now. Hes not just a fastball thrower. Hes evolved as a player, hes controlling his speed better. It allows him to process the game probably a little bit better and get into the right areas. Hes always been very good in front, so he hasnt lost that.

Theres probably one thing Kreids does better now than he did in the past is he probably manages his game way better from blue line to blue line, in terms of what kind of speed does he bring.

Controlling speed is something St. Louis is asking of a lot of players, but particularly Josh Anderson, whose speed is such an asset in his game. And if there is one player on the Canadiens who is most similar to Kreider in terms of playing style and size, it is Anderson.

I think its important that you need the speed, but to stay successful in this league I compare it to a baseball pitcher, if you only throw gas, eventually they just time it right and they hit home runs, St. Louis said. So thats why you need many different pitches. Im trying to address it with Josh, but still, you cant lose that speed. Its just knowing how to use it better, probably. And I think Kreids has done that.

Whats important for the Canadiens is that notion that players need to evolve over the course of their careers, something St. Louis understands better than most because he did that so well. He has already said the one thing he thought he did at an elite level as a player was get better. But not everyone can do that at the same level.

Gallagher will do it one way. Anderson another. And so will Jake Evans, who once said in Laval that he saw himself as a fourth-line checking centre in the NHL but acknowledged Wednesday he now sees himself as potentially more than that.

Maybe they see somebody do something they werent doing before, is it the coachs fault that the players doing X, Y and Z? St. Louis said. I think its part of it. You bring attention to certain details of their game that they need and certain thoughts that I want them to think of when theyre out on the ice.

But at the end of the day, its the players. Actually, its an art to be able to absorb and apply, and I think thats on the player. Its a little bit on me, too, in the sense that not everybody learns the same way, so I cant necessarily try to teach somebody one way and think its going to work with everybody. Im still figuring that part out. But for the most part, when guys are evolving as players, its really on them. As a coach, I think youre a facilitator in that sense, but its the player that has that responsibility to go and apply it.

The Canadiens will need St. Louis to lock down that ability to understand which players have a capacity to evolve and which dont, and it will be vitally important to the organization that he find a way for certain players to make a jump at least similar to the one Kreider made this season. No, neither Gallagher, Anderson nor Evans is likely to become a 50-goal scorer, but if they can adapt their games to become more consistent contributors, the Canadiens will be the big beneficiaries.

Because landing the first pick in the draft, or picking in the top three if someone else wins the lottery, is definitely a big thing for the organization. It can turn around what has been an objectively awful season, the worst season in the NHL.

But that one high-end prospect will not be enough. The Canadiens will need certain veterans to adapt and evolve into more productive versions of themselves next season. And even if the wins have not really been there much for St. Louis this season, he is a big part of that evolution.

(Photo of Brendan Gallagher: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

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Canadiens have best shot at the first draft pick, but the evolution of their veterans is almost as important - The Athletic

Google is quickly becoming the complete funnel for many of the searches and transactions we make online. When we first published this article in 2018, Google already made significant strides within the hotel and travel space and was in the process of adding even more features and functionalities.

According to a recent study by Similarweb (2022), as of October 2021, nearly 20% of keyword searches resulted in a search engine results page (SERP) feature on the results page. In January 2020, that percentage was lower than 5%. Hoteliers are no stranger to Googles SERP features like hotel listings, map packs, pricing tools, and ad-supported spaces. Ultimately, its Googles way of keeping its nearly 90% search market share within its search and buying ecosystem.

In this article, we are going to look at the updates Google has made over the past several years to its hotel and travel SERP results and features, and their effects on hotels and OTAs.

Back in October 2018, Google made a significant announcement that they would be rolling out a suite of design and functionality improvements to the hotel shopping experience. The gist of the announcement is that the information you can find within Googles own environment would rival that of TripAdvisor and other OTAs.

In doing so, Google put the finishing pieces on what has arguably become the most complete hotel shopping and booking system available. Within Googles hotel shopping ecosystem, youll find price comparisons, hotel details and overviews, Google reviews, reviews sourced from around the web, and hotel photos.

As a hotel, its on you to ensure the information on your hotel listing is accurate. Just in case you havent read our Google Business Profile for Hotels guide, Google Business Profile is going to be the place to start for any hotelier. By ensuring you have an optimized hotel listing, compelling photos, and are responding to guest reviews, you will put yourself in a position for success.

In 2018, Google rolled out a new search and filtering system to the search engine results page for hotel searches. In 2022, similar features still exist in addition to new hotel highlight icons and hotel listing callouts.

Data has already proven that a vast majority of hotel decisions begin with a search and, based on the ever-evolving hotel SERP tools, customers will continue to stay on Googles system for much longer as they slice and dice to find their perfect hotel.

Googles push to gather more and more reviews makes searches even more valuable. Back in 2018, Google was revealed as the number one online review site, outperforming Tripadvisor and other OTAs. Today, Google continues to be a leading source for hotel reviews. Now, searchers can get enough information from Google to validate a booking decision without having to visit Tripadvisor or an OTA.

Read the full article at TravelBoom

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The Evolution of Google Hotel Search Results - Hospitality Net

Evolution Theater Companys 2022 season begins this weekend with a rousing production of the fizzy, loving parody The Musical of Musicals: The Musical, with book by Eric Rockwell and Joanne Bogart, music by Rockwell, and lyrics by Bogart, directed by Joe Bishara.

Jonathan Collura, behind a piano on the side of the stage, leads the action as narrator and music director, offering wry commentary on the action while adroitly moving between rhythms and genres in a way thats as delightful as it is seamless. Matt Piper and Nat Harper play a series of young lovers (Pipers characters all named some variety of William and Harpers some shade of June). Tom Cardinal plays a landlord in each of the sketches, with variations on the name Jitter, standing for authority figures throughout the worlds of which were treated to a glimpse. Lisa Thoma covers all other adults the characters interact with, named withshades of Abby.

The unabashed delights of The Musical of Musicals come with the way Bogart and Rockwell stir together songs and wink at characters and themes across its five sketches, with a brief intro and outro. The opening sequence, Corn, takes its spine from Oklahoma and winks at the rest of the Rodgers and Hammerstein oeuvre, including a beautifully executed ballet with particularly strong work from Harper. Piper soars through the scores nods to the way R&H characters slide intoAmericana Opera, Looks like its time for a soliloquy, even as Cardinal and Thomas highlight the rough, lived-in rhythms that made that work so fresh and so often imitated.

The most arresting mash-up of elements for me was the Sondheim riff, A Little Complex, that slams Sweeney Todd and Company together with flashing hints of Sunday, Night Music, and a few others. Cardinal shines here and as Phantom Jitter in the hilarious Andrew Lloyd Webber poke Aspects of Junita in stellar showcases forhis rich voice and physical comedy.

The Kander and Ebb/Fosse sequence Speakeasy leads Chicago and Cabaret by the collar through a series of fun house mirrors, casting shadows of Spider Woman and other elements, again making excellent use of Harpers Dancing and the contrasting vocal textures of Harper, Piper, Cardinal, and especially Thoma in a show-stopping number.

One of the key elements that makes The Musical of Musicals as much fun as it is, is the sense of rough play. Anyone who loves something, like the art form of musicals, has just as passionate a list of things that drive us insane or widely beloved shows we hate and that acknowledgement, that grinning, playful sense of, Okay, this was ridiculous even before we turned the volume up, with exaggerated, extended leg movements in Jamie Markovich McMahons light choreography, with a raised eyebrow and a smirk from Collura, and with shared looks that nudge the elastic fourth wall but never quite break it.

The beauty of the voices and the fluid movements also keep the play grounded and amplify the cartoonish quality. Bisharas direction keeps things moving at a sometimes-breakneck pace but never gets frantic, never buries a joke. That fluidity has a perfect partner in Colluras encyclopedic knowledge of musical theater and the piano, moving between genres as easily as breathing. The Musical of Musicals is a delightful evening for people who love various stripes of musicals and have hated one or two.

The Musical of Musicals runs through May 7 at the Abbey Theater of Dublin, with performances at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday,8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and more info, visit evolutiontheatre.org.

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Theater Review: Evolution Theatre Company Kicks Off 2022 Season With Bubbly 'Musical of Musicals' - Columbus Underground

Automobile technology has come a long way since the first car was launched in the 19th century. Along came its various technological wings or the frontiers with unrelenting work on design, efficiency, economy, and safety.

It is a new era in which the automobile evolution has come into. Smart devices are driving our day to day lives. Speech recognition technology has come to become an everyday car-riding experience. It is an issue that made the industry welcome in-car speech recognition in such a big way. There was a need, and the very need drove the research and innovation rather than just producing and marketing another product to capture the attention of the buyers. There are tech-hungry buyers of today who are not vulnerable to getting drawn to anything that becomes a market buzzword. They have become quite selective and aware of what they need.

One might wonder why there is a need for in-car speech recognition technology. To answer that one can recognize the fact that there is a drive that works for acknowledging the reality there is a strong need for driving people safe and feeding the device-dependent attributes of humans. There are a plethora of objects inside the car like the maps by Google or texting gadgets which time and again force people to take their eyes off the road. It is distractive and needs immediate intervention with bringing about something that lets you concentrate on the road and yet lets you get all the inputs you require to make your drive easy and pleasurable. There are laws to regulate our unsafe driving behaviours while driving, like speaking over the phone while at the steering wheels or using emails.

The system aims at removing the distractions such as looking down constantly at your cell phone while you are at the wheels. A display at the front will make it easy for you to drive and get a glimpse of something important on a gadget. Thus, you keep your mind on the road for the sake of safety. Use of spoken instruction is heading in the right direction.

There are three categories basic, intermediate, and advanced.

Basic: The basic level of voice activation works around media and entertainment built in your car. You can use your voice to switch stations of the radio, control volume, change tracks, etc.

Intermediate: It allows you to use the phone to make and receive calls, work on the GPS, and even adjust the air-conditioning system inside the cabin.

Advanced: This system includes internet connection, web browsing through spoken words, and so on. The future will unfold itself to give a further boost to technology when there will be many autonomous cars on the roads of the world. You may ask for directions, find a seat in a restaurant, and even find a suitable parking space while you are fully focused on the road. You are not taking your eyes off the road. You can call up the notes application and dictate your ideas and thoughts. You may call for weather updates voiced out without your having to look in the direction of the prompting screen. One may request one's favourite number over a voice message and get to listen to one's favourite music or podcast.

In-car speech recognition has come about because it gives you directions, the facility to send emails, make calls, and play your favourite music.

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You simply press the voice button that is fixed on your steering wheel and you can navigate between controls mentioned in the playlist. You can navigate to the nearest supermarket or the gas station. You can even send text messages to an important person who you think must be waiting for your message. If you glimpse the text message on the infotainment screen, one press of the switch will let the system read out the message for you.

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Evolution of In-Car Recognition Technology - carandbike

The play KAndre Miller made late in the first period of Wednesdays meaningless Rangers-Canadiens game was not surprising.

Not to the Rangers teammates and coaches whove seen Miller grow in confidence to match his outstanding skill set this season. Not to the coaches from his amateur career who helped him transform from a big, rangy forward into a potential top-pair, shutdown defenseman. And not to his old friends and teammates who know that underneath Millers cool exterior theres a hard-charging, focused young man who seemingly wont be denied his place as a top NHL defenseman.

When you think youre by him, Cole Caufield said, you find out pretty quick youre just not.

The Rangers are in the playoffs, non-bubble version, non-preliminary-round version, for the first time since 2017. Of the 20 guys who are likely to suit up for Game 1 next week, this will be the first NHL postseason for 10. And outside of Igor Shesterkins surefire Vezina Trophy performance this year, none of the Rangers young players has improved more than Miller, the 22-year-old who has solidified one of the best top-four defense corps in the league.

He keeps the serious, professional look, said Tony Granato, Millers coach for two years at University of Wisconsin. That emotion and energy is controlled. But I know how much he loves it.

Millers evolution as a defenseman began just five years ago. He arrived in Plymouth, Mich., to the U.S. National Team Development Program, in 2016 as a bit of a tweener a rangy, athletic player who played mostly forward but also some defense.

I remember at tryout camp seeing him play a scrimmage at forward and one at D, said Nick Fohr, who has coached defensemen in the USNTDP program for the past decade. I was coaching the 99s (birth year) then, and (Danton) Cole and Chris Luongo had the 2000s. By the time Seth (Appert) and I got KAndre the next year, he was a defenseman full time.

Fohr said Miller excelled at closing out opposing players on the rush, even in the earliest stages of learning to be a defenseman. The way we defended line rushes, he was able to close plays out and do most of it on instinct angling, either forwards or backwards, Fohr said. He was so good at doing that, hed get on top of people super fast. Then you had to teach him the D-zone aspect. Pucks in the corner, heres what you need to do. He had to learn how to do a lot of that stuff. He had a good base in year one. He was such a quick learner and picked up on those skills so quickly.

Fohr and Appert, who is now coaching the Sabres farm team in Rochester, fielded their usual inquiries from amateur scouts. Miller was still considered a raw prospect, but the way he picked up the nuances of being a defenseman and added them to his game throughout the USNTDP season didnt go unnoticed. He was the No. 31 ranked North American prospect by Central Scouting midseason and moved up to No. 23 before the draft, where the Rangers took him 22nd.

I remember talking to some scouts that year. Everybody wanted to compare KAndre to (Sabres defenseman) Mattias Samuelsson, who was also at the program, Fohr said. Mattias was going to play you could see the maturity. KAndre had a higher ceiling, a chance to be a top-pair NHL guy, but if things go sideways, he could spend a lot of time bouncing from team to team. There was more unknowns with KAndre at that time. How good can this be? It was only a year and a half that hed played the position so I had all these scouts asking questions. You couldnt stamp it then. There were huge factors that had an impact on where hed end up.

Hes fun to coach. He had so much to learn and it was a challenge because you didnt want to overwhelm him. And we had our moments. There were some times he didnt like me too much, Im sure. We had this picture of where he could go and what he could be and honestly, hes exceeding it already. And hes going to continue to get better. You can see hes got more to add to his game. As that comes together, hes going to be really, really good.

After the draft, it was on to Granato and Wisconsin. Miller was definitely a defenseman and definitely someone the Rangers held in high regard among their growing stable of prospects. In Madison, he started to show some of the offensive flair hes let out from time to time in the past few months with the Rangers.

Frankly, we needed that from him because of how our team was structured, Granato said. He didnt get much power-play time at the program, but we needed some offense from him. They were hard on him about the basics, learning where to be, what to do without the puck. It was great for his development. When he got to us, we had to turn him loose.

Miller posted 12 goals and 40 points in 62 games at Wisconsin, with the Rangers player development team keeping in close contact. Tanner Glass, Jed Ortmeyer, they had a really good plan on what they thought KAndre could be, Granato said. And hes ahead of schedule. Hes already surpassed whatever expectations they had for him in year two, Im sure.

Miller had a very strong rookie season in 2020-21. It can be that second season where theres stagnation for a young defenseman, as he is asked to do more, gets sheltered less and the adrenaline of that first season wears off. Add in a new coaching staff, and it was understandable for Miller to have the lull he had the first three months of this season, as many of his teammates did in getting their bearings under Gerard Gallant and assistant Gord Murphy, who runs the defense.

You could see plays like the one Wednesday from Miller, but they usually came when he was trying to erase his own mistakes. Mistimed pinches or mentally getting ahead of himself on a play thinking instead of acting and pucks were coming off his stick to opposing players at an unpleasant rate.

Since Christmas, though, Miller has been perhaps the most dependable Rangers defenseman.

Courtesy Evolving-Hockey, here are the expected-goals percentages at five-on-five for the Rangers six most-used defensemen before and after Christmas:

45.07

51.46

45.52

50.39

54.03

47.99

52.20

47.85

--

42.73

44.15

36.32

49.83

--

Its the same as it was when he came to us, or when he went to Wisconsin: You have to learn the level before you can apply the knowledge at that level, Fohr said. Watching all the guys Ive had move on to that level, its impressed me to watch and see how quickly they pick things up. They all have those moments when theyre in the NHL, then theres a lull. It wouldnt shock me that he had that in his second season, and then things take off again.

That development process that happens here happens there too. For him to pick things up, start to accelerate and become a more dominant player at that level is not a surprise. Hes probably done it a little faster than I thought he would, to be honest.

The confidence that comes with knowing the defensive keys has allowed Miller to be more confident joining the rush and showing some of that skill at the other end of the ice. His tricky shootout goal to beat the Bruins on Feb. 15 was one moment.

His overtime winner to beat the Sabres last month was another.

Yeah, I saw that one, Granato said. It was against my brother (Don, the Sabres coach), so I definitely heard about it. And maybe they need to move him up the shootout list.

Caufield was with Miller at the U.S. program and for a year at Wisconsin. Caufield has had a whirlwind year-plus in the NHL, going from making a Stanley Cup Final in his first season with the Canadiens to the AHL in the first half of 2021-22 to a surge since Martin St. Louis took over as coach. Hes kept in touch with Miller along the way and sees what his old friend is developing into.

Every time I catch a game of theirs, I see him on the ice against the other teams top players, Caufield said. It shows how far hes come in such a short time. We always knew how good he was, even when he was still new to being a defenseman. And now hes playing big minutes on a pretty good team. It says a lot about him as a person and a player. The skys the limit for him.

(Top photo of Rem Pitlick and KAndre Miller: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)

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KAndre Miller is coming on fast: Inside his evolution from scouting conundrum to Rangers defensive stalwart - The Athletic

Practifi Sets Sight on Powering the Future of the Wealth Management Industry

CHICAGO, April 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Practifi, a performance optimization platform for the wealth management industry, today announced the company has evolved its brand to align with its growth, vision and suite of new platform capabilities. Practifi's forward-looking solutions are driving the future of wealth management across the spectrum, with the firm's platform offerings addressing the ever-expanding needs of the RIA market and enterprise market.

In the past nine months, Practifi built more functionality and features on its platform to further support the RIA industry, while expanding its platform to help enterprise clients achieve their business goals and drive efficiencies. Practifi's previous and upcoming product releases build off the platform's brand evolution and will continue to include new solutions designed with both enterprise and RIA firms in mind.

Newer platform capabilities include:

Practifi also has an open API that allows for deeper, more custom integrations with industry-leading partners to help both RIAs and enterprise firms build their ideal tech stack.

Adrian Johnstone, President, and Co-Founder of Practifi said, "We want to awaken the industry to the possibilities available through better technology and partnerships, transforming data into insights, action and excellence at scale. We want to help wealth management firms go beyond the traditional CRM and redefine what's possible."

Practifi's platform and brand evolution align with the firm's aspirations to power the future of wealth management. Built on the world's No. 1 enterprise cloud, Practifi is secure, reliable and massively scalable. With an extensive list of industry features and integration capabilities, Practifi has a library of ever-growing APIs and best-in-class integration partners.

Glenn Elliott, Chief Executive Officer, and Co-Founder of Practifi said, "This is the next chapter of our business after experiencing tremendous growth since being here. We've set our sights on building better technology and challenging conventions for better results that move the wealth management industry forward." Johnstone added, "We're deeply proud to have helped so many firms and clients solve their CRM needs and grow their business. As the industry and our clients continue to grow, we want to grow alongside it. That means pioneering bold ideas that power the future of wealth management. With our new approach, we aim to 'power more possibilities'."

About Practifi

Practifi is the performance optimization platform purpose-built for the wealth management industry. Practifi empowers teams to automate workflows, create rich client records, and access advanced analytics in a unified experience. With comprehensive APIs, a range of specialist wealth industry integrations, and an ecosystem of hundreds of integrated apps, our platform centralizes data and gives greater visibility across organizations. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with offices in Sydney, Australia, Practifi enables organizations across the globe to deepen loyalty with their clients and pioneer the future of wealth management. To learn more, visit practifi.com.

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Practifi Unveils Brand Evolution and Expanded Platform Capabilities for RIAs and Enterprise Firms - PR Newswire

[Shenzhen, China, April 27, 2022] Informa Tech successfully held the "Towards F5G Evolution, Promoting Industrial Prosperity" Summit during the 2022 Huawei Global Analyst Summit. At the Summit, European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, Globe Telecom, MTN Group, and Huawei jointly proposed the F5G industry evolution initiative, calling on all industry stakeholders to work together to define F5G evolution directions and standards and boosting the prosperity of the fixed network industry.

ETSI, CAICT, leading operators, and Huawei delivering keynote speeches

In 2020, ETSI officially released the Fifth-Generation Fixed Network (F5G) to solve the issues of fragmentation and unclear generation in the fixed network industry, taking the global fixed network industry into the fast lane. In the future, XR, holographic imaging, and naked-eye 3D services will be a common sight in homes and enterprises, the industrial field will require higher network reliability, and green, low-carbon, and sustainable development will be high on the agenda. All of this will place new demands on F5G networks, making the further strengthening of F5G network capabilities a major focal point for the industry.

Luca Pesando, Chairman of ETSI's ISG F5G, shared the progress of defining F5G Advanced standards at the Summit. He said: "The ISG F5G develops smoothly with its publication of F5G Release 1 in the first mandate. Now it's the right time to discuss the evolution of F5G to the next level 'F5G Advanced' in its second mandate. '"

Ao Li, Chief Engineer of CAICT, said: "Currently, F5G not only needs to be deployed on a large scale based on application driving and technology matching, but also to be continuously evolved to contribute to the long-term development of the digital economy."

"The broadband industry has seen rapid development since the release of the F5G standard," said David Wang, Huawei Executive Director of the Board and Chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board. "Gigabit access has become universal for homes in China and many developed countries around the world. Huawei has developed new fiber to the home (FTTH) solutions to improve the network experience of home users. In addition, Huawei's innovative fiber to the office (FTTO) and fiber to the machine (FTTM) solutions have created many more use cases for optical networks. Looking ahead to 2025, all industry players should work together to drive F5G evolution and satisfy home, business, and industrial needs for higher bandwidth, lower latency, and more connections. This is why we proposed F5.5G."

David Wang delivering a keynote speech

F5.5G will create greater value than F5G in four ways:

Moving forward, Mr. Wang called on the industry to reach a consensus on F5G evolution, and work together to shape a thriving industry ecosystem and bring network technologies to maturity.

Leading operators such as China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, Globe Telecom, and MTN also shared the scenario requirements and business practices of F5G evolution, and expressed their intention to jointly evolve to F5G and enrich F5G service scenarios. At the end of the Summit, all participants proposed the formulation of the F5G Evolution Industry Vision White Paper, calling on all parties in the global fixed network industry to jointly promote F5G evolution, boost industry prosperity, and create greater value for social development.

Originally posted here:

ETSI, CAICT, Leading Operators, and Huawei Jointly Propose the F5G Industry Evolution Initiative - Huawei

ByNEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian digital payments provider yesterday predicted it will this year top the $130m worth of transactions it settled in 2021, and said of this shift: This is not going to be the norm; it is the norm.

Jeffrey Beckles, Island Pays managing director, told the Eleuthera Business Outlook conference that the increasing uptake of digital payments was confirmed by a recent Central Bank briefing thatrevealed a 13 percent increase in this method of transaction settlement. Yet automated teller machine (ATM) withdrawals had declined by 11 percent over the same period, indicating reduced reliance on cash.

With the COVID-19 pandemic having accelerated the transition to a digital Bahamian economy, Mr Beckles said small and medium-sized businesses in particular needed to embrace the disruption rather than fight it and adopt the new technology to become more efficient and effective with their payment methods.

The Bahamas has over the years been working diligently to get our economy to perform at an optimum level in a sustained way, he explained. One thing we have not done well is to evolve. We need to become creatures of evolution. If we dont change, theres a common remark for us: Roadkill. We must evolve. The reality of this evolution for us as far as digital payments are concerned is digital adaptation.

Arguing that The Bahamas must adapt at the same speed as the rest of the world, or face being left behind and becoming uncompetitive, the Island Pay chief said COVID-19 - and its lockdowns and associated other restrictions - had brutally exposed just how many companies were lagging when it came to embracing technology and digital payments.

Mr Beckles said surveys conducted during the pandemic disclosed that 50 percent of Bahamian businesses had no capacity to restart operations because they lacked digital integration, while 81 percent were unable to accept online payments - a percentage that has since since significantly declined.

And, while there are more cell phones in The Bahamas than its 400,000-strong population, he added that less than 15 percent of those cell phones are used to conduct commerce. Yes, its a problem, but its a huge opportunity.

Your cell phone will become the most important device you ever own, Mr Beckles, suggesting that desktop and laptop computers may become obsolete. Your life is going to be centred around the quality of your phone. Youre going to be able to manage every aspect of your life from your cell phone. Your cell phone will become a heartbeat of your existence.

With cell phones able to control a homes temperature and other functions, the Island Pay managing director added: Digital payments will not become the norm; digital payments are the norm. However, the failure of many Bahamian businesses to adapt was driven home on a recent trip to Eleuthera when he was unable to pay for fuel at two separate gas stations because they did not accept credit card payments.

Arguing that both businesses were losing revenue, and incurring a huge opportunity cost, Mr Beckles said that by switching to digital payments they would be able to eliminate the 5-7 percent card fees and reduce the costs associated with transactions by 60 percent. The costs and security risks in handling cash would also be reduced, if not eliminated.

We settled over $130m in digital payments in 2021 and still didnt do a lit of things, he added of Island Pay. Thats a significant effort in a very dismal environment, especially when the adoption is low. We anticipate topping that in 2022......We have a client today where revenue, over a six month period after they went digital, improved by 20 percent. Think about that.

Read the original post:

'Creatures of evolution': Digital firm to top $130m - Bahamas Tribune

If youve read any of the more recent Axiomatics articles, we have highlighted the rapid evolution of the authorization market.

We see it daily more organizations realize their current or traditional approach to authorization isnt in line with the reality of modern access control considerations.

Nowhere is this growth illustrated more clearly than in the recently published KuppingerCole Market Compass for Policy-Based Access Management. The Axiomatics team is pleased to be featured as a vendor in this report.

The report, written by senior analyst Graham Williamson of KupppingerCole Analysts AG, talks not only about how the authorization space has evolved, but also the challenges that have arisen as a result. These challenges are acutely felt by established enterprises, facing a considerable task in keeping pace with the rise of more agile competitors while at the same time trying to modernize and protect legacy systems and applications.

The report rightly identifies that this reflects how and why established enterprises are looking to expedite their digital transformation initiatives and embrace a mix of infrastructure (including public or private cloud) to become more modern.

The Market Compass highlights that theres no one size fits all approach to PBAM. What authorization looks like to support one cloud application versus hundreds of apps living in a cloud-native environment that must adhere to strict regulations, will have different considerations.

As a result, there are three takeaways we want to emphasize in this report:

What we hear from organizations today is that theyre on a journey of putting the right foundational elements in place to begin modernizing their authorization and policy-based access management approach. This can include implementing an identity-first reference architecture that supports a Zero Trust strategy.

With this strategy in place, theres a realization that homegrown authorization solutions cannot keep pace with modern cybersecurity and compliance requirements.

Enterprises must take the right steps forward to enable a modern approach to authorization that can be adopted at the pace of the business.

This means adopting a proven deployment methodology and process that leads to a unified authorization strategy. KuppingerCole provides an example of what this could be in page five of the Market Compass.

As mentioned in the report, Axiomatics is a respected pioneer in this market.

Weve delivered authorization implementations for many of the worlds largest organizations, whose journeys started in what the Market Compass refers to as the traditional approach to PBAM.

As the market has adopted cloud-native infrastructures, Axiomatics has done the same and has delivered many cloud-native implementations. This report reaffirms that supporting PBAM for the modern enterprise must balance both traditional and modern infrastructures.

We believe Orchestrated Authorization is a successful approach to PBAM as it addresses many of the challenges outlined in the Market Compass it takes authorization out of silos, works with an enterprise-wide approach, and is scalable.

In addition, it ensures alignment across internal stakeholders, including development teams, business analysts and executives, with identity leaders and/or CISOs having the centralized view of the strategy.

You can read the full KuppingerCole Market Compass for Policy-Based Access Management, courtesy of Axiomatics.

For more about Orchestrated Authorization, take a look at our 2022 State of Authorization Report.

If youre in a hurry, weve summarized the key points in this executive brief.

The post Policy-based access management and the evolution of authorization appeared first on Axiomatics.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Axiomatics authored by Mark Cassetta. Read the original post at: https://axiomatics.com/blog/policy-based-access-management-and-the-evolution-of-authorization

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Policy-based access management and the evolution of authorization - Security Boulevard