Have you ever made New Year’s resolutions for your home?

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Before the New Year comes,  it is a time to make resolutions for the upcoming 12 months, not only for yourself, but for your home. 

As 2015 has now started, now is the time to ask what property goals you would like to accomplish in 2015. 

Global real estate marketplace Lamudi has compiled a list of five simple suggestions for revamping your home for the New Year.

1. Go Green

To go green, you do not have to spend a lot of money installing solar panels; simply make a few changes. By unplugging appliances and turning off lights when they are not in use, you can save both energy and money. If you want to take it one step further, switch to energy-saving light bulbs or LEDs and reduce usage of your washing machine and dishwasher by ensuring they are full before pressing “start.” For more tips on how to go green, check out http://www.everydayme.com.ph/home/going green

2. De-clutter

Start the year by deciding what you really need in your house, and what you can leave in 2014. Once you have given away unnecessary items to charity, you can begin to clear the clutter. Houses, apartments, and condos all have an abundance of storage possibilities; whether it be installing high shelves, or under-bed boxes, secret compartments within your sofa or hiding places beneath the stairs, be creative with your space.

3. Embrace Technology

Make 2015 the year of the hi-tech home by embracing the vast number of smart products on offer. Whether it be a connected fridge that you can text to check on food supplies, or a television that you can program from the other side of the world, treat yourself to a new appliance as they become increasing innovative, yet affordable.

4. Learn a New Skill 

Whether it is how to reupholster your sofa or make your own curtains, learn something new next year. Either sign yourself up for a local course or search online for a tutorial and let 2015 be the year that you develop your DIY skills. Basic skills in plumbing and maintenance, such as unclogging a drain or re-plastering a wall can save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

5. Refresh and Recycle

A new year is a time to make changes, so why not repaint a room in your house? Perhaps there is a more daring color for your front door that you have been considering or a new refrigerator that you have been eyeing up—2015 is the year to make that change. Furthermore, why not recycle old items to freshen up your home; use empty bottles or old light bulbs to create a chic new light fitting or an old bathtub to brighten up your garden. Check out Upcycle That for more tips and inspiration.

For more information, please visit http://www.lamudi.com.ph

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Epson Acquires K-Sun Corp To Expand Presence In Industrial Solutions Market

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From art to the environment and everything in between, explore and see how Epson is not only about innovative technology.

Seiko Epson Corporation recently announced it had acquired Somerset, Wisconsin-based K-Sun Corporation, a supplier of award-winning portable and desktop electronic label printers. The acquisition of K-Sun, with its more than three decades of experience in the industrial identifications solutions market, will provide Epson with broader access to labeling customers and influencers as well as expand the company's presence in the industrial labeling market.

After supplying K-Sun with label printers on an OEM basis for two decades, Epson believes that acquiring its partner will enable it to better serve industrial customers with the ever expanding line of Epson label printing solutions - from the desktop to the industrial press.

Junichi Watanabe, director, and chief operating officer of Epson's Visual Products Operations Division, commented, "We are delighted to take our partnership with K-Sun to the next stage. The acquisition will not only give us access to K-Sun's expertise in industrial label printing, but will help boost the Epson brand and increase exposure of Epson's label printers in this important strategic market."

"K-Sun has enjoyed a strategic partnership with Epson since 1994. Now as a member of Epson's prestigious group of companies, we are very excited for our future and the new products and supplies that we can offer our customers and the expanded opportunities for our employees," Michael Kasun, founder and president of K-Sun, said.

Specializing in industrial and safety marking/ identification, pipe marking, and wire/ cable labeling, K-Sun will begin with selling the innovative Epson-branded lineup of LabelWorks label printers for industrial applications in North America from January 2015, while Epson America will continue its focus on promoting LabelWorks label printers to the consumer and office markets. Expansion of the product line offerings will follow.

“Epson’s inroads into the label printing segment show our commitment in enhancing our value proposition to our customers. Through this acquisition, we strengthen our goal of providing high precision, world-class products to Filipinos to help them grow the return of their investments,” enthused Christopher Sanchez, Epson Philippines Head of Sales Division.

For more information, visit: www.epson.com.ph/labelprinting

WD Demonstrates World’s Fastest 4 TB Hybrid Drive at Storage Visions 2015

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Prototype Drive Demo on commercially available motherboards show leading performance on both benchmark scores and gaming experience

WD, a Western Digital company and world leader in storage solutions, demonstrated the world’s fastest 4 TB hybrid drive at the SATA-IO booth (#205) at Storage Visions 2015 last January 4 and 5 in Las Vegas, NV. WD’s prototype drive utilized the SATA Express PCI-e interface, 4 TB 3.5-inch hybrid hard drive, and up to 128 GB solid state drive to deliver compelling performance and GB-per-dollar solutions for desktop and gaming applications. 

The two WD SATA Express interface demonstrations at Storage Visions 2015 included commercially available motherboards from WD partners ASRock and Gigabyte. These systems demonstrated cabled SATA Express PCI-e interconnect flexibility and configuration options for single-volume caching and RAID.

Heavy desktop usage scenarios will benefit from larger cache sizes (64 GB will be demonstrated) by enabling retention of key hot data across multiple applications, which improves overall performance. In WD’s labs, WD’s SATA Express 4 TB drive with 64 GB cache achieved a PCMark8 benchmark score of 4459, demonstrating near-SSD performance at an optimized GB-per-dollar value.

PCMark8 benchmark data collected on Asus Z97-A platform, core i5 3.4GHz, 16GB DRAM

GB/$ calculations based on Dec14 retail price sampling 

“WD is committed to working with the industry to push the boundaries of what you might expect from a traditional hard drive,” said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president, Storage Technology, WD. “By moving to PCI Express, the industry marries the world’s most popular storage bus with the world’s most popular computer bus. This union provides a solid growth path to innovate new capability, while preserving the ability to plug legacy SATA drives into new SATA Express based computers.”

“WD’s culture is one of strong collaboration with industry partners in a rapidly changing environment,” said Gary Meister, senior vice president of engineering, WD. “We see the industry moving toward simplification of the overall PC subsystem to a single storage bus based around the PCIe protocol. In this demo, we placed a hard drive, flash NAND and SATAe technology into one package, freeing up one slot in the system and simplifying how our customers could create and maintain such an advanced storage solution. When our customers ask us to move to the next storage bus, we will have done all the necessary work to be ready to support the move.”

“ASRock is delighted to show speeds of almost 10 Gbit-per-second when RAID striped off of two WD prototype drives,” said James Lee, vice president of ASRock sales and marketing of ASRock. “ASRock is on the forefront of creating new systems and architectures that break through classical bottlenecks.”

“Gigabyte demonstration will show how a WD prototype SATAe drive enables world class gaming experience,” said Jackson Hsu, product planning division manager of Gigabyte. “Included in our demonstration is work we have done with WD to make the combination of a hard disk drive and a flash subsystem look like a single volume to the end user. This allows the power of having separate devices in a system along with the convenience of having only a single drive to manage.”

Better healthcare means investing in high-quality tech

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B. Braun says future-proof medical technology is key in improving healthcare in hospitals

For hospitals and clinics, raising the quality of service is always a top priority. But with constrained finances, the challenge for these facilities is finding the right investments, in terms of medical equipment.

Typical infusion pumps, for instance, are used to deliver fluids (including nutrients and medications) into a patient’s body. However, these medical devices are limited in terms of the variety of fluids it can carry.

“Outdated medical equipment can pose challenges to delivering quality healthcare,” said Julian Nair, Country Manager of B. Braun Medical Supplies in the Philippines. “This makes finding technologies that offer flexibility at decreased operational cost all the more important.”

According to the International Trade Administration, there is an existing depreciation in Philippine medical equipment, as some hospitals have no option but to prolong their use. 

Nair pointed out, “Investing in future-proof medial solutions is the key in taking healthcare to the next level. It is really a matter of finding the right equipment to invest in.”

In line with this, B. Braun—the world’s leading provider of healthcare solutions—has developed Space Pumps, a modular system that configures the complex process of infusion pumps. Nair described it as “One Infusion System for all Therapies.”

Next generation technology

“Space Pumps are the smallest and lightest hospital infusion pumps in the world—this allows for easy transport. More importantly, Space Pumps usher a new generation of infusion technology,” said Nair. 

With this device, a single pump can be used for the entire clinical pathway for all hospital applications. Nair also noted that it “only needs a single power cord to run all the pumps, and there is only one data protocol to complete the fluid management required.”

Other benefits include: 16-hour operation time when off the line, easy integration in mobile intensive care vehicles, simple patient transfer with handy pumps, and minimum space requirement.

Unified standards

B. Braun’s ‘one system for greater diversity’ pump is universally implementable for hospital-wide standardization and simplification. Other pumps, Nair pointed out, may not be used for other therapeutic functions that create bottlenecks in availability.

“Single-type pumps are expensive as it can only be used for a single function,” Nair said. “However, using a pump that can be universally used for different drugs is more cost-effective.“ 

He concludes, “Because we believe that optimum patient care is not dependent on very costly medical equipment, all our devices are tailor-made based on unified standards. We have to avoid complications to meet excellent outcomes—both for our patients and the medical institutions as well.”

About B. Braun Medical Supplies, Inc.

25 years of Sharing Expertise in the Philippines

B. Braun Medical Supplies, Inc. is one of the country’s top healthcare companies. Although established in the Philippines only in 1985, B. Braun’s experience in the healthcare industry is backed by 175 years of continuous pioneering and innovative breakthroughs developed and implemented by its mother company B. Braun Melsungen AG, along with subsidiaries in over 60 countries.

B. Braun started in the Philippines with just one operating division, retailing sutures and disposables. On its 28th year in the country, with a strong and driven sales force and service team, it is almost a one-stop healthcare company offering quality and cutting-edge health care products such as infusion solutions and devices, IV cannula, sutures, surgical instruments, value added drugs, regional anesthesia and clinical nutrition.

B. Braun draws its innovative strength from the guiding principle “Sharing Expertise” which cultivates the exchange of information and experience both within the company and more importantly, with practitioners in the hospitals. “Sharing Expertise” is the promise that holds true for B. Braun employees and their customers.

Michael Bublé To Take Manila On A Pre-Valentine’s Date

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There is no doubt that critically-acclaimed singer-songwriter Michael Bublé always gives his audience a night they will never forget. With his unsurpassed charm, splendid stage presence, and enchanting vocals, he transforms his concert into a date with his fans. During his full house show in Value City Arena in Ohio, Bublé mentioned that he didn’t want it to be treated like an ordinary concert. He added, “It’s more like a first date. I start nice and slow, because I know some of you haven’t seen me before.”

Bublé’s electrifying performance is complemented by his natural ability to please the crowd. The Telegraph writes, “On [Bublé’s] first concert of a 10-night run at London's 02 Arena, part of the Canadian singer’s 2013 To Be Loved worldwide tour, he high-fived male fans, blew kisses to adoring women and stood atop a 20-foot structure while blasting out jazzy takes on the old standards.” The Canadian crooner, donning a full tuxedo and shiny shoes, had sold out the O2 Arena on those 10 nights. He was backed by a full orchestral band which he grandiosely introduced as their information such as their respective hometowns, colleges, and draft dates were flashed on screen. He rendered the crowd astonished with his versions of classics, but it was his chart-topping hits “Hold On” and “Haven’t Met You Yet” that got the crowd on their feet.

The multi-Grammy Award winner connects exceptionally well with his audience through his effortless humor, hip dance moves, and strikingly infectious charisma. This global entertainer performed in 18 sold out shows in UK, 31 in Europe, 12 in Canada, and plenty sold out shows in the US, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand for his To Be Loved Tour.

On January 31, Michael Bublé will sweep Manila off its feet. Catch the Canadian crooner at the Mall of Asia Arena, 8 PM, as Wilbros Live in cooperation with Dainty Group and FOX International Channels presents Michael Bublé LIVE in Manila. 

Tickets available at SM Tickets via smtickets.com or call 470-2222. Special thanks to Warner Music Philippines, ABS CBN, MYX, RX 93.1, Play FM 99.5, Natural 97.9, 103.5 KLite, Mellow 94.7, The Philippine Star, Business World, Business Mirror, HDI Admix Inc, Philstar.com, PEP.PH and Inquirer.net.