FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Plainview, New York – May 24, 2010 – Kassoy LLC, the world leader in jewelry supply, today announced
several new and exciting products and promotions. The announcement comes in anticipation of The JCK
Las Vegas Tradeshow where the following products will be on-hand for live demonstrations and purchase
at Kassoy Booth #60001 .

Radio Frequency Identification, or “RFID”, is the cutting edge in inventory technology. It allows for faster,
more accurate inventory control with minimal physical handling of products and tags. No longer do
jewelers need to waste valuable time scanning each piece of their collection. RFID makes conducting an
inventory analysis quick and time-efficient. Computerized chips are wirelessly “read” by a wand as it
passes over a showcase or jewelry tray. This system has the potential to revolutionize the way jewelers
handle their inventory.

As the recycling of precious metals continues to increase, so does Kassoy’s testing inventory. At JCK
Las Vegas, Kassoy will be debuting its highly anticipated Precious Metal Analyzers. Specifically designed
for the rapid, accurate and non-destructive testing of gold and other precious metals, these energy
dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometers are ideal for all types of jewelry analysis, including gold
purity, plating and coating thickness measurement, lead testing and more. Available in two sizes, the
units come equipped with superior radiation shielding, plug and play operation and a two-year warranty.
Both models are liquid nitrogen (LN2) free, eliminating the costs and hassles associated with LN2
dependent units.

“Here at Kassoy, we pride ourselves on our ability to stay on the technological forefront and provide the
most cutting-edge tools and solutions to our customers,” commented Joanne Slawitsky, President.
Slawitsky continued, “Each of these exciting items will be front and center at our JCK Las Vegas Booth
#60001.”

At JCK Las Vegas, booth 60001, Kassoy technicians will be on hand to answer questions, give
demonstrations and provide expert advice. Jeweler’s are invited to stop by to have questions answered,
view our new product inventory and enter to win an iPod Nano with any purchase of $50 or more.
To request a catalog, call Kassoy toll-free at 1-800-4-KASSOY (1-800-452-7769) or internationally at 516-
942-0560. For more information contact sales@kassoy.com.

About Kassoy LLC
Headquartered in Plainview, New York, with a Manhattan showroom, Kassoy has been providing all types
of jewelers with the supplies they need for over 75 years. What began in 1936, as a supply company for
diamond dealers, today boasts over 3,000 different SKUs, and a complete product line of more than
40,000 items for every professional in the precious metal, gemstone and jewelry industry. An innovator in
the industry, Kassoy first made bar-code jewelry tags available to retail jewelers in 1987 and continues as
a leader, delivering new products, solutions and technology to the jewelry industry year after year. For
more information, visit http://www.kassoy.com.

When it comes to the Court’s Reputation, Offenders & Community…

Taking the Time to Research a Program is a MUST!

Providers with “new” programs for shoplifting offenders are popping up all over the place, likely in response to the current economic climate and the increase in shoplifting being reported by retailers. Unfortunately, too many of these providers fall short in terms of client and offender support services, compliance rates and effectiveness claims – leaving the courts underserved, the offenders open to repeat offenses and the community at risk.

A major contributor to these “pop-up” programs is the internet which makes it easy for companies, with little or no experience and few if any qualifications, to create websites where information has simply been “lifted” from a variety of other sources – with or without the consent or permission of those sources. In fact, several of these new programs have simply “copied and pasted” information from others to create their “new” programs.  More often than not, the information is “lifted” from the non-profit National Association for Shoplifting Prevention (NASP) – either from the NASP website, one of the NASP programs or a NASP research report – in clear violation of U.S. Copyright Laws.  Such was the case with one long time, seemingly reputable, drug and alcohol program provider.

Another program, while we did not find that its content was plagiarized, uses discriminatory language and inappropriate – if not offensive – scenarios to make its point. One program boasts “endorsements” and “accreditation” from seemingly separate and objective websites yet the sites are not accreditation authorities at all. In fact, they are simply the same company using these other websites – which they themselves created – to endorse and accredit their own programs!

The irony of this is that these program providers are stealing the material they need to create a program to teach shoplifters not to steal!

But the most important take-away here is the need for the court system to ensure that any alternative sentencing program they utilize – whether for shoplifting or any other offense – successfully accomplishes the long-standing goals of the court system; to reduce recidivism, reduce court appearances and effectively serve the best interests of the community. Low-cost, stripped down programs are unlikely to meet these goals. Yes, corporate America is always seeking the next thing that is “faster, cheaper, better.”  However, the fact is that when it comes to truly effective crime prevention, faster and cheaper is rarely better.

To protect the court, the offenders and the community, the court officers making these program decisions must make it a priority to thoroughly research providers, to carefully evaluate the programs they offer and to verify the claims they make.

When Evaluating A Program Make Sure The Provider…  …Is Not Violating any U.S. Copyright Laws Subjecting your Court to Potential Litigation

ASK: Is the program original material? If not, what knowledge base and
sources of information were used to develop it?   …Offers a Program that is Research-based to Ensure Effectiveness.

ASK: What research have they conducted? With how many offenders? Over
how many years? On what do they base their expertise? A Google-search on “shoplifting” or “shoplifters” does not qualify as research, even today.  …Is Not Making False Claims About their Success Rate or their Program being “Evidence-Based.”

ASK: What evidence can they show that their programs are truly effective? How many recidivism studies do they have to back their claims?  Valid recidivism studies are conducted by the courts themselves and tracked over time. Self-studies conducted by the company itself – the one selling the program – are not a valid measure of success in preventing the next offense.

…Can Provide Valid and Credible References. Offering a program over the internet has empowered many to market themselves as “national” providers – implying that their program is well-established and utilized by courts throughout the country – without having any real track record.

ASK: Can they provide a list of references from court personnel in various counties and states? If so, check the references; reach out to your peers and get honest feedback on effectiveness.

Finally, ASK For A Sample Program And Invest The Time To Go Through It And See Exactly What The Offenders Will Be Learning.

Looking for a program to comply with your court order or simply for help, support and understanding of why you shoplifted and how to stop doing it, in order to prevent a future incident or arrest? If so:

You’ve Come To The Right Place

The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention (NASP), a non-profit organization, has developed a unique program for people in your position called the Shoplifters Alternative Course (SA Course). The program is used in hundreds of courts nationwide and presents everything you would ever want to know about shoplifting, so that you will have all the facts you need to help you make future decisions which are best for you.

Theft Class Online Registration

How Shoplifting Becomes An Addiction

While most non-professional shoplifters feel guilty, ashamed and fearful of getting caught, the excitement they experience from shoplifting entices them back, again and again. The excitement of “getting away with it” produces a chemical reaction which is described as an incredible “rush” or “high”. Many shoplifters say that this is the “true reward” of shoplifting rather than the item itself.

A shoplifter’s habit or addiction can develop quickly when a person discovers that the “high” they experience helps to temporarily relieve such feelings as depression, frustration, deprivation, anger or boredom. At these times, people feel the desire to give themselves a reward, a gift or lift which they feel they need or deserve.  READ MORE

As a crime prevention organization, NASP provides programs and technical support for retail theft with its primary focus on petty theft or non-professional consumer shoplifting – a crime generally defined as stealing merchandise from a retail store with the intent to deprive the owner of that property.

While the dollar amounts which define petty theft vary from state to state, stealing from a retail store is always shoplifting and is always a crime which steals from all of us.

NASP’s programs, services and technical assistance for the prevention of shoplifting and retail theft are available to law enforcement, criminal and juvenile justice and local communities as well as retail loss prevention practioners – from national chains to small independent stores without dedicated loss prevention resources. NASP also provides shoplifting programs, shoplifter services and offender solutions directly to the parents of juveniles caught shoplifting and the offenders and people (consumer shoplifters) caught up in a shoplifting problem who want help to stop shoplifting.

Every Thursday at 12:15PM – Free piano event

Keep up your musical inspiration by joining us for our weekly Thursday Lunchtime Concert Series. Experience world-class talent performing in the most intimate listening environment in Seattle!

Please call us or email to find out who is playing!
You won’t be disappointed. (206) 622-7580.

Jazz Great Jessica Williams Live in Concert
Saturday, March 6th at 7PM – Free concert but RSVP required

Dave Burbeck has called her, “One of the greatest jazz pianists I have ever heard.” McCoy Tyner says,”Jessica is a beautiful player.” This two-time Grammy Nominee was classically trained at the Peapbody Conservatory of Music. For the past four decades she has written and recorded extensively. Her appearance includes NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and on Marian McPartland’s Piano Show. She’s written scores for PBS and HBO and has received more than twenty ASCAP Special Awards for her prolific musical output.

Limited seating so RSVP’s required, but there is no cost. Call (280) 622-7580

NY Times Building

The New York Times says it will start charging for online content next year, dropping a big shoe in the debate over whether newspapers should — and can — get paid for something they’ve been giving away for free for years. Instead, it plans to offer a certain number of articles for free before charging a monthly price.

“This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the web is going,” said Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. in an internal memo sent to employees. “This is not going to be something that is going to change the financial dynamics overnight.”

Speaking of those financial dynamics, the Times needs this plan to work — as does, arguably, the rest of the newspaper industry, which has been crushed by debt from financial restructuring, the recession, a weak ad market and intense competition from the same online medium this plan hopes to embrace. The Times‘ cash flow appears to be fine for the moment, although its new 52-story Manhattan high-rise and a stock price that lost about 75 percent of its value over the past five years surely pressured it to make the internet — quite literally– pay.

Google Traffic 2009

Americans conducted 14.7 billion core searches on the top five search engines in December 2009, an increase of 2% over November 2009, according to the latest qSearch data from comScore, Inc. Google searches accounted for nearly 66% of these queries.

Google Sites led the US search market pack in December with 65.7% of the searches conducted, virtually unchanged from 65.6% in November 2009. Google is followed by #2 Yahoo Sites (17.3%, down 0.2 points), and #3 Microsoft Sites (10.7%, up 0.4 points).

Ask Network captured 3.7% of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.6%, comScore said.

Of the 14.7 billion December searches, Google Sites accounted for nearly 9.7 billion of them, followed by Yahoo Sites (2.5 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.6 billion), Ask Network (545 million) and AOL LLC (383 million).

Bing Moves in US Expanded Search Rankings

In the December analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led the search market with more than 14.0 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo Sites with 2.6 billion queries and Microsoft Sites with 1.6 billion searches, comScore reported.

Bing experienced significant growth during the month with a 6% increase in query volume to nearly 1.4 billion searches. eBay and Amazon Sites experienced gains in December as retail search activity picked up during the holiday season.

Split testing is a conversion-tracking method that separates your message into two or more variations to see which gets the best response. Different visitors see different versions of the message and the results are tracked to determine the best return.

We wanted to learn more about conducting split tests (also known as A/B tests), and so we corresponded with Paras Chopra, founder of Wingify, a company that produces Visual Website Optimizer, a split-testing tool for ecommerce merchants and other web operators.

Chopra cited the example of a holiday A/B test conducted recently by MedaliaArt, an online art gallery specializing in Caribbean and Latin America art. “MedaliaArt put up a holiday sale where they offered 5 to 55 percent discounts on all paintings,” he said. “They wanted to determine the best location on the home page to put the message so as to optimize for bounce rate.”

The challenge for the company was to determine where to show the message. “Displaying it prominently on the home page will make more visitors notice it, but some visitors may find it too intrusive and leave the site immediately,” said Chopra. “On the other hand, putting it at a not-so-noticeable location may have no effect at all.”

An Example Split Test

For its split test, MedaliaArt created a couple of versions of its home page with “Holiday Sale” displayed at two different home page locations. One version represented what Chopra calls an “in-your-face ‘Holiday Sale’ message displayed in big, red font prominently on the homepage.”

“In-your-face” Holiday Sale message placement.

The second version was a sidebar “Holiday Sale” message in a smaller font.

Sidebar Holiday Sale message placement.

“Usually, split testing tools track conversion rates (percentage of visitors doing desired action). But, to track the bounce rate, MedaliaArt defined a click on any link on the home page as conversion. Thus the conversion rate of, for example, 40 percent corresponded to a 60 percent (100 percent less 40 percent) bounce rate.”

The first batch of conclusive results was available within two weeks.

“Clearly, the in-your-face, prominent promotional message has a dramatically lower bounce rate (60 percent) than the sidebar one (76 percent), said Chopra. “The reduction in the bounce rate of 21 percent is statistically significant (at 95 percent confidence level) so the in-your-face variation obviously represents a better version. The improvement in bounce rate means more interest by visitors in the paintings they are selling and potentially more sales.”

Without split testing the company could have never known the optimal position of its promotional message. And, fears that a prominently displayed promotional message might backlash by irritating visitors proved not to be an issue.

How To Improve A/B Test Results

Chopra had a suggestion for MedaliaArt (and other ecommerce merchants considering A/B testing). “Also include a variation without the ‘Holiday Sales’ messaging. If MedaliaArt had included such a variation, it would have provided a benchmark to see the effect of the sales message, irrespective of the position.”

Chopra said MedaliaArt could also have used different versions of text in addition to different home page positions. “Maybe a message with the word ‘discount’ (such as ‘55 percent discount on paintings this holiday season’) would have worked better than the default message (‘Holiday Sale’). And, optimizing for bounce rate is fine, but a better metric would have been to measure and optimize for sales, which is what really matters to an ecommerce site.”

Conclusion

Chopra said he believes split testing is the only way to really know what will work and what won’t. “It is essential to check assumptions related to promotional messages, checkout process, product category ordering, buy now button, and more.”

He suggested that merchants should be a little adventurous and test radically different home page designs and ideas. “You can always choose to include only a small percentage of traffic and can disable non-performing variations at a click of a button.”

by Kate Monteith

Comcast’s $30 billion acquisition of NBC | Universal, announced on December 2nd, has drawn interest from Washington regulators, concern from NBC employees, and speculation from bloggers about how the deal will affect others in the industry.

Here at Compete our first thought was “wow, that’s a lot of web traffic!” Looking at 54 leading web properties, such as Weather.com, Hulu.com, and Eonline.com* that are owned in whole or in part by NBC | Universal or Comcast we found that Comcast properties receive 30 million visitors each month while NBC domains host almost 44 million monthly visitors. A combined reach of 74 million web users would put this new behemoth ahead of AOL, MySpace, and Disney’s Go.com as one of the most trafficked companies on the internet. But, will this acquisition help Comcast reach a new audience, or is there a significant overlap in those that already visit both Comcast and NBC properties?

The chart below captures the overlap between the NBC and Comcast domains we examined.

What we found was that only 30% of current NBC web visitors also frequent Comcast properties. Comcast is adding over 30 million new web visitors with this acquisition, doubling its online audience reach.

This finding has a host of implications. Comcast can now sell advertisers on this increased reach in cross-channel marketing agreements, demand better ad rates from online marketers, offer special access on more sites to Comcast cable or internet subscribers, and the implications for net neutrality could be part of the imminent regulatory hearings on Capitol Hill.

While it will take considerable time and effort to get all of these different constituencies moving in unison, the opportunity to leverage this huge new online audience will not pass Comcast by. When this deal is completed, expect Comcast to exert its influence as an ISP and as a leading content provider.

*The complete list of sites includes – Comcast: Comcast.com, comcast.terra.com, comcastsportsnet.com, csnbayarea.com, csncalifornia.com, csnchicago.com, css-sports.com, csnne.com, web.sny.tv, csnphilly.com, themtn.tv, csnwashington.com, dailycandy.com, eonline.com, exercisetv.tv, fancast.com, fandango.com, fearnet.com, g4tv.com, thegolfchannel.com, golfnow.com, movies.com, sproutonline.com, plaxo.com, mystyle.com, tvoneonline.com, versus.com, and NBC | Universal: nbc.com, ivillage.com, neversaydiet.com, momtourage.com, astrology.com, gardenweb.com, petside.com, healthvideo.com, travelskoot.com, bravotv.com, televisionwithoutpity.com, syfy.com, cnbc.com, usanetwork.com, oxygen.com, universalsports.com, weather.com, hulu.com, msnbc.com, holamun2.com, universalhd.com, chillertv.com, sleuthchannel.com, accesshollywood.com, nbcsports.com, nbcolympics.com, telemundo.com (Source: www.nbcutransaction.com)

Written by Steve Schuler