The Buffalo News - Business

CHICAGO – Your favorite team is playing for the title, and you are in the middle of the field. You have a ticket in the very top row for an NBA playoff game, and a courtside seat. The referees are reviewing a big play in the final seconds, and you are right there in front of them.

Google Glass is slowly becoming more common in sports as teams and broadcasters try to bring fans closer to the action. The Philadelphia Eagles are going to test the Internet-connected eyewear for in-game use, and a company with a key application for the technology says it has secured a new round of financing that will help roll out its Glass program to sports, entertainment and other fields.

“When I talk to teams and ask them about what technology are they looking at, what technology are they keeping track of, the two answers I most commonly get are Google Glass and Snapchat,” said Eric Fernandez, a founder and managing partner of SportsDesk Media, a fan analytics and digital media activation company.

The futuristic eyewear was known as “Project Glass” when it was introduced by Google in a video and blog post in April 2012. The Mountain View, Calif., company started selling the $1,500 glasses to a select crowd later that same year, but it only recently became available to the general public.

The use of Glass in sports has progressed from trendy athletes dipping their toes in the water to a tool for teams looking to draw fans to arenas and stadiums, and then keep their focus on the action, instead of their omnipresent smartphones and tablets. It comes with endless revenue possibilities, ranging from sponsorship deals for the new content streams to a possible attendance boost for teams with empty upper decks.

“I think the fan experience one is the one that’s really hitting hard,” said Eric Johnsen, the business development lead for Glass at Work, “and the performance line people are dabbling with, that’s really interesting.”

Punter Chris Kluwe used the eyewear in training camp last year to take fans inside an Oakland Raiders practice. Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Golden Tate wore the glasses at Super Bowl media day. Roger Federer used one when he hit with former tennis star Stefan Edberg during a visit to Google’s campus, and a referee at the recent USA Sevens Collegiate Rugby Championship donned the glasses for the NBC Sports broadcast.

But it is the big-picture applications that offer intriguing possibilities for teams and leagues concerned about attendance in the 21st century, when flat-screen TVs and rising prices at sporting events have made the in-home experience even more appealing.

The 2014 Know the Fan Report, produced by Sporting News Media, Kantar Media and SportBusiness Group, found 45 percent of fans use a second-screen device while watching sports on TV, a definite factor in the willingness of teams and broadcasters to take a closer look at Glass. The report was based on a survey of more than 1,000 American adults conducted in February.

“The focus has been through sports at large, how do you get people using their phones to interact during the game?” said Rob Laycock, the vice president of marketing for the Indiana Pacers and Fever.

“What’s nice about Glass is that it’s keeping your focus on center stage, you know main court, with the scoreboard right above it.”

The NBA’s Sacramento Kings used a CrowdOptic application to become the first pro sports team to employ Glass in the arena when they put the eyewear on their mascot Slamson and others for a January loss to the Pacers, allowing fans at the game and viewing at home to witness the courtside experience. Indiana used it for the first time for a March 26 game against Miami, and the Orlando Magic broke it out for their April 9 game against Brooklyn.

The Eagles are the first NFL team to try the application for Google Glass. They are planning for a similar approach to the Pacers, who used the CrowdOptic program to provide multiple courtside perspectives over the videoboard during games.

“We’re on a constant search for ways to enhance the overall fan experience at Lincoln Financial Field,” said Brian Papson, the vice president of marketing for the Eagles. “So what caught us is that this is a creative, different, new innovative way to do that.”

There are many factors at play with the use of Glass at sports venues, including the strength of the Wi-Fi network and the reliability of moving people wearing the technology. Thousands of people using their phones to post to social media or check fantasy sports can grind Wi-Fi networks to a halt, and a courtside perspective becomes much less attractive when it’s an obstructed view.

That’s where CrowdOptic comes in.

“What our stuff does is it really converts all this chaos into a demonstrable broadcast feed that, for example, the Pacers can really count on,” said Jon Fisher, the CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based company. “So they can put Glass out there and it can work in many cases as well as any other fixed camera asset because of these algorithms at work.”

Maintaining a reliable feed is just one potential problem for sports teams deploying the technology. There is concern about overwhelming fans with a barrage of viewing options. The eyewear has faced criticism over its intrusiveness and its ability to take photos and video through voice-activated commands, making it more likely that even attentive fans could find themselves on the videoboard before they realize what’s going on.

The rollouts have been conducted with great care.

“We haven’t just determined yet who’s going to be wearing the Glass and deploying it, that’s all up for a lot of discussion,” Papson said. “But I think as content such as this continues to be more available, I think every team has those discussions as to what’s not appropriate to provide.”

Asked about his vision of the future, Johnsen paints a compelling picture.

“If a fan wants to be Tom Brady, 10 seconds left in the Super Bowl, in the red zone making the call in the huddle and executing a play,” he said, “I think it’s absolutely possible next 10 years if not sooner ... with Glass-like technology.”

NEW YORK – Supersized isn’t just for french fries.

Americans increasingly are replacing their once-enviable 50-inch TVs with even bigger screens. Think: 65-inches and up.

People are snagging big screens – pushing sales of them up 50 percent in the past year while overall TV sales have faltered. As prices fall, hardcore TV watchers and video gamers are finding sets affordable that a few years ago would have been playthings for wealthier people.

Jarvis Jackson, for instance, plans to spend up to $1,500 for a 65-inch TV with Internet capability. Jackson, who lives in Birmingham, Ala., says he’ll scale back on dining out and postpone other purchases to make room in his budget.

“You definitely can tell the difference between a 55-inch and a larger size TV,” says Jackson. “To get the right TV is important, especially when football season is coming up.”

Shoppers like Jackson are being enticed by new technologies like Internet capability that allows Netflix streaming, and Ultra HD screens, which offer a sharper picture.

Falling prices also have made big screens more accessible to the average person: TV prices overall have fallen 9 to 11 percent, and the average price of a 50-inch TV is down $75 from two years ago to $573, according to research firm NPD Group.

“TVs are more affordable than they’ve ever been, so a ‘supersized’ TV today is still far less expensive than smaller screens were three or four years ago,” says Jamie Bastian, a spokeswoman for Target, which expanded its selection of big-screen TVs to include 70-inch versions this year, up from last year’s 60 inches.

Although TVs 65 inches or bigger account for just 2 percent of sets sold, they’re the bright spot in a market that has been slumping in part because more people are using tablets and cellphones to stream movies and TV shows.

Overall, TVs 50 inches and bigger accounted for 25 percent of the sets sold in the past 12 months, up from 14 percent in 2012. NPD expects the figure to reach 30 percent this year.

The advent of flat screens and high-definition television prompted a rush to upgrade a decade ago, but things like 3-D TVs have failed to entice buyers in recent years. But experts say Ultra HD is a simple enough upgrade to gain widespread adoption in the next few years.

While overall TV sales have dropped as much as 10 percent annually since 2010, big-screen TVs have become the fastest-growing category. During the year that ended April, 800,000 65-inch TVs or larger were sold, a 69 percent jump. That equated to a 50 percent increase to $1.6 billion in sales in a TV market totaling an estimated $18 billion.

Lower-income shoppers are accounting for a larger share of the supersized TVs. In the year that ended in April, 61 percent of TVs 60 inches or larger were purchased by shoppers with household incomes of $75,000 or less, up from 45 percent a year earlier, according to NPD.

Retailers are taking advantage of the demand. Amazon.com plans to feature some 100-inch models this year, while Chicago-based electronics store Abt is expanding its warehouse space by nearly 30 percent, in part to accommodate bigger TVs.

Best Buy is increasing its selection of 55-inch-plus TVs by 20 percent. But big-screen TVs come with hassles: Best Buy delivery people sometimes have to open the box on the customer’s front lawn or go through a patio door because the box won’t fit through a regular door. Best Buy says a 55-inch Samsung TV weighs 37 pounds whereas a 75-inch Samsung TV weighs 83 pounds.

“I don’t think anyone would have estimated the appetite for the size of these TVs,” says Luke Motschenbacher, director of Best Buy’s TV business.

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is also beefing up its big-screens because of increasing customer demand. The retailer is allocating half of its TV wall to 50- to 60-inch TVs this year, up from about a third last year. It’s also offering 80-inch TVs, including a $2,998 Vizio, in some stores. And Walmart.com is increasing its selection of stands to accommodate TVs over 60 inches.

This year, at Walmart’s Sam’s Clubs, nearly half of the TVs will be at least 55 inches, up from about 30 percent last year. Last year, the biggest TV that Sam’s Club sold in its stores was 80 inches. This year, it will sell 90-inch TVs in some locations.

Sam’s Club CEO Rosalind Brewer says the trend is “counterintuitive” to the overall frugality it’s seeing from members, who are switching to cheaper chicken from more expensive cuts of beef.

William G. Gisel Jr. remembers walking into a Niagara Street building in the late 1980s that Rich Products was considering buying.

The property was in financial distress, and still had tenants including an auto parts store, a rust-proofing operation, and a metal fabricator. But the food products company saw potential for more space for its research and development work, said Gisel, now the chief executive officer of Rich. The company bought and transformed the building, adding space to its headquarters complex and creating a gathering spot commonly called the Atrium.

Rich has evolved over the past quarter century. The family-owned business no longer manufactures products in Buffalo, but has bulked up its corporate operations here. The company has a presence in 112 countries, operates nine R&D centers around the world, and records annual sales of $3.3 billion. To reflect its growth, the company has modernized the Atrium and created a new “customer innovation center,” an $18.5 million investment that is substantially complete.

Gisel joined Rich in 1982 and was named CEO in 2006. He reflected on the changes and how its international growth flows back home.

Matt Glynn: What does the investment in your property mean for Niagara Street?

William Gisel: We’re very pleased with the mayor’s and the city’s focus on Niagara Street, on this corridor, and the realization that it’s a high opportunity area for the future of the city. When you think about a space that overlooks the river and faces Canada, there’s just so much to like about this. And one of our goals was to make enough of a commitment to this space that would draw others to believe that this is a good place to be for the long term. And so we’ve seen Resurgence Brewing next door. That’s a great development that hopefully is the beginning of several more. There’s nothing that we would like more than to see a real upsurge in interest in Niagara Street as a home for new businesses.

MG: Which markets are performing the best for Rich Products right now?

WG: Our U.S. business is doing very well. The growth rates in the U.S. are fairly low, as they are in many industries. The food industry is not growing quickly right now, along with the rest of the economy. We’re doing much better than the industry growth, so that’s a positive sign. We have a new business that we acquired a little over a year ago, the F’real milkshake business, and that’s growing very, very well. We’re on track to sell somewhere near 50 million milkshakes in 2014. We’re gradually rising in the ranks of the top sellers of milkshakes in the country.

Our business in Asia continues to be very strong, more than double-digit growth rates across the region, led by excellent growth in China. We continue to expand into tier-three and tier-four cities in China. There’s close to 300 cities in China with more than a million people, so there’s an enormous market that’s still coming into its own, and we are very much on the forefront of that market.

MG: Are there other countries you would still like to expand into?

WG: There definitely are. We’re in the Middle East, but we’re not in all the Middle Eastern countries. You have to be realistic about some of the constraints that exist in these places. We started off our international business in the late ’80s, and our major criteria at that time were a simple model of access and appeal. What markets can we have reasonable access to, based on duty restrictions or food laws or other things, or infrastructure? And appeal, as to what markets would have an appetite for some of the things that we’re able to offer. And just by using those two simple criteria, we’ve been able to consistently evaluate opportunities in different places around the world.

MG: How does your international growth flow back to Buffalo?

WG: Well, you’re seeing it. This place here is a headquarters that is geared to support a global corporation. If we were not a global company, we wouldn’t need the kinds of capabilities that we have constructed here. So what this really represents is a commitment by the Rich family to Western New York for a longer-term presence in this area. We could put these things anywhere in the world; we have nine R&D centers. But making the decision to do it here is really the family’s very strong commitment to Western New York as the headquarters of the company for the future.

MG: How has the economy treated Rich Products over the past couple of years?

WG: Since the financial crisis in 2008, the recession, that affected all companies everywhere, it really affected consumption. So everyone had to adapt to that. We in the food industry at the same time were very affected by high commodity prices. Raw material costs went up considerably during that period of time. We weathered that in very good shape and we’ve continued to add momentum ever since. So we have been performing very well for the last several years.

Part of the reason we were so effective in weathering it is we have had a greater presence in emerging markets than most of the other food companies in the U.S. Earlier than most, we made commitments in Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, and therefore have this strong base of business, strong foundation in emerging markets, when they were growing much faster than the U.S. Over the last couple of years, those economies have softened quite a bit, many of the emerging markets. And the U.S. has started to pick up a little bit. So what we’re starting to see now is a much more balanced but less growth-driven business climate.

MG: The company had an issue last year with a national E. coli outbreak linked to a Rich plant in Waycross, Ga. What was the outcome?

WG: Those types of issues happen from time to time in the food industry, and as an industry, the attention to food safety has never been higher. And it is higher in the U.S. than in any country in the world. Rich’s reflects those values. Food safety and the safety of our associates are the two most important things that we dwell on with all of our people. So when something like this happens, you know it’s a possibility because we’re dealing with raw materials that are coming from so many different places.

The most important thing is, how do you react to it? What we did is we got out in front of the issue. We worked very closely with the health authorities at the state and federal levels. We instituted recalls voluntarily early on to make sure we eliminated any possible risk. The reason we did that is because identifying the specific source of something like this is really like finding that proverbial needle in a haystack. And we did not want to wait to see if we would find that needle before taking action to assure that there would be no ongoing issues.

In the end, there were no specific sources that could be identified, and that was not a huge surprise because of the way we process food, and the ingredients that come through, and it’s harder to go back and do research into the past of what happened in a circumstance like this.

We ended up deciding to close the plant, not because of safety issues, but because of a change in the decision on the way we would produce these products and a change in a bit of the portfolio. And from an economic standpoint, it became a facility that was not viable going forward. So that facility has been closed for some time now, but the overall product line continues to be very much in our portfolio and doing very well.

email: mglynn@buffnews.com

When Peter Tyrrell needs a haircut, he climbs into his car and drives two hours from Eldred, Pa., to a quaint barbershop on Elmwood Avenue in Kenmore, where the cuts are as old-fashioned as the men wielding the trimmers and the checkered floor beneath their feet.

Tyrrell, 47, has been a customer of Rich Rosso’s since he was 18. He is especially particular about his flattop trim, and that requires his favorite barber.

When the Riverside native moved away to get married years ago, he embarked on a search for another barber in the area. It’s not that there are no barbershops in Eldred – there are a handful within a 15-minute drive – but none that could cut Tyrrell’s hair like Rosso can.

“I tried two different places down here, but nobody cuts a flattop as straight as Richie the Barber,” Tyrrell said. “If he moved to Canada, I would get a passport.”

Rosso, 63, has been in the business for more than 40 years. He opened his 2684 Elmwood Ave. shop called the Real Barbers 11 years ago and became a fixture in the Kenmore-Tonawanda community.

The five-chair shop, and others like it, are traditional touchstones for an industry at the beginning of a renaissance following decades of regression. The services offered – hot-towel shaves, $12 cuts and a comfortable customer experience – have endeared the profession to customers. Now they are helping spur a resurgence. Growing slowly
Active barber licenses have increased in New York State each year since 2002, following at least a decade of steady decline. (the state’s license database only goes back to 1994.)

In Western New York, the figure has jumped from 461 to 490 since January, the highest it’s been since 2003. It’s still a far cry from the 735 licensed barbers operating in the region 20 years ago, but interest in the trade is rising.

People like Les Leopold want to be a part of the comeback.

As director of the Adult Education Center of Buffalo Public Schools, Leopold is charged with identifying areas of demand in the community workforce.

It took him about eight years to convince his bosses of the need for the Buffalo School of Cosmetology, and upon its opening in 2012, Leopold started getting calls from people asking about a barber school.

The Buffalo School of Barbering launched its first class under the Buffalo Public Schools adult education division in April 2013.

A few months later in October, Erie 1 BOCES started a master barber program of its own, also receiving an outpouring of inquiries. A course for high school seniors will begin in the fall to coincide with the cosmetology program.

The two schools are the first barbering trade programs to open in Western New York since the Chippewa Barber School closed its doors in 1971, and they attracted more than 30 students during the first year.

The classes have a wide variety of students, from 18-year-olds fresh from high school and college graduates, to longtime barbers hoping to refine their skills and people in their 50s searching for second careers.

There are also three women enrolled at the Buffalo School of Barbering, a new trend in a male-dominated industry.

“We thought that this region had a real need for barbers,” Leopold said. “I noticed all these barbershops popping up around the area. The minute we opened up the program, the calls were coming and the classes started filling.” Better training needed
Thomas Nichols, the lead instructor at the Buffalo School of Barbering, said future barbers weren’t being trained well enough without a school.

When the Chippewa Street school closed, hopeful local barbers had two options: head off to expensive trade schools in Rochester, Toronto or New York City or complete their training hours during a more prolonged two-year apprenticeship with a master barber before taking the state exam.

While apprenticeships taught how to cut hair, Nichols said most overseeing barbers failed to touch on the finer points of tonsorial services – massage therapy, scalp treatment, customer engagement, entrepreneurship.

Nichols teaches chapters on each, while blending traditional components like hot-towel shaves with new artistry hairstyles.

“The whole idea of this course is to bring back the professionalism, the traditional customer service to barbering,” Nichols said.

His students – and hopeful barbers everywhere – are learning to blend the old with new ideas, from which a new brand of barbering has derived. A new wave
In larger cities like Toronto and New York, old-school barbershops like the Real Barbers are blending with the flashy trend shops.

Some students would like to bring a slice of that culture here.

In Toronto, Crows Nest Barbershop draws clients young and old. It’s a chic, trendy outlet with attitude and a refrigerator where customers can grab a drink and kick back as a barber with equal parts talent and tattoos snips new twists on old-style cuts.

It caught the eye of Jason Bauers, a 28-year-old student at the Buffalo School of Barbering.

“It was the first really enjoyable haircutting experience I’ve had,” Bauers said.

For males, hairstyles of old are in vogue. Many again seek the comb-overs and slickbacks of year’s past, with new flare.

“What’s old is new again,” said Patricia Kirisits, coordinator for the Erie 1 BOCES barber program. “Barbering itself is becoming more and more like an art form.”

Jacob Marsh, another student, was sporting one of those hairdos during a recent class – a thick slickback on top, shaved down to a buzz on both sides.

Marsh, 23, said he was attracted to barbering because today’s styles defy rules, allowing for more creativity.

“I think it’s reintegrating the old-school, traditional stuff and it’s taking it to a new place, which is exciting,” Marsh said. “A lot of younger guys want to do something more traditional with their hair, and I think that’s really cool.”

Marsh thinks Buffalo has a place for shops built in the mold of Crows Nest.

“Cutting hair is an art form,” he said. “I follow a lot of other barbershops. They have a lot of stuff Buffalo doesn’t have. I kind of wanted to bring that here.”

No matter the method, Nichols feels the foundation for any successful barber should be what shops like Rosso’s have been doing at a high level for years – customer service and professionalism. A veteran team
Customers who have been with Rosso for years – some for 20 years or longer – appreciate the value in the extra touch, which could come in the form of a tongue-in-cheek wisecrack from Rosso’s longtime partner Mark Wnink, 63, or a story about Buffalo’s mobsters from 81-year-old West Side barbershop legend Larry Scinta.

Two more barbers – Russ Giambeluca, who merged his barbershop with Rosso’s to form The Real Barbers, and co-owner Cindy Montanino, who now spends three days a week running The Real Barbers’ newest location in Grand Island – combine to give the shop its personality.

Rosso, after 43 years cutting hair, insists business has never been better.

Rosso hopes to staff his new place at 2379 Grand Island Blvd. with students from Buffalo’s new schools once they pass the state exam to go along with the new-age movement. The secret sauce?
The formula for success in barbering, and in business, Rosso says is the unique rapport he builds with his customers.

“We get these customers laughing in here,” Rosso said. “We have a lot of fun. When they come back, they have fun. They want to come back. And when they come back, they start becoming like your own family.”

One customer, a first-timer recently moved to Tonawanda from Las Vegas, said his first order of business once settled was to find a barbershop.

“You’ll be my guy,” Ken Wright, 65, said to Wnink, running his right hand across his newly minted buzz cut with a nod of satisfaction.

Rosso has seen boys grow to men in his chair. Now they bring their sons in for haircuts.

From Eldred to Blasdell and everywhere in between, they keep coming back. “It’s not because of our dynamic personalities,” Rosso joked. “He owes me money,” Dan Murphy, 54, a Tonawanda resident and customer of 25 years, chirped when asked why he returns.

“My hair keeps growing,” quipped Bob Voigt, 58, of Amherst, who has sat in Wnink’s chair for almost 20 years.

Eventually, one by one, they eased up on the satire and confessed.

“In all seriousness, it’s the atmosphere,” Murphy said. “Everybody knows everybody. Where can you get a haircut for $12? It’s just nice to come in and relax.

“That’s going to cost you, Rich,” he added, before leaving the shop.

He’ll be back. They always come back, because there’s nothing quite like it.

email: bschlager@buffnews.com

Maybe you’re dreading arriving at your high school reunion in a minivan with an overworked odometer.

Or you dream of impressing a date in a flashy sportscar instead of your ho-hum sedan.

Or you want to arrive in style at a wedding in something other than the typical limo.

What to do? Roll up in a Porsche, a Corvette, or a muscle car like a Dodge Challenger.

A couple of Buffalo guys, Gregory Straus and Matthew Bona, have these cars for rent, and they think there is a market for people who want to escape their everyday driving experience. They launched Redline Rentals of Buffalo with that idea.

Customers have already rented the cars for a day, several days, or even weeks at a time, for everything from cool road trips to wedding anniversaries and milestone birthdays. The customers get the thrill of driving – and being seen driving – expensive cars, and then turn in the keys and go back to their everyday transportation.

Robert P. Carr, president of Carr Marketing Communications, compares the concept to signing up for baseball fantasy camps to play alongside real major leaguers for a few days. “In some ways, it’s kind of like a Water Mitty type of dream,” Carr said. “All of a sudden, the alarm clock goes off and you’re back to reality,” he said.

Charis Zaczek surprised her husband, Eric, with a 24-hour Corvette rental to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. When they stopped by Redline’s North Buffalo shop, Charis figured they would just see the car and pick up a gift certificate. But Eric was eager to rent the Corvette immediately, so they did, taking the Corvette to Grand Island to see what it could do.

“We had a lot of yells: ‘Nice car, nice car!’” Charis said. Later, the Kenmore couple drove to the Buffalo Chophouse for dinner.

Adam Hageman usually drives a tow truck with his business, Empire Towing and Recovery. The Challenger is Hageman’s “dream car,” but he can’t afford to buy one, so he rented one from Redline for a month.

Hageman drove the car to a wedding, and took a friend to Gowanda to pick up a motorcycle. He also drove it for errands.

“I was at Lowe’s with my two daughters and someone asked me if it was mine,” he said.

Tim O’Donnell drove the Corvette with his 19-year-old son to Chicago for a Blackhawks-Kings playoff game. They could have flown, but O’Donnell preferred father-son bonding time on a road trip. The head-turning car added an extra touch, O’Donnell said.

“The Hawks won in double overtime, which was awesome.”

These are exactly the types of stories that Straus, 27, and Bona, 28, hoped to hear when they started Redline. The North Buffalo residents went to St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute and Canisius College together. While on assignment in New York City, they learned about the luxury car rental business.

When they returned to Buffalo, Straus and Bona talked about bringing the concept here. Both are lifelong car guys with an affinity for numbers: Straus has a degree in accounting, and Bona earned a degree in accounting and finance.

But they faced an obvious question: how can a business like Redline succeed in a place like Buffalo, where wintry weather spoils the fun for months?

“My response to that is, that’s exactly why it’s going to work, because it’s a shortened season,” said Bona, the chief operating officer. “People don’t want to buy these cars, they don’t have room to store them, they don’t have the time and ability to maintain them, because the average person probably only is going to drive them 1,000 to 2,000 miles per year.”

They found a bank willing to work with them and, after a long search, lined up insurance for the business. Then the co-owners set out to build a fleet.

Straus and Bona always had a Corvette and a Porsche in their game plan.

“What we were trying to do was think about that Ferrari-Lamborghini mindset without the pricetag,” said Straus, Redline’s president.

They found a 2008 midnight blue Porsche 911 in Washington, D.C., that fit their criteria: full convertible, turbo engine and automatic transmission. Straus flew to Washington and drove the car home just in time to display it at one of the charity events Redline attends to promote its service.

Bona spotted a torch-red 2011 Corvette Grand Sport on a car lot one day.

“I drove by it and said, ‘Yep, that’s the car,’ and pulled a U-ie in the parking lot.”

They rounded out the fleet with a 2012 Challenger with chrome rims, a custom exhaust, and a thunderous rumble.

“It’s pure black,” Straus said. “It’s really an ode to muscle cars.”

Straus and Bona spent about $150,000 for all three vehicles, assembling a fleet with different levels of rental prices. The rates vary depending on what a customer signs up for, but the Porsche rents for about $700 for 24 hours on a weekend, compared to about $500 for the Corvette and about $300 for the Challenger. (A new Porsche comparable to Redline’s rental sells for more than $100,000.)

Like any rental cars, Redline’s come with rules. Customers must be at least 25 years old, and have a clean driving record and proper insurance. They can’t eat in the cars, and they have to put down a $2,500 refundable security deposit. Straus and Bona show customers how to drive the cars safely.

If a car comes back damaged – for example, a fender hanging off from ramming a steep driveway – Redline will hold the deposit until the customer’s insurance company reimburses Redline. “By telling people that, they drive it as if it was their own,” Straus said. “They’re a lot more responsible.” And so far, customers dropped off the cars in good condition.

Can a business like this succeed in a smaller market like Buffalo? Gotham Dream Cars, which inspired Redline’s founders, operates in big markets like New York City, Miami and Los Angeles. During his research, Straus talked to Rob Ferretti, Gotham’s chief operating officer.

Ferretti said he doesn’t believe Buffalo is large enough to sustain a luxury rental car business as more than a side gig. “It’s not an easy business to make work, and the (profit) margins are far what from people expect.”

And Ferretti said it’s not just about drawing customers from a pool of wealthy people in a market. “They are people who want to pretend to be rich, effectively.”

Gotham customers will rent exotic cars and head to traffic-jammed places like Times Square. “Everybody just drives places nice and slow to be seen,” Ferretti said.

Straus and Bona say they recognize the challenges ahead. They have full-time jobs at banks – they declined to name them – and operate their business from rented space in a former collision shop. Straus believes Redline can be profitable within five years. If it doesn’t succeed, they can always sell off the cars.

By August, they expect to know how their bookings are looking into autumn. They are deciding what to do about the winter months – just put the cars in storage, or add a luxury SUV to the fleet that can handle the snow.

For now, Straus and Bona are enjoying the ride. And Straus notices something when a customer’s rental time with a car is up: “They don’t want to give it back.”

email: mglynn@buffnews.com

RENO, Nev. — A street newly nicknamed Startup Row intersects this city’s old strip of casinos. And while old-fashioned slot machines are whirring nearby, this stretch of road has become a home for smartphone app makers, cloud computing developers and companies like one that set up shop here recently to build tiny sensors that allow devices to connect to the Internet.

Although Reno stirs images of worn-out casinos, strip clubs and quick divorces, the city is trying to change that reputation and take advantage of its location and low taxes to gain a solid footing in the new economy. Instead of poker payouts, Reno now boasts of e-commerce ventures, an Apple data center and a testing ground for drones. It also hopes to attract a large factory to build batteries for Tesla’s electric vehicles

“People believe in this town, and they’re tired of being presented as this joke,” said Abbi Whitaker, a local business owner who helped create a marketing campaign to reshape Reno’s image. Reno exemplifies how cities not far from California — including Boise, Idaho, and Tucson, Ariz. — are trying to poach California’s technology culture to help diversify their economies, marketing themselves as places where taxes are lower and environmental regulations are less onerous.

Reno is among the best situated, less than a four-hour drive from San Francisco and in a state with no corporate or inventory taxes.

New technology companies are coming to Reno, and older ones are expanding.

Most of all, civic boosters are on edge waiting for Tesla, Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company, to announce the location of its new battery factory that is expected to employ more than 6,000 people.

Reno is not far from one of the few lithium deposits in the country; it is relatively close to Fremont, Calif., where the vehicles will be assembled, and its industrial park has thousands of acres of land for the auto company’s new factory.

“There are solid reasons to be optimistic about Reno,” said Greg Bird, an economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Moviegoers are used to the long pre-show routine of film industry trivia, concession stand ads and trailers for coming films. Then, just before the movie begins, a voice asks you to please turn off your cellphone.

Soon, that last instruction might change. The movie industry is working on ways to make smartphones, tablets and even built-in screens in seats a key part of the experience both before the movie and, more disturbing to some patrons, during the movie.

The “second-screen experience” – using another device to enhance the main attraction – is growing for people at baseball games and rock concerts, and while watching TV shows or playing video games. Sometimes it’s just to read reactions on Twitter, though recently apps have been designed for use during a specific program or event.

Now that technology is beginning to spill over into movie theaters.

“We believe that movies, by definition, are a social experience,” said Cliff Marks, president of sales and marketing for National CineMedia, which is launching pre-movie second screen content.

Industry observers think that most movie-goers will easily accept the second screen experience before movies, but they’re wary about it during full-length screenings.

But with more people expecting to use their second screen at all sorts of events, theaters will be pressured to follow their patrons’ desires. And even with the warning to put away cellphones and iPads, some patrons pull them out during a movie anyway. So instead of fighting a trend, theaters and Hollywood could exploit it.

Feature-length second screen content could be behind-the-scenes looks, subtitles and more interactive features, such as games.

That doesn’t sit well with Jerry Harrington, the owner of the Tivoli Cinemas in suburban Kansas City.

“That’s an experience other than a movie,” he said. “I don’t know what to call that, but it’s not watching a film.” Before your movie
Those familiar scenes before a movie are often part of National CineMedia’s FirstLook show. It’s a staple at many theaters, including AMC Theatres and Regal Cinemas.

Next month, FirstLook will launch its second screen content.

Marks stressed that National CineMedia will encourage second screens only during FirstLook. The audience will be instructed to disengage from the app and their phones once a film starts.

Through a partnership with Shazam Entertainment, which started out as an app that uses voice recognition to identify songs, FirstLook will offer more information about the ads and coming shows.

To access the content, audience members will need to open Shazam and use the app’s sound recognition feature.

Viewers will be able to learn more about advertised products, movies and TV shows that are part of FirstLook. So far, Marks said, advertisers seem intrigued. Enhance or distract?
Stretching the use of second screens into the films presents a whole new layer of concerns.

Last fall Disney tried it with its re-releases of both “The Little Mermaid” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

Moviegoers at the trial locations were told to bring iPads and use an app that synced with the movie. Throughout the movie, the app presented lyrics to sing and interactive games users could play with others in the theater.

It was marketed as “Second Screen Live!” and available only in select locations.

Eric Wold, a senior analyst at the firm B. Riley & Co., said adding new experiences for patrons was essential to keeping a theater afloat.

“Everything from 3-D to reclining seats to dine-in theaters ... is crucial,” Wold said, to lure lure audiences with services they can’t get at home.

Over the past 10 years, attendance at the movies has been flat, he said. Box office revenue has continued to increase thanks to the higher cost of general tickets, and the extra expenses theaters tack on for new experiences such as 3-D movies.

If the lawn outside your window is giving you the blues, join the club, says Consumer Reports. After a brutal winter walloped much of the country, the magazine’s Facebook and Twitter feeds have been buzzing with lawn care woes from exasperated homeowners (#moles #barespots, anyone?).

Fortunately, many of the most common problems have fairly straightforward fixes. Consumer Reports offers the following solutions to common problems: Lack of sunlight
Solution: Look for lawn alternatives

Even so-called shade-tolerant varieties of turfgrass won’t do well in dark corners of the yard. And pruning trees too aggressively to create sunlight can end up harming the tree. You’re better off cutting your losses and replacing the sun-starved patch of grass with a shade-tolerant ground cover, such as bishop’s hat or sweet woodruff. Or you might convert that part of the lawn with gravel or a perennial bed. Crabgrass invasion
Solution: A multipronged defense

You’re smart to tackle this pesky weed. Besides being an eyesore, crabgrass typically dies off at the first frost, promoting soil erosion. Applying corn gluten meal, a natural alternative to chemical herbicide, in early spring can help contain the problem. Follow with a spring fertilizer.

As the mowing season begins, don’t cut the grass too short, since this can open the door again for crabgrass. Set the deck on your mower or tractor to around 3½ inches. Most decks have notches, not inches, so getting the height just right can take some trial and error. Thin, patchy grass
Solution: Get a soil test

Chronic lawn problems are often about the soil, not the actual grass. Having a soil test done is the best $10 to $15 you can spend. Home and garden centers sell DIY kits, but Consumer Reports recommends working with your local cooperative extension, whose experts will pinpoint your soil’s pH level and identify any missing nutrients.

They’ll also prescribe the best course of treatment, for example, spreading limestone if the soil is acidic or sulfur if it’s overly alkaline. It’s prudent to do a soil test every few years, though if you just moved into a new home, you may want to do one annually, at least until the desired results start to come in. Grub sightings
Solution: First assess, then address

These milky-white beetle larvae feed on grass roots, which can lead to dead spots in the lawn. Grubs also attract moles and raccoons. But a few here or there might not be a problem, says Kyle Wickings, a turfgrass entomologist at Cornell University. Ten larvae per square foot is a common threshold for treatment, however, this can vary by species. A very healthy lawn can tolerate higher densities.

If there are signs of damage, say dead or wilting turf, ask your cooperative extension for the best treatment, which will depend on the species of grub. Preventive insecticides are applied in spring, and curative measures are done in the fall. In some regions, chemicals are illegal or must be applied by a certified pro. Organic alternatives, such as Heterorhabditis nematodes, are often effective. Ugly bald spots
Solution: Start from scratch

Weeds love bare patches, so if you don’t act quickly, they will. Spring’s cool, wet weather is conducive to growing many types of turfgrass.

Start by digging up the damaged section, plus 6 inches of surrounding, healthy lawn, cutting about 2 inches deep. Then level the soil and add a small amount of soil amendment, such as a plant-based compost, and starter fertilizer. If you’re using seed, cover it lightly with straw and keep the ground moist until germination.

For sod, which is about 10 times more expensive than seed but tends to work better, Consumer Reports suggests cutting a section to fit, pressing it into place, and watering frequently until it takes root.

Watch out, Siri. Someone wants your job.

Since it debuted on the iPhone 4S three years ago, Apple’s Siri technology has been synonymous with the concept of a virtual personal assistant. But now comes Cortana, an intelligent assistant from Microsoft that’s supposed to be much like Siri, only better.

Cortana is one of the key features of Windows Phone 8.1, the latest update to Microsoft’s smartphone software that is beginning to show up in new devices. The feature is something like a combination of Siri and Google Now, the intelligent assistant technology built into Android.

Like Siri, Cortana can send text messages, search for information on the Web and launch applications in response to users’ inquiries and statements. As with Siri, users generally don’t need to use specific commands, but can talk naturally, as if they were speaking to a real person.

But unlike Siri, Cortana can also act like Google Now, providing information unprompted by a particular inquiry. Looking at your calendar, Cortana can tell you when you need to leave for a crosstown meeting in order to make it on time. And by knowing your favorite sports team, it can keep you updated on the results of its latest games.

Microsoft has designed Cortana so that individual users can customize it to a much greater degree than they can Siri or Google Now. Inside a settings area, users can view and edit the information Cortana knows about them, such as the name of their spouse or their office address.

Cortana, which, like Siri, allows you to assign it either a male or female voice, also knows some pretty cool tricks. Like Google Now, but unlike Siri, Cortana shows what it hears you saying as you speak. This feedback can reassure you that Cortana is listening and understands what you are saying.

As with Siri, you can use Cortana to set reminders and can specify that you want to be reminded to do them at a particular time or when you arrive at a specific place. But with Cortana, you can also ask to be reminded to do things when you interact with particular people.

So you can ask Cortana to remind you to wish your mother a happy anniversary the next time you talk to her. Then when you send a text to your mother or receive a call from her, Cortana will flash a message on the screen reminding you about the anniversary.

With reminders, Cortana tends to be more inquisitive than Siri. Cortana will ask what time you want to be reminded. And if you want to be reminded of something when you go to a store, say Trader Joe’s, it will ask you which Trader Joe’s location you mean.

With Siri, you have to remember to tell it that you want to be reminded at a particular time. And Siri was baffled when I said I wanted to be reminded when I got to Trader Joe’s.

Cortana has another advantage over Siri. Microsoft is allowing app developers to create custom commands for Cortana, something Apple does not allow for Siri. So in the future, you might be able to ask Cortana to start playing the next episode of “Breaking Bad” that you haven’t seen through Netflix. Or you might be to ask Cortana to buy a book for you through Amazon.

By contrast, Siri only recognizes the commands that Apple has plugged into it. Apple hasn’t yet allowed app developers to tap into Siri other than for dictation. Over time, Cortana’s openness could give it the ability to do a lot more things than Siri can.

But for now, Siri is a lot more capable personal assistant than is Cortana. Either will help me find nearby restaurants, but only Siri will make a reservation for me.

If I tell Siri I want to see “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” it will list show times at local theaters and even let me buy tickets. Tell Cortana the same thing and it will simply do a Web search on the movie title.

Cortana also has trouble with sports. It was befuddled when I asked, “Who won last night’s hockey game?” and “How many points did Tony Parker score in his last game?” Siri, by contrast, was able to answer both questions.

There are other things that Cortana can’t yet do that Siri can. It can’t set a timer, for example. Nor can it post updates to Facebook or Twitter, or send an email message.

And Cortana has other little annoyances. One in particular is the way you launch the feature. It’s a two-step process – you press the phone’s wake button and then long-press its search button.

Cortana has the potential to be a very capable personal assistant in the not-to-distant future. But I wouldn’t fire Siri just yet.

Take a close look at your cable bill, Consumer Reports suggests. It’s a confusing onslaught of charges, taxes and add-on fees.

With all of the fine print and opaque pricing, it’s hard not to feel like you’re getting ripped off. In the previous six years that the Consumer Reports National Research Center has conducted customer satisfaction surveys on in-home telecommunication services, providers have consistently rated below average among services they cover.

One positive finding from the survey is that consumers of telecommunications services are becoming more savvy negotiators. Four out of 10 respondents attempted to bargain with their service providers. Among the hagglers, 46 percent said their provider dropped the price by as much as $50 per month, 31 percent got a new promotional rate and 29 percent received additional premium channels. Even among those whose initial promotional rate had expired, 43 percent were able to negotiate a new discount.

Companies have been talking tough about cracking down on serial negotiators, but haggling has no downside. Consumer Reports recommends these ways of doing it right:

• Ask for a better deal. It might sound obvious, but the first step is to call customer service and say your bill is too high. Ask whether you qualify for any promotions, including their best deal for new customers. Stress that you’ve been a loyal subscriber and want to stay – but only if they can do something for you.

• Fight price hikes. Even if your promotion has expired, ask whether you qualify for a new one: 43 percent of Consumer Reports subscribers in that situation negotiated a new discount. If you encounter a helpful representative, note his or her name and, if possible, extension. One Facebook contributor facing a $20-per-month hike recontacted an agent he’d dealt with previously, who was able to cut that to $5.

• Check out the competition. If your requests fall on deaf ears, see what other local providers are offering new subscribers, then ask your current provider to match it. Several Facebook followers said their company was willing to meet or beat a competitor’s price. Note that you might have to sign a contract to get the sweeter deal, so decide whether it’s worth being locked in.

• Threaten to disconnect. Still no luck? Call to say you’re planning to cancel your service because it costs too much. You’ll be directed to a customer retention rep, who might be more willing to work with you.

But be warned: Over the past few months, Consumer Reports has found that telecom providers are more likely to skip the discount and offer a small perk, such as faster Internet speed or a three-month freebie on a premium channel.

If you’ve called a number of times in the past, you might not get concessions. One Facebook respondent said his provider offered nothing but thanks for his previous business and the comment, “Sorry you will be leaving.”

• Be ready to walk. At some point, you might have to switch if you can’t get what you want. Before you move to another company, check its website for the best deal and request a written quote that includes all equipment charges, taxes and fees. Find out how long the promotional rate applies and what the bill will be after it expires.

Once you put in the disconnect order, you might find that your former provider wants you back. One Facebook poster said his company offered him a better deal when he arrived to turn in his equipment, and another got a call offering the deal she wanted a day after she terminated her service.

Have you factored funeral costs into your retirement budget?

Revenue for the funeral home and crematory industry is expected to top $16 billion in 2014, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

The trade group makes estimates every few years of the median price of a funeral. In 2012, that number topped $7,000, up from $6,560 in 2009. Throw in a cemetery vault for burial and the number climbs by another $1,300 or so. Buy some flowers, fly in relatives for a memorial service, or host a post-funeral reception, and pretty soon we’re into five figures.

And while consumers are gravitating to cremation – typically a lower-cost alternative to traditional burials – there are plenty of new opportunities for loved ones to part with cash when dealing with their dearly departed. From pricey urns to 24/7 grief hotlines, funeral providers are rolling out a slew of options.

“It’s often the worst day of (survivors’) lives, and they haven’t done any shopping around,” said Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance. “It’s the perfect consumer transaction for abuse to occur. Not all funeral homes are bad guys, but even absent any abuse, the consumer is automatically at a disadvantage because they are emotionally compromised and unaware about what is legal and what is not.”

Funeral expectations should be factored into wider financial and estate planning, argues George Clarke, a former funeral director and author of “Nobody Wants to Talk About It: An Enlightening Guide to Planning a Funeral or Other Tribute.”

“Aside from the theological aspect, funerals are about helping survivors begin the grieving process, so it should be a family discussion about the proper shape and form a funeral should take,” he said.

Once you’ve got your loved ones’ attention, experts said, consider these tips for avoiding added stress.

• Tackle the biggies: Cremation followed by scattering ashes or keeping them in an urn in lieu of a pricey casket, burial and headstone can save thousands of dollars. That’s partly why the U.S. cremation rate has grown from 26 percent in 2000 to about 44 percent today, the association says. But cremation can be a big step if you haven’t discussed it in advance, so start talking.

• Shop around while you can: The funeral industry is still highly fragmented, but two of the biggest chains – Service Corp. International and Stewart Enterprises – merged last year and now account for about 15 percent of the market. Consumer advocates protested the merger, and the Federal Trade Commission required SCI, also known as Dignity Memorial Network, to divest properties in certain markets because of anti-competitive concerns.

The FTC enforces some consumer protections, including the right to buy goods and services separately, so you can buy a cheaper casket from a discounter, for example, and use it at a local funeral home. Consumers also are entitled to an itemized price list, though Slocum says base costs are often inflated and vague.

• Plan, don’t pay: Unless you are spending down assets in anticipation of transitioning to Medicaid, it probably doesn’t make much sense to prepay for a funeral, Slocum said. While some funeral homes offer the ability to transfer a prepaid funeral to another location if the need arises, it can be a hassle, he said.

If you do decide to prepay, approach the contract with the same diligence as other big financial transactions, Clarke said.

• “Budget” is not a dirty word: Slocum says we make money mistakes around funerals because we don’t have a lot of practice.

“Most people will arrange a funeral one time in their lives, maybe two. Compare that to buying cars or finding a good auto mechanic. We all joke about not falling for the car dealer undercoating, but we don’t treat funerals that way,” Slocum said.

Interest rates on savings accounts have been close to zero for a while. But if you’ve been building an emergency cash fund or got money as part of a graduation gift this spring, you need to put those dollars somewhere.

What’s your best option?

You’ll likely be disappointed if you head to the branch of a major bank. At these institutions, savings accounts tend to pay a meager 0.01 percent to 0.15 percent in annual interest.

Low interest rates were one of the top reasons that customers switched banks during the past year, according to the latest banking satisfaction study by J.D. Power.

For a better deal, try the following:

• Shop around. A national bank is not the only place to park your cash.

“You’ve got to shop around for the highest yields,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com, which keeps tabs on banking trends.

You can start your search with sites such as bankrate.com, bestcashcow.com, nerdwallet.com and gobankingrates.com, which compile the latest offers from banks and credit unions.

Credit unions are not-for-profit organizations and, as a result, may pay slightly higher interest rates than banks do.

According to a quarterly report by SNL Financial, which tracks the financial services industry, the average rate for a traditional savings account was 0.13 percent nationally at credit unions and banks as of the end of March.

But on other savings products, credit unions had the edge.

For example, on money market accounts, which tend to have higher minimum balance requirements than traditional savings accounts, credit unions paid 0.16 percent; banks only 0.12 percent.

You have to qualify to join a credit union, which may be based on where you work, whether someone in your family is a member or where you live, among other things. For details, go to mycreditunion.gov.

• Bank online. If you’re willing to bank online, you may find even better deals.

Today, online savings accounts pay as much as 0.95 percent in annual interest. What’s more, some of the accounts have low- or no-minimum balance requirements. Many do not charge monthly fees. (You can find these offers using the websites mentioned earlier.)

For even bigger payouts, consider a rewards checking account. Annual rates go as high as 2.5 percent to 3 percent, up to a certain balance (usually $25,000 or less).

But there’s a catch: To get the big yields, you have to meet specific terms, such as making 10 or more debit card transactions each month and receiving statements electronically.

Fail to meet the terms, and the interest rate drops to a fraction of a point.

Said McBride: “You have to be a savvy saver.”

Some community banks and credit unions participate in a nationwide program for rewards checking called Kasasa. To find them, go to kasasa.com.

• Go with Uncle Sam. Finally, you may earn a better rate if you can commit your cash, say, for a year or more. In that case, consider a Series I saving bond offered by the U.S. Treasury. The bond’s yield is made up of two parts: a fixed rate that remains unchanged for the life of the bond, and a variable rate that is adjusted twice a year with inflation.

For bonds bought through Oct. 31, the combined rate is 1.94 percent. If interest rates eventually start to rise, the I-bond’s yield could also go higher. (Likewise, if rates fall further, the yield could drop.)

You can buy the bonds in any amount from $25 to $10,000 per year. You can cash in the bonds after one year, but if you redeem before five years, you lose the last three months of interest. To purchase, go to treasurydirect.gov.

Not long ago, I focused one of my weekly chats on eldercare.

Joining me was Tim Prosch, author of “The Other Talk: A Guide to Talking with Your Adult Children About the Rest of Your Life.”

Here’s an edited transcript of that conversation.

Q: When is it time to move to a retirement home?

Prosch: The time to consider moving to a retirement home is when you obviously are no longer able to handle your day-to-day activities, but it’s important to think about more than just yourself. This really needs to be a family discussion. As you consider the retirement home decision, you should also look at your alternatives such as living at home with in-home care, living with your kids, living with some friends, and then finalize your decision when you sit down to have the other talk.

Singletary: Seniors often take a stand that they “won’t” do one thing or another when it comes to their living situation. But your decision can impact a lot of people, especially family who will be helping to take care of you.

Q: What are the pros and cons of living with your adult children as you get older?

Prosch: As I learned with my own family growing up with my great-grandparents in the same home, there are many benefits to sharing your lives together. But there are also responsibilities and potential for conflict. So I suggest before you make this move that you sit down and ask some very practical questions. How will the finances work? What are the guidelines for using different parts of the house? Who is responsible for food, for housekeeping? What responsibilities do the grandparents have for the kids? How do you and your spouse maintain a healthy marital relationship? There are many things to consider, but it can work and be a very fulfilling experience.

Q: How much should you let your adult children know about your investments and finances?

Prosch: The fact is your financial situation [may] end up in your kids’ lap eventually, so it’s incumbent upon you to sit down now and take them through your financial situation and discuss how you want to manage it from now until the end. I would even encourage you to introduce them now to your financial advisers so they know who to talk to when it’s time for them to begin to take over that responsibility.

Singletary: Your adult kids don’t have to be “involved” in investments or choosing what you invest in or how you save. But you should, as you get older, think about sharing what you have that can be used to take care of you should you need to pay for long-term care.

Q: While the importance of having “the other talk” is clear to me, what would you suggest are the most important specific “outcomes to achieve”? I would imagine, for example, that the first talk would just lay the foundation for having a series of different talks about specifics such as medical directives, long-term care, etc. Prosch: There is a lot to cover and you don’t want to overwhelm your kids initially. Begin to establish the partnership between your kids and yourself. I hear many aging parents tell me “I don’t want to do this because I’m losing control.” The point of the “other talk” concept is that you are not losing control; you’re sharing control.

The talk is not a one-time event. It is something you should do every year because things change. Your health changes, your finances change, your kids’ jobs change and your opinions expressed in that first talk may change. So it’s important that you maintain the dialogue by sitting down annually and going through the talk.”

Q: When should you start having the other talk with your adult children?

Prosch: I almost learned this the hard way when my wife and I took a trip to Italy. We ended up renting a sailboat. A boom slammed into me from the back, which is the last thing I remember. When I came to in the hospital I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak, but I could think, and I thought, “My God, I’ll never have the other talk with my daughter.”

Don’t wait, have the other talk now.

Facebook’s new ad program is targeting ads based on the non-Facebook websites users visit and apps they use. Here’s how users can opt out of the program:

• Opt-out cookie: Users can visit www.aboutads.info/choices, which is a site run by a digital advertising industry trade group, to opt out of receiving targeted ads from a wide range of ad networks, including Facebook.

But they’ll have to go through the same process, which is built around an opt-out cookie on their computers, for each browser on each computer they use. And they’ll have to remember to repeat the process if they ever delete all their cookies.

What’s more, the opt-out cookie doesn’t block advertisers from continuing to track users’ online movements.

• App block: To block ads based on app usage, users will have to go to the settings areas of their smartphones or tablets. On iPhones and iPads devices, they’ll have to go to the advertising section of the privacy area of the settings app and turn on the option to “limit ad tracking.”

On Android devices, they’ll have to go to the ads area of the Google settings app (not the main Android settings app) and tap on the “opt out of interest-based ads” setting.

• Plug-in power: At least on your computer, a potentially more effective way to block Facebook’s tracking and targeting is through ad-blocking plug-ins such as Adblock Plus and Privacy Badger, which are both available for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

With Adblock Plus, users will have to specifically turn on the feature to block social media tracking, which they can do through the plug-in’s website at adblockplus.org/en/features#socialmedia. Privacy Badger has the option turned on by default.

• Anonymize yourself: The Tor browser – available at www.torproject.org – not only blocks ad tracking but anonymizes users by routing their traffic through a series of computer relays, obscuring their Internet address and geographic location. Unfortunately, all that relaying can slow browsing considerably.

The topic of life insurance doesn’t have much going for it. First, it’s about insurance, which many people find boring and complicated. Second, it can involve paying money for something you may never use.

And it’s about death.

Those are difficult hurdles and probably among reasons why many surveys show Americans are vastly underinsured when it comes to life insurance, which might better be called “income insurance” because its primary purpose is to replace income from a family breadwinner.

“Selling life insurance is an uphill battle,” said Byron Udell, CEO of online life insurance broker AccuQuote.com. “It’s not a product that’s fun to buy.”

But life insurance should be a fundamental part of financial planning for those who have others relying on their income.

Yet statistics show ownership of individual life insurance policies is at the lowest level in 50 years, with only 44 percent of households owning them, according to the insurance industry group LIMRA. And 86 percent of people say they haven’t bought life insurance because it’s too expensive, yet they overestimate its cost by more than two times, the group found.

A national survey commissioned by New York Life Insurance Co. recently found that Americans’ gap in protection worsened considerably since the Great Recession, amounting to a $320,000 shortfall, up from about $289,000 in 2008. Americans say they want enough life insurance, on average, to cover expenses for at least 14 years after the loss of a breadwinner. But they have only three years of protection in place.

“It’s no surprise that Americans are underinsured. What did surprise us was the magnitude of the gap and the fact that it has grown so dramatically since 2008,” Chris Blunt, co-president of the Insurance and Agency Group of New York Life, said in releasing the results.

Also concerning is what the survey found about Americans’ perception of what life insurance is for. A majority said the top reason for buying it was to cover funeral expenses, but paycheck replacement is far more important.

The good news for consumers is, the basics of life insurance continue to apply. “The beauty of life insurance is that it’s not a fast-moving industry,” said Amy Danise, editorial director for Insure.com. “Unlike health insurance, where what you know one month is wrong the next month, life insurance advice is consistent.”

Here is some of that advice: Do you need it?
The overly simple rule is that single people don’t need life insurance, married people might and parents of school-age children do. The specific answer is easy to determine. Ask yourself, “Would anybody be hurt financially if I died and wasn’t bringing home money anymore?” If yes, you need life insurance.

The cash beneficiaries get, known as the death benefit, replaces your income and can help your family meet financial needs, such as living expenses, including the mortgage or rent and health insurance, as well as kids’ college funding, according to the Insurance Information Institute. There is no federal income tax on life insurance benefits. How much?
Numbers get huge in a hurry when talking about coverage amounts – $500,000 or $1 million might seem ludicrous but aren’t for many people.

To get your head around such large dollar amounts, ask yourself a few questions, Udell said. For example, if you make $80,000 and are looking at $500,000 of life insurance, that’s about six years’ worth of replaced gross income. “When you die, and you will die, are you planning to be dead more than six years?” Udell asks.

Or, “If I wrote you a check for $500,000 right now, would you agree to work for the rest of your life for no pay?” Most people wouldn’t, he said. Or, if you were out jogging and got hit by a reckless beer truck driver and died, how much should your family sue the beer company for: $500,000 or millions of dollars?

“I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding about what the economic value of a human life really is,” Udell said.

Rules of thumb say you should buy from five to 20 times your income, which is such a wide range as to be useless – and such simple calculations are panned by experts.

Brokers and online calculators can help determine how much you need, including ones at LifeHappens.org, Accuquote.com, and Bankrate.com. Just realize most insurance professionals and online calculators have a financial interest in selling you more insurance, not less. And no, the amount of life protection you get through your employer is not enough. Rates
The good news is that simple term insurance – insuring your life over a specific time for a specific amount of money – is relatively inexpensive. A 40-year-old male nonsmoker in a good health can get $500,000 worth of coverage for as low as $350 a year, Udell said, adding that rates, on average, haven’t changed much in the past decade. But during the early 1990s, that same coverage cost about $1,000 per year.

“People are usually pleasantly surprised at how inexpensive it is,” Udell said. Term or perm?
Term life is the easiest type to understand. For example, 20-year level term means you will pay the same premium for 20 years in exchange for a specified payout if you die within that period. If you don’t die in that time window, your beneficiaries get nothing. But maybe that’s OK because after that time, your children will be grown and have their own incomes. And you’re confident that your retirement nest egg will be big enough to support your spouse.

Permanent life insurance, such as universal life or variable universal life that have investment components, can be much more complicated and much more expensive. But they can make financial sense. Make sure you thoroughly understand what you’re buying, Danise said.

A new type of policy that’s gaining traction allows you to tap your life insurance death benefit before you die as long as it’s for long-term care expenses, Udell said. “And they’re not that much more expensive,” he said.

For more information on life insurance types, seek out a broker, either online or in person, and read up at such websites as InsureUOnline.org, III.org and LifeHappens.org.

If you just want life insurance to protect from financial disaster, get term life. You can always get a different life policy later, assuming you’re still in decent health, and can cancel the current one. In the meantime, you’ll be covered. Shop around
As with other types of insurance, premiums can vary widely, so get multiple quotes or use a broker. But don’t let indecision delay getting the insurance you need. “Dying without coverage is a lot bigger problem than paying too much,” Udell said. Don’t keep it a secret
Tell beneficiaries that your policy exists, Danise said. “We receive tons of questions every year from people whose relatives passed away and mentioned having life insurance but didn’t leave any information,” she said. “Imagine paying for life insurance for decades and decades and having that money go down the drain because your beneficiaries can’t make the claim.”

Ninety percent of consumers say that they read online user reviews before they make buying decisions, and why not? What could be more helpful than the opinion of millions of Americans about the products and services they’ve tried?

But what sounds great in theory seems a lot less valuable in reality, Consumer Reports warns. That’s because the trustworthiness of user reviews is increasingly being called into question.

Good reviews can boost sales and profits; negative ones can do just the opposite.

A one-star increase in user ratings on Yelp, for example, can boost revenues by 5 to 9 percent for a restaurant, according to a 2011 Harvard Business Review study. A similar jump on Travelocity and TripAdvisor can push a hotel’s room rates up 11 percent, Cornell University researchers say.

That gives unscrupulous advertisers, businesses and reviewers all the financial motive they need to game the system. Those fabrications “are the 21st century’s version of false advertising,” says Eric Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general.

Given that reality, how can you wisely tap this often-useful information? Consumer Reports offers this advice:

• Be skeptical. You don’t know whether the strangers who write the reviews have actually used the product and are telling the truth or whether they’re shills paid $1 to $10 per review, like those uncovered in an investigation last year by Schneiderman’s office. It snared 19 companies that pumped out thousands of fake consumer reviews on such websites as Yelp, Google+ Local, Yahoo Local, CitySearch and InsiderPages.com.

• Don’t try to guess which reviews are true. Some well-intentioned consumer advice recommends that you try to be a truth detective and scrutinize reviews for signs of fakery.

But when Cornell researchers asked undergraduates to determine which of the 800 user reviews for 20 Chicago hotels were phony and which were real, the students showed no ability to do so.

One reason: People suffer from a “truth bias” that leads them to trust what they read – until they discover evidence to the contrary.

• Don’t rely on reviewer reviews. Publishers of user reviews have come up with a variety of safeguards to prevent bogus write-ups. But Consumer Reports found them to be a mixed bag.

When Nitin Jindal and Bing Liu of the University of Illinois in Chicago analyzed 5.8 million user reviews of electronics, books, music and DVDs on Amazon.com, for example, they noticed something unusual. Many of them were from “trusted reviewers” who had written hundreds or thousands of them. The researchers concluded that such an output was “unlikely for an ordinary consumer.”

• Check the criteria. Root around sites with user reviews to find out exactly how the publishers themselves manipulate, filter and use them.

OpenTable, for example, says that its reviews must “pass our standards and guidelines for publication.” The site also says that the user reviews aim to benefit diners “as well as our restaurant partners.” The partners are 31,000 restaurants around the U.S. that pay $190 million in fees for the review and booking services, and get to nominate a “featured review” for placement at the top of OpenTable’s ratings and review tab.

• Look for verified standards. To get eBay’s Top Rated Plus seal, which pushes its best merchants to the top of its rankings, sellers must maintain a good track record with known users. They also must have a significant volume of sales and adhere to pro-consumer standards, including a 14-day money-back return policy and same-day or one-business-day shipping.

• Rely most on objective evaluations. Your best sources of information are those based on scientifically sampled surveys, such as those produced by the nonprofit Consumers’ Checkbook, which rates local service companies in seven U.S. metropolitan areas; comparative product testing, such as that done by Consumer Reports; and other objective measures, as you would find with ratings from the Better Business Bureau.

As a teenager, there was nothing Bonnie Michlin loved more than a shopping trip to the Summit Park Mall in Wheatfield.

As an adult mom, she still goes to malls regularly, but there are plenty of other retail options vying for her affection.

“It used to be that the mall was, like, the place to go,” she said. “But now it’s like there are so many different places that offer so many different things.”

As shopping habits change, some predict that traditional, enclosed malls are doomed to go the way of the leg warmer. So malls are fighting back.

In Western New York and across the country, they are adapting strategies to stay relevant, some emphasizing high-end stores and others adopting an atmosphere that is almost like a community center.

The threats are lurking. While Internet shopping is taking its toll on all brick-and-mortar stores, malls face additional challenges, like competition from stand-alone discount stores attractive to struggling middle-class shoppers and the loss of anchor stores able to draw the kind of consumer traffic on which other tenants depend.

“Mall shopping has been down and particularly so in these little malls with two and three anchors that are not special,” said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail consulting and investment banking firm in New York City.

The national mall occupancy rate average is a healthy 91.9 percent, well above the 65 percent benchmark for mall distress. And occupancy rates at mid-tier malls Boulevard Mall in Amherst, McKinley Mall in Hamburg and Eastern Hills Mall in Clarence stand at or near a stellar 100 percent. The same goes for Walden Galleria.

But that doesn’t mean they are beyond harm’s reach and can stand pat, experts said.

Lavish upscale malls offering designer names and luxurious experiences are doing well catering to society’s most affluent consumers, who have thrived since the recession. Outlet malls, which offer brand names to cost-conscious consumers, are booming as well, though the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls is facing increased competition from the new Outlet Collection at Niagara that recently opened across the Canadian border.

But mid-range malls, especially those anchored by beleaguered department stores Sears and J.C. Penney, are the most vulnerable. With the middle class squeezed by stagnant wages and a weak job market, shoppers are turning away from traditional mall anchor stores in search of better deals and deeper inventories at stand-alone stores such as Walmart, Target, TJ Maxx and Kohl’s.

A rise in online shopping and high unemployment rates among teens are drawing key demographics away from the mall as well, hurting teen-serving mall staples such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Aeropostale and American Eagle – which together have closed hundreds of stores and are expected to close hundreds more over the next few years. Entertainment venues
Across the country, malls are experimenting with new ways of generating the foot traffic that anchor stores used to create.

One way they’re doing it is by re-imagining their vast indoor spaces as mixed-use facilities where, as is Walden Galleria’s motto, consumers can “Eat. Play. Shop.”

Entertainment, long a part of the mall mix, is becoming an increasingly important factor.

Walden, McKinley and Eastern Hills each have movie theaters, which have been commonplace at malls since the beginning.

But Eastern Hills Mall has ramped up its entertainment offerings with an indoor ball field and batting cage complex called Sports Performance Park, a Dave & Buster’s restaurant arcade and is planning an outdoor ice rink.

Boulevard Mall’s coin-operated rides and food court carousel are very popular, as are the celebrity appearances, fashion shows and holiday events it hosts. Walden Galleria recently opened Pole Position Raceway, a giant indoor electric go-kart track, has interactive video games outside its Microsoft Store and is launching a live music series this summer.

Malls across the country are even experimenting with art galleries, performance spaces and rotating museum exhibits, which shoppers here could also eventually see.

Restaurants, once relegated to the food court, are becoming a more important draw.

“The concept is about bringing everything to one destination,” said Matthew Bader, general manager at Walden Galleria. “It’s about giving people a reason to come in and shop, and stay longer once they’re here.”

As part of its $60 million renovation five years ago, Walden Galleria added “restaurant row,” an exterior wing of restaurants, many of which cannot be found elsewhere in the local market. Eastern Hills Mall added a popular Duff’s Famous Wings franchise. Boulevard Mall added Bonefish Grill years ago and is looking for another restaurant to fill a space vacated by Honey’s. Community centers
Malls are also offering more community-oriented events and services, in an attempt to turn themselves into neighborhood hubs.

“We are a local community center and we’ve always tried to play to those strengths,” said Betsey Bonvissuto, the Amherst mall’s marketing manager. “We have tried to be more than a retail venue. We’re a destination for the local community.”

Boulevard Mall’s children’s play center in the food court is a huge draws for families, especially during the long winter months. Its Boulevard Buddies children’s programming has hundreds of members and its annual Breakfast with Santa is wildly popular.

Eastern Hills Mall, which was barely surviving five years ago, has bounced back with its new mix. The mall hosts a Department of Motor Vehicles, an Erie County SPCA and a blood donation center and serves as an NFTA-Metro Park & Ride location. It also houses the WBBZ television studio.

“My plan all along has been to make Eastern Hills something a little different,” said Russell Fulton, the mall’s general manager. “I don’t try to compete with a super-regional shopping center like Walden. Instead I try to complement it, be something different, give shoppers another choice.”

McKinley Mall in Blasdell is home to the popular Tabby Town cat adoption center and the Red Dragon School of Martial Arts.

Each of the malls also has free Wi-Fi as well as a full calendar of family-oriented programming – free children’s activities, nonprofit fundraisers, animal adoption events – that get shoppers through the doors. New convenience
Shopping centers are also changing up their retail offerings.

Boulevard Mall recently added a new exterior entrance to highlight nontraditional anchor and popular clothing retailer H&M. Both Walden Galleria and McKinley Mall have Best Buy locations, a big box retailer that is usually found in off-the-mall properties. Just five percent of Best Buy locations are housed within malls. Most are in strip malls, which are gaining in popularity.

“People would rather drive up in their cars, run into a store and drive away,” Davidowitz said.

McKinley Mall has added five additional entry points along the front of its building which gives it a more convenient, strip-mall-type format. One of those entrances opens onto Bed, Bath and Beyond, another traditionally off-the-mall format store it has lured inside.

“It’s not about just getting retailers in, it’s about getting the right mix,” said Jeff Ohle, general manager at McKinley Mall.

email: schristmann@buffnews.com

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers plans a rally from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. today in Cheektowaga to support IAMAW members who have been on strike at Calspan Corp. since May 13.

The rally will take place outside Calspan’s facility on Genesee Street, across from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. A total of 24 workers, who belong to IAMAW Lodge 1180, are on strike at that location as well as at a facility at the Niagara Falls International Airport.

The striking workers on June 30 voted down the company’s latest contract offer.

More than $51.4 million worth of commercial real estate changed hands during the past two months in Erie County, led by the former Gaymar Industries building in Orchard Park, a television station, a retail plaza in Cheektowaga, a Sheridan Drive auto facility and a former Southtowns strip plaza.

The Erie County Clerk’s Office recorded 72 commercial transactions valued at $200,000 or more in May and June, as buyers and sellers continued a frenzied pace of activity. Both months tallied an average deal value of nearly $700,000, while the median or midpoint deal was $495,000 in May and $461,250 in June.

In June alone, 39 deals were worth $28.55 million. Among the highlights:

• E.W. Scripps Co., which bought WKBW-TV and a Detroit station from Granite Broadcasting Corp. for $110 million last month, bought the local station’s real estate, including its main building at 169 Church St., for $1.725 million and a separate property at 8909 Center St. in Colden for $1.365 million. Scripps Media Inc. made the purchases from Queen City Broadcasting of New York Inc.

• CCS Oncology, through 3021-3041 Orchard Park Road LLC, paid $2.4 million to buy a 4.6-acre property at that address, across the street from Southtowns Radiology’s new Orchard Park office at 3050 Orchard Park Road. The property includes a 44,596-square-foot single-story strip plaza, built in 1972, and was acquired from Robert G. Friedman’s Orchard Park Associates of New York City. Plans call for a new CCS Oncology location, adding to existing offices in Williamsville, Kenmore, Niagara Falls, Lockport, Hamburg and West Seneca.

• Medical device maker Stryker Corp., which acquired Orchard Park-based Gaymar Industries in 2010, sold the facility at 10 Centre Drive in Orchard Park to A-Titan Instruments, a precision dental equipment maker based in Hamburg, for $2.1 million. The property, located just off Route 20A in the Quaker Industrial Park, includes a 115,000-square-foot facility.

A-Titan, which is currently in 15,000 square feet of space, will occupy half of the building, while Pyramid Brokerage Co. of Buffalo will seek to find tenants for the rest, according to Pyramid’s Richard Schechter, who brokered the deal with colleague David Seider. A-Titan employs 30 to 35 workers now but hopes to increase its employment by 20 percent to 25 percent in the next few years, Schechter said.

• Anthony and Nicholas Cutaia’s Rane Property Management, acting through Fairways at Lancaster LLC, paid a combined $1.85 million to buy 5354 and 5360 Genesee St. in Lancaster from the Surowick family. The properties include the Harris Hill Golf Center Restaurant and Ice Cream – a 1,700-square-foot restaurant with an 18-hole miniature golf course – and an adjacent 37,520-square-foot Class B office building, constructed in 1997 on five acres. The entire property is at the front of the nine-hole Harris Hill golf course and driving range.

• AirSep Corp., a maker of air separation equipment and technology for commercial and medical uses, sold its headquarters facility at 401 Creekside Drive in Amherst to 401 Creekside Drive LLC for $1.6 million. The buyer is registered to Ark Wholesale LLC, an Amherst-based retailer of licensed sports apparel and novelty items. AirSep was acquired recently by Chart Industries.

• Following the closing of Hopevale Inc. and the merger of the Hopevale School District into the Randolph Academy Union Free School District, the Hopevale School at 3780 Howard Road in Hamburg was acquired for $1.5 million by Randolph Academy, which plans to reuse the campus. Hopevale provided residential treatment, foster care and family programming, and the school served 80 day students from the Buffalo area, but Hopevale’s closing jeopardized those services, along with 50 jobs. The consolidation, which saved $1.1 million from combined operations, required state legislation.

For a look at all the commercial real estate deals over $200,000, go online to BN DataBuff at buffalonews.com.

email: jepstein@buffnews.com

Hires/Promotions/Honors
Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center welcomed Dr. Vikram Reddy Vattipally to its team of surgeons. Vattipally recently completed his fellowship at Penn State University’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in advanced laparoscopic/bariatric surgery. A graduate of Osmania Medical College in Hyderabad, India, he completed surgical residencies in the United States, United Kingdom and India. He is certified in general surgery by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, U.K., and NTR University of Health Sciences, Andhra Pradesh, India.

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Roswell Park Alliance Foundation appointed Christopher J. Lee, Russell D’Alba and James D. Newman to its board. Lee is the managing partner for WNY Holding LLC Real Estate Development in Amherst. D’Alba is the founder, president and managing director of Paramax Corp. Newman is the president of Noco Inc.

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The newly formed Rotary Club of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus elected John DePaolo to its board of directors. DePaolo, special counsel at the Bouvier Partnership, has been involved with Rotary International for 14 years.

Company Connections

Trellis Marketing produced a series of television commercials for Steenberg Law Firm. Also, Trellis was retained to create an advertising campaign for Local House Pro. The campaign comes with the launch of LocalHousePro.com, a website that connects contractors and homeowners for a variety of home-based projects.

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Astronics Corp. was selected to provide the primary power distribution system for the Daher-Socata TBM 900 aircraft.

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Caldron’s 3 Dog Country Cafe will hold a grand opening from 5:30 to 7 p.m. today at 8865 Sheridan Drive in Clarence. The business features baked goods, paninis and pizzas, a coffee bar with saddle seats, and a country boutique featuring clothing, boots and body products. Patents
Title: Eddy current damper and method

No.: 8,753,069

Inventor: Maier, Martin D. (Allegany)

Assignee: Dresser-Rand (Olean)

Date issued: June 17, 2014

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