Everyone knows that inkjet cartridges are ridiculously overpriced, but now we know that HP has been shrinking HP cartridges dramatically each year since 2010 thanks to the research by the HP Ink Cartridges blog.

Yep, those ink guys were becoming suspicious and decided to do a little research.

This blogger (adminky) removed the top of the cartridge with a handsaw and as you can see from the picture below the hydrophobic sponge fills the cartridge totally, just as anyone would have expected. He then took another HP 350, the same cartridge but this time the manufacturers date was 2012 on the cartridge, and removed the top in the same way as before and could not believe what he was looking at. The hydrophobic sponge inside the 2012 cartridge was only half the size!!

Next, them boys began opening other models of ink only the find the same sort of results. Despite smaller sponges, I doubt prices have gone down.

No wonder it seems like printing is so darn expensive to do from home. BECAUSE IT IS! Curse you HP. Curse you.

Is it fair to diss HP just because the sponge is smaller? I don’t fully understand the inner workings of a cartridge manufacturing plant. To me, it would be more interesting to test how many pages print from each cartridge. I’m looking forward to future studies.

Yesterday, my wife, Melissa, visited Barnes & Noble to pick up some training books as she prepares herself to run a marathon in Disney World. Like many families, we often struggle with eating healthy consistently and diet will obviously play an essential role in Melissa’s training.

While sifting through books, she came across an information-packed book concerning the nutritional values of numerous restaurants, fast food chains, flavored drinks, frozen foods and more. The book, Eat This, Not That! 2012, basically helps you choose alternatives for what you already eat.

If you visit McDonalds every day for breakfast, the book offers healthier choices on THAT menu. If you eat at Olive Garden two or three times a week like me, and have no intention of stopping, then the book offers healthier alternatives. It also gives tips how to eat better on food-centric holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. Each two page section has a high-calorie, fat trap food on the right, and a healthier alternative on the left.

There are some surprises in the book too. For instance, each restaurant’s menu is given a rating based on overall choices. McDonald’s menu is rated a B+ compared to Olive Garden’s D. I was stunned how many fast food restaurants offer decent alternative food choices. Sure, it’s probably better to eliminate fast food restaurants altogether, but it seems those places are not any worse than dine-ins. Eating healthy is more about educating yourself to make better choices.

A few things in this book that surprised me.

1. A Carl’s Jr Guacamole Turkey Burger is 490 calores compares to Ruby Tuesday’s Avocado Turkey Burger of 886 calories. By switching places to eat an identical food item, you can save 396 calories and 33g of fat.

2. Do you like coffee flavored ice cream? You’re better off with Edy’s than Starbucks. Starbuck’s coffee flavored ice cream has 70 more calories per 1/2 cup. Simply switching brands could be considered dieting.

3. Sonic’s tots is fast food’s best bet for a potato side. A small order has 100 less calories than a small fries from McDonalds.

I found this book greatly fascinating and would love to hear what you think about it. I’m learning more each reading session and if the book helps my waistline even a tad bit, the $15 is well worth it.

A children’s book about the election process is about to become physical reality thanks to Kickstarter, the wildly successful fundraising website.

The author, Nick Dazé studied English at USC. He began writing about Roger Nix when he was still in college. The idea came to him in the summer, while watching coverage of the 2004 US presidential election. He’s been whittling away at the story ever since.

At the time of this posting, Nick was seeking $30,000 for the project and had already achieved $32,599. Way to go!

What’s the Story About?

Roger Nix is an ordinary boy: he loves kindergarten, playing make-believe, and hanging out with his imaginary friends (a baby donkey named Jack and a baby elephant named Abe). But when he learns about the plans of Old Man Plee, a perennial presidential candidate, to shut down schools and send kids to work in factories as an austerity measure; Roger decides to run against Old Man Plee as a defender of kid-ness. Of course Abe and Jack are there to help him every step of the way.

Roger Nix, President at Six is a fable about elections. Its primary goal is to get young children thinking and talking about elections. But the real message is to encourage kids to dream big and to do what they think is right.

I’ve been waiting a long time for The Dark Knight Rises trailer to finally arrive. Obviously, this is going to be an amazing summer for blockbuster movies, but Christopher Nolan’s epic conclusion is the one I’ve been most anticipating. The Avengers is a close second though.

The trailer focuses on Baine’s destruction of Gotham City and his torturing of Bruce Wayne. We finally get some glimpses of Anne Hathaway’s catwoman and a souped up Batmobile. I actually expected more from the trailer, but it was nevertheless captivating since I feel like Nolan is controlling how much is revealed. Most notably, the trailer supports Cracked.com’s “The Prestige” theory that Bruce Wayne will die.

The official release date for the The Dark Knight Rises, which concludes the Dark Knight series, is July 20, 2012.

This is the best list of tips for photographers I’ve ever seen. This list of tips, advice, rules and just things to know about photography are from Eric Kim, a street photographer who also holds photography workshop classes.

1. Just because someone has an expensive camera doesn’t mean that they’re a good photographer.
2. Always shoot in RAW. Always.
3. Prime lenses help you learn to be a better photographer.
4. Photo editing is an art in itself
5. The rule of thirds works 99% of the time.
6. Macro photography isn’t for everybody.
7. UV filters work just as well as lens caps.
8. Go outside & shoot photos rather than spending hours a day on photography forums.
9. Capture the beauty in the mundane and you have a winning photograph.
10. Film isn’t better than digital.
11. Digital isn’t better than film.
12. There is no “magic” camera or lens.
13. Better lenses don’t give you better photos.
14. Spend less time looking at other people’s work and more time shooting your own.
15. Don’t take your DSLR to parties.
16. Girls dig photographers.
17. Making your photos b/w doesn’t automatically make them “artsy”
18. People will always discredit your work if you tell them you “photoshop” your images. Rather, tell them that you process them in the “digital darkroom”.
19. You don’t need to take a photo of everything.
20. Have at least 2 backups of all your images. Like they say in war, two is one, one is none.
21. Ditch the neck strap and get a handstrap.
22. Get closer when taking your photos, they often turn out better.
23. Be a part of a scene while taking a photo; not a voyeur.
24. Taking a photo crouched often make your photos look more interesting.
25. Worry less about technical aspects and focus more on compositional aspects of photography.
26. Tape up any logos on your camera with black gaffers tape- it brings a lot less attention to you.
27. Always underexpose by 2/3rds of a stop when shooting in broad daylight.
28. The more photos you take, the better you get.
29. Don’t be afraid to take several photos of the same scene at different exposures, angles, or apertures.
30. Only show your best photos.
31. A point-and-shoot is still a camera.
32. Join an online photography forum.
33. Critique the works of others.
34. Think before you shoot.
35. A good photo shouldn’t require explanation (although background information often adds to an image). *
36. Alcohol and photography do not mix well.
37. Draw inspiration from other photographers but never worship them.
38. Grain is beautiful.
39. Ditch the photo backpack and get a messenger bag. It makes getting your lenses and camera a whole lot easier.
40. Simplicity is key.
41. The definition of photography is: “painting with light.” Use light in your favor.
42. Find your style of photography and stick with it.
43. Having a second monitor is the best thing ever for photo processing.
44. Silver EFEX pro is the best b/w converter.
45. Carry your camera with you everywhere. Everywhere.
46. Never let photography get in the way of enjoying life.
47. Don’t pamper your camera. Use and abuse it.
48. Take straight photos.
49. Shoot with confidence.
50. Photography and juxtaposition are best friends.
51. Print out your photos big. They will make you happy.
52. Give your photos to friends.
53. Give them to strangers.
54. Don’t forget to frame them.
55. Costco prints are cheap and look great.
56. Go out and take photos with (a) friend(s).
57. Join a photo club or start one for yourself.
58. Photos make great presents.
59. Taking photos of strangers is thrilling.
60. Candid>Posed.
61. Natural light is the best light.
62. 35mm (on full frame) is the best “walk-around” focal length.
63. Don’t be afraid to bump up your ISO when necessary.
64. You don’t need to always bring a tripod with you everywhere you go (hell, I don’t even own one).
65. It is always better to underexpose than overexpose.
66. Shooting photos of homeless people in an attempt to be “artsy” is exploitation.
67. You will find the best photo opportunities in the least likely situations.
68. Photos are always more interesting with the human element included.
69. You can’t “photoshop” bad images into good ones.
70. Nowadays everybody is a photographer.
71. You don’t need to fly to Paris to get good photos; the best photo opportunities are in your backyard.
72. People with DSLRS who shoot portraits with their grip pointed downwards look like morons.
73. Cameras as tools, not toys.
74. In terms of composition, photography and painting aren’t much different.
75. Photography isn’t a hobby- it’s a lifestyle.
76. Make photos, not excuses.
77. Be original in your photography. Don’t try to copy the style of others.
78. The best photographs tell stories that begs the viewer for more.
79. Any cameras but black ones draw too much attention.
80. The more gear you carry around with you the less you will enjoy photography.
81. Good self-portraits are harder to take than they seem.
82. Laughter always draws out peoples’ true character in a photograph.
83. Don’t look suspicious when taking photos- blend in with the environment.
84. Landscape photography can become dull after a while.
85. Have fun while taking photos.
86. Never delete any of your photos.
87. Be respectful when taking photos of people or places.
88. When taking candid photos of people in the street, it is easier to use a wide-angle than a telephoto lens.
89. Travel and photography are the perfect pair.
90. Learn how to read a histogram.
91. A noisy photo is better than a blurry one.
92. Don’t be afraid to take photos in the rain.
93. Learn how to enjoy the moment, rather than relentlessly trying to capture the perfect picture of it.
94. Never take photos on an empty stomach.
95. You will discover a lot about yourself through your photography.
96. Never hoard your photographic insight- share it with the world.
97. Never stop taking photos
98. Photography is more than simply taking photos, it is a philosophy of life
99. Capture the decisive moment
100. Write your own list.

So, one of my biggest difficulties as a web designer is typography and dealing with fonts. In the beginning, our website’s CSS was clean, but as time progresses new features and functionality is added by different developers. Eventually, our website was reeked with thirteen different font sizes and six font types. 13 and 6. A serious mess.

Fixing font issues can be tricky. We have to consider customer reactions, browser compatibility, and of course, the overall aesthetics. Despite these complexities changes had to be made.

First, we now only use three font sizes. One for our logo. One for headers and titles. And one for the body text. Three font types is the most any website should ever utilize. Controlling the font families was actually the easy part of my cleanup task.

Next, we had to eliminate the various font-sizes. I found that we were using: .9em, 1.2em, 100%, 10px, 12px, 13px, 14px, 16px, 18px, 20px, 26px, 30px, 48px. That’s just plain embarrassing. Many websites fall into this kind of mess though. As time progresses and numerous functions are added, things can swerve out of control rather quickly. I was actually surprised the site still looked as good as it did.

Anyhoo. As I obviously eliminated most of these font sizes. We now only have two header sizes (H1 and H2) and two body text sizes. We then signed up for Browser Stack to check the fonts across many browsers and made adjustments accordingly. Especially with e-commerce websites, cross browser compatibility is essential and font alterations can cause critical design “breaks” which must not go overlooked.

After the grueling process, I’m presently much happier with the website’s appearance and the CSS is way more efficient.

Facebook is unquestionably the most successful social network on the planet and is expected to IPO at a $100 billion valuation on May 17th. I hadn’t even considered buying FB stock until Zuckerberg’s recent purchase of Instagram, which was-but-maybe-not-anymore my favorite social application. I had intended on buying Instagram stock once it went public, but now I have to consider the Facebook empire instead.

First, Facebook is probably a good buy. The company is a marketers dream and a cash cow, which in the end, is what drives stock prices up. Facebook reaches billions of people and millions of businesses and is the centerpiece for an uncountable amount of 3rd party applications. The possibilities of revenue growth is huge but risky.

So why am I skeptical about forking over investment dollars?

1. Privacy concerns

It’s simple. Facebook has a bad name when it comes to privacy and rightfully so. The company seems more concerned with serving marketers than protecting users. To me, that’s a major trust issue that can’t be overlooked.

2. Advertiser’s control panel is weak

The marketing opportunities in Facebook’s platform are endless, but the control panel Facebook offers marketers (at least for us little guys) is lacking and when compared to Google’s Adsense it is simply child’s play. Facebook’s advertiser control panel doesn’t offer conversion tracking, advice of how to improve advertising results or detailed reporting.

3. It’s already big

Facebook has to be reaching a bubble when it comes to adding new users. Unless they can tap into foreign markets or continue buying other companies, their growth is simply not sustainable.

What does Facebook reveal about it’s weaknesses?

One of the more painful parts of taking a company public is you are required to make an honest assessment, in front of the whole world, of all the things that could kill your business. Facebook is no exception.

In its SEC filing, as required by law, the company outlined 35 “risk factors” that could “materially and adversely affect” Facebook. It’s a comprehensive list of every threat the social network admits to facing.

1. We could simply lose users, or fail to add new ones.
2. We could lose advertisers — and new technology may let users block ads.
3. Facebook’s mobile platform doesn’t show ads — so the more that grows, the worse for us.
4. The platform for Facebook apps might not be successful.
5. The competition from Google, Microsoft and Twitter could heat up — not to mention other social networks around the world.
6. More governments could restrict access to Facebook.
7. Users could turn their noses up at new products.
8. The Facebook culture is all about rapid innovation and getting users engaged — and that could come at the cost of profits.
9. Unspecified future events could tarnish our brand.
10. Bugs might give people access to users’ information that they’re not supposed to see.
11. The media could turn on us.
12. Our quarterly financial results could be difficult to predict.
13. Zynga accounts for 12% of our revenue. If we part ways, that could seriously hurt us.
14. Our revenue grew by 88% last year — and that’s simply not sustainable. Growth is bound to decline.
15. The U.S. laws and regulations we’re governed by could change or be reinterpreted.
16. If our patents and copyrights aren’t granted — or aren’t effective — it could seriously hurt us.
17. We have some patent lawsuits on our hands that could end badly.
18. We’re also involved in class-action lawsuits, and we could lose them too.
19. Mark Zuckerberg has a massive amount of shares, which concentrates power in the hands of one man.
20. There’s a complicated tax liability connected to a particular kind of stock unit we gave out — one that will be taxed at 45%.
21. If we need more rounds of investment, the terms might not be reasonable.
22. Costs might grow faster than revenue.
23. A lot of our servers are handled by third parties, and they might be disrupted.
24. We’ve started building a lot of our own data centers to handle traffic, and we’ve got limited experience doing this kind of thing.
25. Our software is incredibly complex and may have a lot of bugs.
26. We can’t say for sure that we’ll handle our growth effectively — we have more than 3,000 employees now, and that could spin out of control.
27. If we lose our leaders, like Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, that would really harm us.
28. People might sue us over all sorts of stuff posted on Facebook — intellectual property, copyright, defamation, and so on.
29. Viruses, hacking, phishing and malware. Oh my.
30. Payment systems in Facebook apps could mean new government regulations.
31. We’re continually expanding abroad, and we may not understand all the risks in new countries.
32. We’re planning to acquire lots of other companies, which could disrupt everything at Facebook.
33. We might default on our leases or our debt.
34. Our tax liabilities, in general, are bigger than we thought.
35. U.S. tax code reform, if it happens, might hit us where it hurts.

What do you think? Will you invest in Facebook or wait it out? I’m planning on purchase some shares early but I’ll probably only buy about 50-100 shares.

Eventually, I was going to have to address Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, my once-now-not-so-sure favorite social networking platform. We’ve written many supportive Instagram-related articles so it just seemed impossible to side-step the buyout news.

As we all know by now, Mark Zuckerberg purchased Instagram for a whopping 1 billion dollars. This is an amazingly huge price tag for a business that basically had no income despite a 40 million user base. Whether you think the purchase was worth it or not (I think it was since Instagram was already working on a 500 million IPO), the crazier news is that Instagram actually wanted 2 billion dineros.

2 billion dollars. For an app that allows you to take pictures and share them. A company with only 8 employees. No revenue stream whatsoever. 2 billion dollars. Wow.

According to WSJ, Mark had secretly been meeting with Instagram counterpart Kevin Systrom for about three days and the opening figure was 2 billion dollars. Zuckerberg was able to whittle that down in half. I think, in the end, both parties got what they wanted. I’m not sure Facebook’s board would have agreed, but Mark kept them in the dark before announcing his intentions of buying the photo-sharing app.

For the time I’ve used Instagram, I’ve loved it and have pretty much embraced it as the centerpiece of my business’s social marketing. I still reluctantly use the service, but can’t help myself from searching elsewhere (currently playing around with Path) since I’ve never been a fan of Facebook. I could go on a long rant about why I’m a Facebook hater, but I’ll save that for a later post. For now, I continue to use Instagram since the service hasn’t changed (yet) and I’ve established relationships worth keeping.

At the moment I hate our e-commerce website. Sure, I customized almost every aspect of it, but there is always room for improvement. If I could get my programmer/partner to be as willing to adopt and implement change as I am, I’d be happier. Anyways, here are some tips we follow to keep our e-commerce website in tip-top shape for sales conversions.

1. Speed up your website

According to Gomez, the application monitor from Compuware, Every 2 seconds of load time on your site equals an 8% abandonment rate. The concludes that reducing load time from 8 seconds to 2 seconds will increase sales conversions by an astounding 74%.

Unfortunately, some ecommerce websites are at the mercy of the 3rd party content provider (such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Volusion etc.) and will run into speed problems if that company is experiencing troubles. There isn’t much you can do there.

Many sites also utilize third party plugins and scripts for stuff like Facebook, Twitter, Google Widgets and more. It might be wise to limit those. We stopped using the Facebook “like” script because it was slowing our site down.

Check every image on your website and be absolutely sure each one is condensed as much as possible. This is probably the easiest place to improve downloads speeds for your customer.

Optimizing the HTML, CSS, database calls, scripts and any other code is also helpful and considered part of an overall SEO strategy. There is an abundance of methods to increase speed especially if you’re a developer or programmer.

2. Keep it simple

Try to keep each page of your website as clean as possible. Don’t add too many images or too much information. Think through each page and only provide absolutely necessary information.

E-commerce pages should be simple along with an easy-to-follow shopping cart. Only require customers to fill out essential information in as few steps as possible. Bogging them down severely limit first-time sales and the complexity will keep customers from returning.

3. Paying should be a cinch

Implement strategies that make paying simple. Is there anything more frustrating than entering your name, address, 16-digit credit card number and three-digit security code, and then restarting from scratch because you forgot your ZIP code? If most of your business is in the U.S., why not put “United States” first on the scroll instead of way down at the end, as it would appear alphabetically?

According to Mashable, Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester Research, says there’s a standard sequence of information for credit card information. If you mess with that order (by putting the credit card number before the name and address, for instance), then users are apt to enter the wrong info because they’ve been trained to log such data in a certain sequence. Says Mulpuru: “Follow the industry standard.”

Also, despite high percentages, be sure to accept AMEX. I’ve read that websites accepting Paypal have seen as much as a 20% increase in sales.

4. Keep shipping low

Sucharita Mulpuru indicates that if you’re charging more than 10% of the total cost of the item for shipping, then you’re charging too much. “You’re probably depressing your sales significantly,” she says. “People are more likely to abandon your cart.”

Shipping prices are a continuous battle for our small business. We keep prices low, but customers gripe about shipping anyways. In the end, be sure to compare your shipping prices against your market competitors to ensure you’re in the same range or lower.

5. Browser friendliness

You may be a Google Chrome fan (like me), but there’s a world full of people who are using old versions of Internet Explorer. Not to mention, Firefox and Safari are hugely popular. Have you tested your site on those other browsers? If not, you should. Many sites don’t perform well across various browsers so people abandon them.

When considering browsers, also consider devices and screen sizes. I download different browsers on each our office computers and check everything. We’ve also visited Best Buys and Home Depots to test our website’s shopping experiences on numerous computers (PC’s and MACs) and tablets (iOS and Android).

Even ask the staff to view the website on browsers and at home to see if they notice any funny business you missed.

Yes, there is a much better and more convenient way to test your browser compatibility. It’s called BrowserStack and it’s worth is priceless.

Long-time rapper Snoop Dogg is entering the book publishing market with a book that you can not only read, but smoke.

Time reported that “Rolling Words: A Smokable Songbook” will be released from Snoop as a marketing campaign for his new Kingsize Slim Rolling Papers.

In the below video for the book, Snoop Dogg says that the book reprints lyrics to his past songs like “G-Thang” and “Gin and Juice.” He tells fans, “This thing can also be smoked with some of your finest, where you at or however you at.”

The book is made from hemp material and twine, while the pages are rolling papers – perforated for easy use.

Snoop also revealed in the video that the spine has match-striking material on it, so users can utilize the book for striking a match, too.

“I made this book so people can always remember, you can roll with an expert, you can roll with Snoop,” the rapper says in the video.

According to The Dieline, the book may not be so easy to get. “Rolling Words” will only be available to an elite group, but there is discussion about making online limited edition copies.

If you’re not really interested in the book, this year’s Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival will have posters up with tabs of the Kingsize Slim Rolling Papers that can be pulled off to sample.

Basically, when someone saves a website onto their home screen, the icon defaults to something like this:

Notice, the icon looks terrible and simply snapshots the home page of our website. It doesn’t appear “app-like” so I think people are less inclined to keep it saved onto their iPhone. I want to imitate the app environment so our website link fits in better.

We created this simple icon that fits well with other apps, and we look a bit more savvy in the process.

How to do it

The good news is this: Apple does most of the beautification for us. The rounded edges and gloss appearance is all done by iOS to ensure all apps have a consistent feel to them so let’s get started.

First, we will need a graphic software like Adobe Photoshop to make a 57px X 57px image.

Next, we’ll choose a background color that fits well with our company branding. It can be a gradient or solid color. Whatever floats your boat.

Next, we put a logo or some letters in the middle. I like to keep it very simple, so I used “PK” representing PrintKEG.

Once my letters are situated I added a little drop shadow just because this seems to easy. Next, we save the image as a PNG file then upload it to our server somewhere. Some people put it in the root directory, but I am using my images folder for now.

The code

We must add a small meta tag under the title tag in our HTML to tell iOS where the icon image is.

We’re done. A simple way to provide Apple users a sweet little icon that matches the other apps on the device. Here are some tips in creating a nice iphone app design.

Good luck!

In the past I’ve discussed how to move your business online and 9 Things to Know Before Starting a Business, which are two articles that represent the primary reason I started this blog in the first place. We’ve successfully converted a small print shop into a more profitable online business, and I think my personal knowledge and experience is worth sharing to other entrepreneurs or small business owners. One aspect I’ve never really shared is the sacrifices, risks, hard work and determination that nurtured the business we now know as PrintKEG.com.

There’s no question that key staff members have gone above and beyond for this company. I hope to one day reward those people in a big way, and I’d love one of them (Jane!) to maybe write an article from an employee’s perspective of working at a young startup. But entrepreneurship is a entirely different beast. Owning a new business is simultaneously stressful, rewarding, aggravating and wonderful.

Two ways to battle that stress is to simplify your life while persistently working hard.

Eliminate Extra Responsibilities (Stop F#cking Around)

Stop making promises to help a friend move, stop reading all your email, limit phone calls and eliminate as many responsibilities you can. To be successful, you absolutely must focus on the business. In my opinion, this rule applies to all entrepreneurs. The business is your baby. It needs the attention of someone who absolutely refuses to lose. Every ounce of your energy should be wrapped up in the business. Be prepared to spend less time with family, the kids, on vacation and weekend cookouts.

Does this mean you will never see your buddies again? Of course not. By eliminating the tons of minor and time consuming responsibilities in your life, you can focus on the important things (the business being one of those).

Personally, I made family and business priority. That’s about as simple as it gets. When I’m not working on the business I’m spending time with the kids, my mom and the wife.

Prepare To Always Work (Work Hard)

One major benefit of entrepreneurship is “making your own hours.” Forget it. If you want to make your business strong, be prepared to always work. Sure, working smart is different than working hard, but working A LOT is what’s important. This is why many entrepreneurs will tell you to “do what you love” since you’ll be doing A LOT of it. You will be thinking of your company nonstop, stressing about new products, or how to improve, or finances and marketing. There’s numerous “extras” associated with owning a business so be sure the business you’re in is rewarding because you should constantly be working on it one way or another.

Don’t believe me? I have read countless business biographies which include Starbucks, Walt Disney, Pixar, Google, Kinkos and they all have one thing in common: A CEO or owner that is a workaholic. Many of them had tempers or interesting quirks, but ALL of them worked around the clock focusing on every detail of the business. Steve Jobs didn’t launch the iPod doing 4-hour workweeks and Howard Shultz didn’t start up Starbucks by playing golf. Every single one of these top companies had executives that lived and breathed the business.