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Wintrust Financial Corporation Reports Record Full-Year 2019 Net Income of $355.7 million and Fourth Quarter 2019 Net Income of $86.0 million, up 8% from the Fourth Quarter 2018

To view more press releases, please visit http://www.snl.com/irweblinkx/news.aspx?iid=1024452.








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Wintrust Financial Corporation Announces Precautionary Decision to Help Achieve Community Health Objectives By Temporarily Closing Selected Branches

To view more press releases, please visit http://www.snl.com/irweblinkx/news.aspx?iid=1024452.











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Analyst/Investor Meeting




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Academy funds three leading engineers to tackle major industry challenges




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Engineering researcher’s non-invasive aid to monitoring pressure in the skull wins gold medal




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Academy welcomes budget announcements on infrastructure and research




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New ‘Great Exhibition at Home’ challenge launched to inspire young innovators




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Academy responds to novel coronavirus and calls for ideas




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Academy launches online events programme




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Seeking 'Engineers in the Making': Academy sets engineering challenges children can do at home




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Academy maps out engineering challenges for recovery from COVID-19




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New Engineering X Pandemic Preparedness programme to support global innovation and knowledge sharing




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National Engineering Policy Centre to provide advice to government on reaching net zero emissions




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HP's COVID-19 Response: There Should Be an Award for This

Some of the troubling reports of corporate responses to COVID-19 include forced work in unsafe areas, not enough -- or any -- protection gear, massive layoffs and furloughs, and the sense that a critical mass of well-paid CEOs and politicians don't get that many people live paycheck to paycheck. There are exceptions though, and HP stands out, thanks to HR VP Tracy Keogh and CEO Enrique Lores.




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Ad Makers Use Deepfakes to 'Refresh' Old Content

With measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 putting a chokehold on their filming capabilities, advertising agencies are enhancing old content with new tech, including deepfakes. Deepfakes typically blend one person's likeness, or parts thereof, with the image of another person. Ad agencies are so restricted in how they can generate content, they'll explore anything that can be computer-generated.




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UK Rejects Apple-Google Contact Tracing Approach

The UK's plans to launch a smartphone application to track potential COVID-19 infections won't include Apple and Google. The country's National Health Service has designed its own mobile software to do contact tracing of people exposed to the coronavirus. The NHS reportedly found that its own tech works "sufficiently well." The NHS chose a centralized model for its data collection and storage.




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Bottom Line: iPhone SE Packs Great Value for the Money

Apple's new iPhone SE delivers incredible value and performance, has a surprisingly good camera, and handles videos well. Reviewers were impressed by the phone's A13 chipset. However, criticisms include insufficient battery life, absence of night mode, and lack of 5G support. "For those of us concerned about money ... the SE provides the greatest bang for the buck," said tech analyst Rob Enderle.




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How to Fix Your Phone or Tablet's Broken Screen

Cracked or broken mobile device screens can be costly to fix, but a few inexpensive DIY strategies can eliminate a repair shop visit and salvage your tablet or phone. It is relatively easy and cheap to replace the glass on a phone once you get the hang of it. Tablets are a bit more involved because of the larger size and added components. Tools might require an additional monetary outlay.




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EndeavourOS 2020: Possibly the Best Arch Linux Option

EndeavourOS is a rolling release Arch Linux-based distribution with some handy new features that improve the user experience. This latest version comes with graphical install options and preconfigured desktop environments. Several new in-house utilities improve package management and error reporting. There are lots of installation tips with the Calamares installer, which has a new look and feel.




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How to Stay Safe on the Internet, Part 3: Drive the Black Hatters Mad

Like conventional criminals, criminal hackers choose easy, lucrative targets. One group in the crosshairs is made up of companies that have data on millions of users, such as private sector entities with a Web presence. Why go after one user at a time when data is collected in one place? Criminal hackers also like to hunt small organizations that have modest capital but weak information security.




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Far-Right Spreads COVID-19 Disinformation Epidemic Online

Far-right groups and individuals in the United States are exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to promote disinformation, hate, extremism and authoritarianism. "COVID-19 has been seized by far-right groups as an opportunity to call for extreme violence," states a report from ISD, based on a combination of natural language processing, network analysis and ethnographic online research.




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Linux Foundation Leads Initiative for Better Digital Trust

The Linux Foundation will host ToIP, a cross-industry effort to ensure more secure data handling over the Internet. This new foundation is an independent project enabling trustworthy exchange and verification of data between any two parties on the Internet. The ToIP Foundation will provide a robust common standard to instill confidence that data is coming from a trusted source.




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Oculus Quest Production Stymied by Pandemic

The next generation of Oculus Quest virtual reality headsets is in the works, but pandemic-related product development and supply chain problems may delay market arrival. Oculus reportedly has multiple potential Quest successors on the drawing board. Smaller, lighter versions with a faster image refresh rate for more realistic rendering are in the advanced testing stage.




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Red Hat's Virtual Summit Crowds Hint at Future Conference Models

In what could be a trial run for more of the same, Red Hat last week held a first-ever virtual technical summit to spread the word about its latest cloud tech offerings. CEO Paul Cormier welcomed online viewers to the conference, which attracted more than 80,000 virtual attendees. The company made several key announcements during the online gathering and highlighted customer innovations.




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Microsoft Covers All the Bases With Impressive Surface Lineup

Microsoft has introduced a slew of new products, including the Surface Go 2, the Surface Book 3, Surface Headphones 2 and Surface Earbuds. Both the Surface Go 2 and the Surface Book 3 come in consumer and corporate versions. "The two products are very different," noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. "The Go 2 is a high-value product -- the Surface Book 3 high innovation."




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MakuluLinux Delivers Modernity With New Core Platform

If you are looking for a well-designed Linux distro that is far from mainstream, loaded with performance features not found elsewhere, check out the 2020 upgrade of the MakuluLinux Core distro. It could change your perspective on what a daily computing driver should offer. Developer Jacque Montague Raymer recently released the 2020 edition of MakuluLinux Core OS.




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Information Security: New Rules

Warren Buffet once said, "Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." You can cover over a host of sins when times are good, but bad or unsafe practices will be exposed when times are rough. Time and experience have borne out the accuracy of this witticism in the financial arena -- and we're now seeing its applicability to the intersection of infosec and COVID-19.




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4 Sales Presentation Innovations That Keep Viewers on the Edge of Their Seats

People have been giving presentations for thousands of years, from Moses with his stone tablets to Elon Musk revealing his grand plans to colonize Mars. While the elements of a great pitchman generally have remained the same over the past 5,000 years -- conviction, charisma, credibility -- today's successful presenters do more than just get in front of an audience and talk.




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4 Ways Intelligent CRM Can Help You Reach Tech-Savvy Millennials

Does your customer relationship management strategy have what it takes to reach Generation Y? It's estimated that by 2021, an additional $394 billion in revenue could be gained from artificial intelligence adoption in CRM activities in the U.S. As companies grow and technology evolves at a faster-than-ever pace, collecting, storing and providing data is becoming a bigger and bigger task.




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Zoho's Noble Endeavor

Edge conditions and the change they drive are fascinating. Some people use the word "margin" because it's at the margin that things change. A situation exists more or less in equilibrium with the rest of its environment until in one way or another the stresses become so great that change happens. We have lots of metaphors, like "tipping point" and "the straw that broke the camel's back."




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Trying Times for Employee Engagement

These days are either the most trying time for encouraging employee engagement or the best we could expect. With so many people working remotely, many businesses need extra ways to communicate with the rank and file, and this might present a prime opportunity to try new things. We make a big deal of engaging the customer, and in most CRM circles engagement outranks simple customer experience.




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A Patchwork of Useful Things

Adobe just announced what it calls the first digital economy index. It seems like it's modeled after other indices usually kept by the federal government to measure economic output and consumption. The Adobe index captures only consumer consumption behavior though. Some of its insights include new shopping behavior, such as which products have become hot items or decreased in popularity over time.




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A 6-Point Plan to Leapfrog to CX Leadership

Customer experience as a boardroom topic is more relevant than ever. Enterprises are investing significant digital transformation budgets and commissioning large projects to elevate CX. Yet more than 70 percent of digital transformation projects fail to move the needle at scale. One topic that has a substantial impact on CX is the transformation of customer service operations using digital tools.




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We're the Adults in the Room

The U.S. Postal Service recently has been battered by a decline in the number of packages it delivers, partly caused by the coronavirus situation. It reportedly is losing $2 billion each month and will be "illiquid" by Sept. 30. The USPS is chartered to do the hard and often unprofitable work no one else wants to do, but the White House has rejected talk of a bailout for the service.




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Merchants Now Can List Products on Google Shopping for Free

Merchants soon will be able to sell products on Google Shopping at no charge. Previously, they had to pay per click, but the cost was not fixed. There was no minimum, but they had to set a maximum for ad spend and Google would stop displaying their ads once the maximum was reached. Starting next week, search results on the Google Shopping tab will consist primarily of free product listings.




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Contact Tracing With Salesforce

Contact tracing is a big job, like trying to drain an ocean with a teaspoon. It involves finding people who have been exposed to the coronavirus and testing them to determine if they are infected or are carriers. Public health officials then can take necessary steps to prevent the virus' spread. It's a perfect fit for CRM, and Salesforce's core technology is coming to the forefront.




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4 Things You Need to Know for Successful Enterprise CRM Integration

The enterprise IT environment is complex. Many systems, technologies and practices developed at various times coexist in the same world. With expectations for technological advancements at their peak, we're tasked with enabling these systems to work together harmoniously to support the continuous sharing of information. Systems and data must connect as if all information were native to each.