It’s a win-win for Apple and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) as the tech company was just awarded a $30 million contract to supply about 35,000 iPads to 47 schools at a cost of about $678 per device. 

“LAUSD is the nation’s second-largest school system, and its decision to award this contract to Apple, and Apple alone, is a hell of an endorsement—one that other school districts are certain to consider while mulling their own tablet deployments," notes All Things D. "Beyond that, it’s further testament to the mind share iPad is gaining in education, and the speed with which it is gaining it.”

LAUSD received more than a dozen proposals and narrowed them to bids from Apple and Arey Jones, which submitted separate plans using Dell and HP tablets. While the $678 price is above retail, the iPad’s are preloaded with educational software and come with a three-year warranty. District officials said students can take the iPads home.Continue reading...

"Meat" may be out in some quarters, but protein certainly is in. Taco Bell is testing a new "Power Protein" menu this summer in another move signaling its interest in offering healthier fare.

The preponderance of beef and chicken on Taco Bell's menu has been one of its main attractions for young males (along with low prices) for decades, but the Yum! Brands chain now is offering a new interpretation that it presumes is more in keeping with the times.

Millennials are seeking items that have more protein but also less fat, Taco Bell CEO Greg Creed told reporters this week, according to Advertising Age, adding that the new items are a step to become a better and more relevant Taco Bell to that core demographic.Continue reading...

There will be two more Olympiads—first in Sochi, Russia next year, and then in Brazil in 2016—before the Olympic and Paralympic torches roll into PyeongChang, South Korea and light the cauldron to kick off the 2018 Winter Games. Before then, whole arenas and hotels need to be built, new sports need to be considered, and complete teams need to be constructed.

According to the IOC, which made its second visit to the country to check-in on how much progress has been made in preparation for the Games, things are well underway, and the committee is impressed. 

“We’ve once again seen good progress from PyeongChang 2018,” IOC member Gunilla Lindberg said, accordng to NBC. “And an excellent team effort from the Organizing Committee, all levels of government, and the Korean Olympic Committee."Continue reading...

Nickelodeon is drawing a line in the sand that likely never would be sanctioned by the network's amiable cartoon hero, SpongeBob SquarePants: It is going to refuse to give in to public pressure to ban ads for non-nutritious foods despite all the concerns about childhood obesity.

"As an entertainment company, Nickelodeon's primary mission is to make the highest quality entertainment content in the world for kids," the company wrote in response to four Democratic US senators' pleas to the network, according to the New York Times. "That is our expertise. We believe strongly that we must leave the science of nutrition to the experts."

The Viacom-owned network has no plans anytime soon to mimic Walt Disney Co., which a year ago unveiled a strict set of nutritional standards and said it would ban ads for noncompliant foods from its child-focused cable channels by 2015.Continue reading...

The latest brand to call the San Francisco 49ers’ new stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. home is Yahoo. The venue, aka Levi’s Stadium (or better, the 'Field of Jeans'), is just down the road from some of Yahoo's offices and will provide an off-campus media hub for the growing internet brand. 

The 10-year deal makes Yahoo the “exclusive online sports content, social networking, and photo and video sharing partner," of the stadium. The company will get to place its logo on the new Fantasy Football lounge as well as install Flickr-branded photo-sharing booths in the stadium's concourses. The booths will have a direct tie-in to the stadium's big screen, as Yahoo hopes it will encourage fans to use Flickr first before uploading to Instagram or Facebook.Continue reading...

The influential J.D. Power & Associates ranking of Initial Quality of auto brands in the US is out today, and the big winners are General Motors and some of its brands, as well as Porsche, Audi, Hyundai, Kia, and Chrysler. 

The main losers in status, defined by the exhaustive study of quality perceptions among American consumers, are BMW, Ram, Mazda and Nissan. Ford and Lincoln brands basically broke even on a combined basis compared with their reduced status from a year ago.

Porsche came out as the top-performing brand overall, rising from third place in 2012. But for the first time, GM could be considered the top-performing company overall in the closely watched study, placing two brands—GMC and Chevrolet—in the top five of the Initial Quality Study (IQS) released today. The annual survey measures the number of problems on 2013 cars and light trucks that buyers report after 90 days of ownership, and so it's a crucial look at very current consumer perceptions and marketplace realities.Continue reading...

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” appears to be the motto Turner Broadcasting is using these days as it heads into its second straight summer Media Camp that helps five innovative startups commercialize their businesses to Turner's stable of networks, as well as other Time Warner media properties. 

“As you might expect, companies of our size and maturity often don’t move as fast as we’d like," said Balaji Gopinath, VP-emerging technology at Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting, according to Ad Age. "Here’s a way for us to spread out the innovation across the startup ecosystem and work collaboratively to define what entertainment might look like in the years to come.”Continue reading...

At United Airlines, soon it will no longer be just the number of miles that passengers fly that helps boost their frequent-flyer standing but also how much they spend. 

According to the Chicago Tribune, those who hope to qualify for the lowest elite tier of United's MileagePlus program will need to either fly 25,000 miles or 30 segments and spend a minimum of $2,500 on United tickets, extra-legroom upgrades, or on partner airlines, such as United Express or Panama’s Copa Airlines. Those with MileagePlus co-branded credit cards are out of luck. Spending on those won’t count toward the minimum levels needed. Neither will taxes, fees, and charges on your bill. Only base fares and fuel surcharges are part of the equation, the Wall Street Journal reports.Continue reading...