October 2009
24 posts
Seattle startup rates "green" products →
“A Seattle couple spent more than two years designing and developing Eco-rate, a Web-based product and technology rating and comparison resource for shoppers looking to make ecologically intelligent choices on just about any product out there, from autos to dishwashers to TVs to paint to water heaters.”
Postal services: Sort it out →
The Economist published this compelling article that addresses why privatisation is the best way to protect postal services as letters die out.
Rise of the Amafessional →
“This is the age of the amafessional, when amateurs are rivaling professionals in opportunity, talent and the ability to produce quality work. It’s happening in virtually every field. In areas ranging from communications to medicine to simply making things with your hands, amafessionals are gaining in numbers and the ability to market their services.”
R.I.P. GeoCities →
Yahoo!? More like Boo hoo!
Today, the Internet giant pulled the plug on WYSIWYG webpage builder Geocities. A Slate article aptly describes the reasoning behind the page’s demise:
“Yahoo’s $3.5 billion purchase of GeoCities in 1999 has been called one of the worst Internet acquisitions of all time. After all, just look at those pages! Brimming with blinking, moving, garishly...
Will lower health-care costs mean higher wages? →
Source: Ezra Klein
Power User's Guide to Google Chrome →
Get down those shortcuts!
FolderSize: What's Eating Your Hard Drive? →
Do you have more than 24 hours worth of music on your iTunes? If so, get this free tool, FolderSize, which tells you what files/folders may be hogging all the space on your hard drive. Tested personally and found to be spyware free.
Many More Planets Found Outside Solar System →
Get off the escalator and on those Musical Stairs! →
Cake wrecks: Professional cakes gone bad. →
Haven’t laughed this hard in ages….
15th Ave. Sonic (Ka)Boom →
In light of the Sonic Boom in Capitol Hill moving to its new Melrose place (next to Wall of Sound and Bauhaus), all non-sale items are knocked down 20%. Hey you, put down that Buddah Box! Hooked up on some Numero group comps tonight, but left a few for you too.
Sh-boom!
Getting Back To Work, Steven J. Davis →
Proposals for job creation and reversing unemployment:
1. Roll back costly benefit mandates for health insurance.
2. Suspend federal minimum wage mandates.
3. Renounce the grossly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.
4. Experiment with how best to put the unemployed back to work and assess the results.
These measures, with regular program evaluations, will foster job creation and help reverse...
Why Your Idea to Save Journalism Won't Work
Your post advocates a ( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) crowd-sourced approach to saving journalism. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply.)
( ) It does not provide an income stream to the working journalist
( ) Nobody will spend eight hours sitting in a dull council meeting to do it
( ) No one will be able to find the...
The Big Picture for this year's Economics Nobel... →
Congrats to Oliver Williamson of University of California at Berkeley and Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University at Bloomington for winning this year’s Nobel prize for economics.
Neither were expected to win (as shown by Greg Mankiw’s scoresheet below), but both works answered big questions in a way that deviates from the traditional, more quantitative lens that recent prize winners have...
2012 Doomsday Not Likely, Mayans Insist →
Leave it to Hollywood to come up with yet another dumb doomsday movie…
3 years. Go!
Free Wi-Fi Coming to an Airline Near You →
… and Google has just announced that it will provide free wi-fi in Sea-Tac for the holiday season. Whoo-hoo!
The Economics of Movie Prices →
Indie film producer Nicholas Tabarrok writes:
One interesting thing that I’ve always found about the film business from an economic point of view is that unlike in any other business I can think of, the cost of manufacturing the product has no affect on the purchase cost to the consumer. For example Honda can make a cheaper car with less features and cheaper finishes than BMW without...
Vinyl Enthusiasts →
Besides the horribly tacky design, which I was warned of in advance, this really is a great way to keep posted on upcoming vinyl shows.
Other cool vinyl links uncovered this week include:
http://my.analogapartment.com/ - A place to keep track of your vinyl records.
http://www.lightintheattic.net/releases.php - Light in the Attic vinyl releases.
http://www.nerdalertrecords.com/ - Online store...
Bentham vs. Hume →
David Brooks makes a solid case in today’s NYT Opinion editorial.
Sound Transit Light Rail →
A complete list of all Sound Transit light rail stations.
Remember, Sea-Tac airport will not be done till December 2009. Awww, quit yer complaining— Capitol Hill won’t be connected till 2016!