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18 Nov 2010 10:50

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U.S.: Four Loko: The FDA’s ban leading to people buying it en masse

  • Just today we sold 10 cases. I think the news is helping sales.
  • DC liquor store cashier Shashi Sharma • Mentioning how the FDA’s coming ban on Four Loko is having something of a Streisand Effect on the remaining product. Reports of sellouts of the drink far and wide have made it a hot commodity, one which may lead to lots of people actually taking this video seriously. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Nov 2010 23:13

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Biz: Four Loko makers Phusion Products decaffeinate potent drink

  • All the bad press finally got to them. In a statement tonight, the drink makers, Phusion Projects, announced they’d be losing caffeine, guarana and taurine from the controversial “blackout-in-a-can” beverage. The company’s three co-founders explain it like so: “We are taking this step after trying – unsuccessfully – to navigate a difficult and politically-charged regulatory environment at both the state and federal levels.” They say they have readily worked with regulators to ensure that their product was legal. The steadfastly claim, however, “that the combination of alcohol and caffeine is safe. If it were unsafe, popular drinks like rum and colas or Irish coffees that have been consumed safely and responsibly for years would face the same scrutiny that our products have recently faced.” Either way, Four Loko is now One Loko – alcohol.  source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

16 Nov 2010 11:05

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World: Blackout-in-a-can Four Loko getting stink eye from FDA

Now the FDA’s getting involved in stopping this menace. It’s all fun and games until someone mixes a lot of caffeine and a lot of alcohol into one can. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

09 Jun 2010 20:52

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Tech: The root of Google’s new Caffeine engine: 9/11. No, really

  • The onslaught of news readers that day made them emphasize immediacy. Remember September 11, 2001? We still had the Internet, yeah, but our search engines were super-primitive back then. So when people looked up news on Google, stories weren’t updated. Eventually, Google started caching sites like CNN to offset this, but it taught them a long-term lesson. “That was a real wake-up call, where we said we have to pay a lot of attention to freshness,” said Matt Cutts of Google’s spam team. “We knew that before, but we thought 30 days was pretty good.” Which led the the development of Google News, and later, Caffeine. Now, what was once updated monthly is now thrown up immediately. Neat, huh? source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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