ShortFormBloggreat ideas Archives

Inspired by the same model Panera’s been using for some of their restaurants, the ’80s hair-metal dude launched his very own pay-what-you want soul food restaurant. Class act. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

Right now, searches are proceeding under the object of preventing terrorist activities. But we’ve got to draw a line. You’ve got to have reasonable cause to touch people’s private parts.
Texas State Rep. David Simpson • Discussing his bill to prevent the TSA from intrusively groping people in the name of national security. (Which, as you might know, is kind of a pet issue for us.) The bill actually went somewhere last month — it passed the state’s legislature. However, it stalled in the senate because the state got pushback from the federal government, who threatened to stop flights into Texas if the bill became law. Simpson (a Republican), however, notes that the law doesn’t prevent these searches, but forces a good reason for them to happen: “But what we’re basically saying is, ‘Show me the law that says you can touch my private parts in order to travel and I’ll let you do it.’” This guy deserves a high-five. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

We totally have to give Apple credit: The conceit around the iTunes portion of the iCloud service, while not exactly what we expected (it’s not Lala 2.0, sadly), manages to pull off an interesting trick — it creates a revenue model from a place where only piracy existed before. By upgrading your music’s quality and making it easily accessible from the cloud, it adds value inexpensively, and gets around a major sticking point for the major labels cleverly. And music industry officials see it as a positive. “It allows for revenue to be made off of pirated music in a way that consumers don’t feel that’s what they’re paying for, and that’s what I find fascinating about it,” noted Jeff Price, the CEO of TuneCore Inc., which helps independent artists sell their music online. Our music anywhere for $25 a year? Sure, we’ll pay that. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

In their defense, it was never technically announced as a real product. Last year, the Internet went aflutter over the idea of the Microsoft Courier, which turned the tablet concept into a book which focused less on consuming media but acting more like a journal where once could save scraps of content, take notes using a stylus and turn nerds into puddles of awe. Instead, the company killed it yesterday, choosing to focus their energy on the coming-soon Windows Phone 7 Series. Hopefully its memory endures, if not the product itself. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

It’ll be fun to see them try to pull this off. Someone needed to combine the philosophy of Digg with a print product, right? And these guys are all about it – it appears that they’re not newspaper people, even, but smart people with a good idea (and hopefully, money). One interesting thing to note is that they plan to ultra-localize the content they distribute, with the possibility of 100 print editions in Chicago alone (!). Watch out for this one. source

Posted by Ernie Smith • 2 Comments • Permalink

22 Oct 2011 18:09