Law Firms Raise Rates, but Ease Blow With Discounts. Coinstar gives vending machines a tech twist | Business & Technology. All the buzz in retail these days is about the explosive growth in e-commerce. Traditional chains such as Costco and Nordstrom have made online business a top priority as Amazon.com reigns supreme. But another Northwest company is making a case for why the lowly old vending machine could be retooled for the Internet age.
Bellevue-based Coinstar, which owns the Redbox movie-rental business, says today's technologically savvy shoppers are a prime market for a new lineup of self-serve products ranging from cafe-grade coffee to refurbished iPods. Research firm IHL Group estimates the North American market for automated kiosks will exceed $1.1 trillion in 2015, up from $715 billion in 2010. "People are much better at educating themselves about products, so they don't need a store's staff support as much as they used to. And people are busier," said analyst John Kraft, who follows Coinstar for D.A. Last year, Coinstar pulled a machine that sold designer purses after talking it up to analysts. Redbox names Solectron worldwide manufacturer of DVD kiosks - News Search on EMSNow.
Redbox names Solectron worldwide manufacturer of DVD kiosks Apr 28, 2005 Selection positions Redbox for rapid 2005 expansion Redbox, the USA's leader in providing automated DVD rental services, announced an agreement choosing Solectron Corporation (NYSE:SLR) as the exclusive worldwide manufacturer of Redbox's fully automated DVD rental kiosks. The newly designed system manufactured by Solectron will immediately appear in markets. "We are thrilled to be working with Solectron to provide increased DVD capacity and better overall functionality to our consumers," said Gregg Kaplan, venture leader for Redbox. Launched in 2002, Redbox continues to revolutionize the DVD rental industry with a combination of ubiquitous locations and $1 per-night pricing.
China's ethnic Manchus rediscovering their roots. Ye Longpei, 70, and his grandson Yehenala Yiyi, 3. The Beijing toddler was… (Barbara Demick / Los Angeles ) BEIJING — Nobody would suspect that this impish toddler is of noble lineage. Yiyi has the same buzz cut as other 3-year-old Chinese boys, the familiar habit of scattering his fleet of toy cars across the living room rug. But his family name gives him away: Yehenala, a famous Manchurian clan that once ruled China. When Yiyi was born, his father and grandfather made the unusual decision to give him the old Manchu name. "We are proud of our royal blood," said the boy's father, Ye Jia, a 40-year-old state company employee who says he would change his name too if the bureaucracy wasn't so complicated.
The name is a mouthful in a country where almost all family names are written by a single character and pronounced with a single syllable. But his father thinks it will serve him well in the long run. A century later, ethnic Manchus are rediscovering their roots. Buttonwood: The secrets of Buffett’s success. Thoughtful Alphabets: Edward Gorey's Lost Cryptic 26-Word Illustrated Stories. By Maria Popova A delightfully dark journey into the love of language. Having a soft spot for all things Edward Gorey and unusual alphabet books, I was thrilled by Pomegranate’s new edition of Thoughtful Alphabets: The Just Dessert and The Deadly Blotter (public library) — a collection of two cryptic 26-word stories, in which the word begin with the letters of the alphabet in order and the story progresses as the alphabet does in parallel.
The stories belong to a mid-90s “Thoughtful Alphabets” series, the first six volumes of which were released as hand-lettered posters illustrated with clip-art. Then, several years ago, stories numbers XI and XVII emerged as signed limited-edition books featuring Gorey’s original drawings — but the books quickly went out of print. In this beautiful resurrection, Gorey’s signature blend of wit and dark whimsy shines in each of the micro-vignettes — a fine complement to his beloved alphabet classic, The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Donating = Loving Share on Tumblr. Why Founders Shouldn't Be The Developers. "If you plan to be doing the coding in a year or two, you're doing it wrong," one of the advisers told me when I was starting my first startup a few years ago. Ha! What a silly notion! The whole point I’m doing this is so I get to hack on interesting technologies all day, learn a bunch of sexy new tools and get to work on something I care about.
Startups are often built using the latest and greatest technologies. It seems, then, that a lot of technical founders start with the same romantic notions of coding freedom as I did. Reality for a founder is a bit different. Mind share A founder must be pitching 50% of the time.A founder must keep the lights on.A founder must do customer development.A founder must tend to company vision.A founder must keep tabs on their industry.A founder must take responsibility.A founder is often _the_ customer support. There’s a lot going on in a startup and because there’s nobody else to take care of it all, these things fall on the shoulders of founders. We Speak With Washington DC 500 Startups, Startup: Speek. While a lot of people are talking about TechCrunch Disrupt NY Battlefield winner UberConference when it comes to conference calling startups, another conference calling startup has been brewing in the Washington DC area.
We first got to check out Speek back in May at the Capital Connection and TechBuzz conference in Washington DC. After carefully checking out both UberConference and Speek, Speek seems to be the simplest, most easy to understand conference calling solution out there. It’s no wonder that Speek has everything together, it’s founded by John Bracken the founder of e-vite and Danny Boice who attended Harvard and is a former executive with The College Board.
More importantly though is how easy it is to setup Speek and get started with your own special url. Speek is working out of AOL’s Fishbowl incubator in the Washington DC area, along another great DC startup CONT3NT. Check out our interview with Boice below: What is Speek? In layman’s terms, how does it work? People. Linkage: Reasons to Love New York 2012 - Chicago Theater. “I want two eggs and a full stack of pancakes—I want the Big Boy Special,” Tracy Letts informs the waitress in his flannelly baritone, “because I’m a big boy.” Letts—a ruddy 47 and north of six feet—is earning those pancakes, shouldering a pair of spectacular careers. In one, he’s a revered stage performer (theater lovers still chatter about his Kenneth Tynan in Orson’s Shadow); in the other, he’s a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright (August: Osage County, Bug, Killer Joe).
Plus, a body burns a lot of calories playing George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Seven times a week. That last word sounds encased in faint, contemptuous air quotes: Letts is a guy who refers to scenework as “carpentry,” and while he’d be the last to claim Art is Easy—even though he makes it look that way—he doesn’t strike you as a tortured sort. That approach is part of what allows Letts to function at the tippy-top of his two fields, writing and performing. Open Source Entrepreneurship. Applying the Golden Ratio in Modern Designs.
Editor’s note: This is an article contributed by Chris Pentago, an experienced web developer, designer and internet marketer interested in key technologies to make your online business perform. During his career, he worked with some of biggest Australian brands. He’s now currently employed as marketing consultant for NiceDesign.biz, Perth-based graphic design agency. Follow @ChrisPentago on Twitter. The ideal web page is both functional and harmonious, but even the most seasoned web designers can have trouble telling you what gives a design natural flow. In spite of color and navigation theories out there, sometimes the most crucial aspect of a perfect web page’s aesthetic seems ineffable. (Image Source: world-mysteries.com) By underpinning the design of your website with a literally natural order, viewers may find your design more interesting and innately pleasing. The Golden What? (Image Source: mathsisfun.com) (Image Source: creativeautomaton.com) Natural Beauty Divine Composition For text.
12 Months of Skiing, From Chile to China. Ten Lessons from Peter Thiel's Class On Startups. Peter Nixey - The 22 rules of Startup storytelling. I'm Peter, a Rails developer and entrepreneur. I'm an ex-computer vision researcher, the former CEO of Clickpass and a YC alum. I have built and sold a lot of different software and am now the CTO of Brojure.com - which lets you quickly create stunning sales pitches I just finished reading the excellent 22 rules of storytelling as described by Pixar storyboard artist, Emma Coats.
They’re brilliant and give a glimpse of what feeds the magic of Pixar. I’ve occasionally ruminated that just as persuading folks to join or invest in a startup requires storytelling, so the corollary is that startup-building means story-writing. Thinking about writing a good story is a surprisingly helpful tool to ensure you tell one. A good startup should therefore be a good story. Emmas guide to storytelling and its startup-building corollaries: 1. Unfortunately this might be the one point that doesn’t ring true. 2. 2. You’ll only really discover what your product is after you release it. 4. 5: Simplify. 7. 8. Rant: Can You "Buy Time" With Small Barrels?
There is a surge in micro-distilleries, small, artisan producers of a variety of spirits, from vodka to rum, whiskey to gin. For example, in Massachusetts, you can find micro-distilleries such as Privateer Rum, Turkey Shore Distilleries, Ryan & Wood Distilleries, and Bully Boy Distillers. You can find micro-distilleries though all across the country, and many more are likely to pop up over the next few years. That is certainly a very positive movement. One controversial practice of some of these micro-distilleries is the use of small oak barrels for maturation. As with wine, barrel aging can be very important for certain spirits, especially whiskey and rums, though the size of the barrels can vary widely.
Small barrels are generally considered to range from 5-15 gallons. The standard size of a whiskey barrel is 53 gallons, and American whiskey commonly ages for 4-8 years, if not longer. It is also crucial to understand that extraction is only one element of barrel maturation. A Booze of One's Own: The Micro Distillery Boom. What’s that you say? Your product is locally produced, hand-crafted and highly intoxicating? Please, just take my wallet. Micro-distilleries—also called craft distilleries—make relative thimblefuls of spirits compared to companies like Jack Daniels. As with any other “craft” good, the products’ main selling point is typically the process: where they’re made, what unexpected ingredients are used, how small and special each and every batch is. And these businesses, buoyed by America’s artisanal love affair, are popping up across the U.S. like corks at a wedding reception.
According to an industry analysis presented on April 3 at the American Distilling Institute (ADI) Conference, there were roughly 50 micro-distilleries operating in 2005; today there are about 250 spread among 45 states. And in ten years time, there could be 1,000 little stills churning out potent potables. (MORE: Food Fight! That kind of discount can make all the difference for a startup trying to open its doors. Why becoming a data scientist might be easier than you think — Data | GigaOM. August 2012. By Terry Dillman Concerned about the threat that debris from the March 2011 tsunami that wracked Japan poses to ocean-going vessels, US Representative Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) and US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) met in Newport with fishing vessel, tugboat and steamship operators on June 30 to discuss what those operators are seeing in the ocean, what is being done about it, and what still needs doing. The meeting at Oregon State University (OSU)’s Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC) also included representatives from the US Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and various state and local officials.
“A lot of attention has focused on the debris that is washing ashore along our coast, but it’s important that we not overlook what’s in the water and the dangers it poses to fishermen, tugboat operators, steamboat operators and others,” Wyden noted. “It’s what you can’t see that is our biggest concern,” Schrader said. Gov. Invasive Species a Big Concern Dream Team. Cold Bay Ideally Suited for Transporting Live Crab to Asia - Aleutians East Borough. It’s an idea that's been around for quite a while, but whose time may have finally come: the transport of live crab directly from the Aleutians East Borough ‘hub’ port of Cold Bay to markets in China and other Asian countries.
Former Cold Bay terminal manager Monty Martin was a founding member of the Cold Bay International Airport Enhancement Committee (CIAEC) in the fall of 2009, soliciting support for the shipment of raw fish products such as king crab, cod milt, fresh salmon fillets and roe through the Cold Bay hub. The idea is far from new, but has new life, due to recent events. Back from an official trip to China, Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development Commissioner Susan Bell was featured on a recent Channel 2 News story (see link below). Last month, Commissioner Bell, along with Department of Transportation Commissioner Marc Luiken and other state officials, met with Mayor Mack and other representatives from the Borough and crab industry.
Live dungeness crab. Software Is Eating The Fashion World And The VCs Are Going Shopping. Over the last couple of years a new trend amongst startups has been towards addressing incumbent industries. And there are few such traditional sectors as the world of fashion. Hence we’ve seen a great deal of activity in the space. We’ve seen the rise of apps to measure our bodies for clothes and personalise our fashion shopping experience.
We’ve even seen fashion startups start to acquire each other. What the heck is going on? This will be prize money in the form of a convertible note for the winning startup at the Decoded Fashion London event in November. Meanwhile, back in London fashion startups continue to proliferate, with the likes of EDITD, Lyst and WIWT making increasingly bigger waves. However, it’s not all been plain sailing. Lookk allows upcoming fashion designers to cut out the traditional network of buyers and sell clothes straight to consumers and actually making them as well. There is no doubt fashion startups are definitely the new black. Why Salespeople Make Bad Fundraisers.
Editor’s note: Contributor Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of WatchMojo. Follow him @ashkan. Company founders are the quintessential cheerleaders, promoting their vision and company every chance they get. But that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily the best at two core functions: selling and fundraising (and many are bad at both but excel at other functions, like technology). While generating revenue and raising capital require a lot of the same traits, in my experience those who are good at one tend to be poor at the other.
Always Be Closing: Coffee is for Closers Some salespeople are driven by money, others less so – but all are driven to close the deal. Most salespeople will tell you that selling is an art. What does it take to be a great salesman? Ultimately, selling a good or service requires that 1- you hustle; 2- you always follow up; 3- you don’t take no for an answer; 4- you offer more and more value until you close the deal. c) My company was based in Montreal, Scarcity. Changemakrs Looks To Reinvent Inspirational Quotes For A More Social Web. What If Founders Did Venture Capital Math? Momentum for Enterprise Mobile Apps - Workday, Salesforce.com and Box.net. Japanese Universities Go Global, but Slowly. Who Knew the Most Creative Seed Fund Was in Grand Rapids? - Alexis C. Madrigal. Designers Criticize Apple's User Interface For OS X and iOS. Prophets trends in Interactive Design 2012.
30 New Typefaces You Need To Know About. The 11th Principle of Good Design | Wells Riley. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says mobile efforts will 'make a lot more money' than website. Website Design Analysis Of Ten World Class Brands. What You Need to Know to Pair Fonts Well. This 7-Step Content Marketing Plan Earned an $87 Million Paycheck. 4 Pro Tips For Publishers Building A Native Ad Strategy. Four ways to become a spellbinding online personality. Instagram Is 12X Bigger Than When Facebook Bought It.