Does the post office still deliver letters?

 Commerce, Personal  No Responses »
Sep 122012
 

That the main function of the post office is to deliver letters may be obvious to many, but apparently it wasn’t obvious to a postal employee today when my wife tried to mail an oversize letter to Hungary. It would be about $30 surface, or $60 air mail, said the young employee to my wife who was so surprised at first, she was unable to respond. Thankfully, a senior clerk overheard the conversation and eventually came to her colleague’s rescue, explaining to her that a letter is not a parcel. Actual cost? $4.20, for a letter weighing between 50 and 100 grams. Though I am seriously beginning to wonder if at least half that price is due to the inefficiencies of inept postal employees…

 Posted by at 5:26 pm

How not to fake an ad

 Commerce, Technology  No Responses »
Sep 082012
 

Poor Nokia. The struggling mobile phone manufacturer is about to introduce its new flagship phone, the Lumia 920. The phone supposedly has a high quality camera with image stabilization, which Nokia proudly showed in a YouTube ad. The ad shows a young couple, the geeky man taking videos of her girlfriend while they ride bicycles, go to an amusement park, or just generally goof off.

Except that it’s all a fake. Look closely at this frame, about 27 seconds into the video:

Look at the reflection in the window of that mobile home (or whatever it is). Do you see the girl’s goofy boyfriend, riding his bicycle while holding a phone? Of course not. What you do see is a white van with its side door open, revealing a cameraman with a large, professional camera.

Ouch.

I am actually rooting for Nokia. I even think that Windows 8, while a disaster on the desktop, will likely be a good smartphone or tablet operating system if it is given the chance. None of which excuses the phony ad.

To their credit, Nokia admitted the fake right away, and the updated version of the video that is presently on YouTube says that much. Still…

But then, as P. T. Barnum once supposedly said, any publicity is good publicity. Maybe Nokia will actually benefit from the extra publicity that their commercial receives as a result of this fiasco.

 Posted by at 4:57 pm

The story of free Red Cross donuts

 Commerce, History  No Responses »
Jul 162012
 

I just listened to an interesting story on NPR: how the Red Cross lost (and never regained!) the trust of American soldiers 70 years ago. It’s a cautionary tale about charging for things that were once free, and how that can irreversibly change perceptions.

The Red Cross made a mistake in 1942 when it obeyed a request from America’s then secretary of war and started charging GIs overseas, to eliminate tension that arose because British soldiers had to pay for similar services. Just how bad are the consequences? Seventy years later, when NPR’s reporter told a veteran that the Red Cross still offers donuts for free, the response was predictably skeptical: “stale donuts probably, too”.

 Posted by at 5:41 pm

Microsoft MBA

 Commerce, Computers, Internet  No Responses »
Jun 122012
 

This graphic was sent to me by its creator with an obvious viral marketing intent; but since it is both funny and informative, I said what the heck, why not? In any case, I just love that photograph of Ballmer on which he looks like a mad 1930s dictator from some wacky computer game (Zork Nemesis comes to mind).

 Posted by at 10:33 am

Made in Canada

 Canada, Commerce, Economy  No Responses »
Sep 122011
 

The other day, I bought some new undershirts. It was my wife who noticed something on the label that escaped my attention: Made in Canada/Fabrique au Canada. It has been so long since I last saw such a label, I almost forgot what it looks like. The undershirts were made by Stanfields, in Nova Scotia.

I also got two books from my wife. They were both printed in the USA. What can I say… neat.

 Posted by at 7:51 pm

Marineland

 Canada, Commerce, Television  4 Responses »
Jul 302011
 

Every summer, on every Canadian TV channel, during just about every commercial break, a commercial for Marineland in Niagara Falls is shown… with a song that just drives me bonkers. I’d sooner listen to a hundred pieces of chalk scratching a hundred chalkboards. Will they ever stop?

 Posted by at 12:49 am

Full circle

 Commerce, Computers, Mathematics  No Responses »
Jul 022011
 

Yesterday, Intel lost the bid for the patent assets of defunct Canadian company Nortel, despite joining forces with Google.

Google bid some odd amounts; for instance, at one point they bid $1,902,160,540.

The digits happen to be those of Brun’s constant: B2 = 1.90216058…

Brun’s constant is the sum of the reciprocals of twin primes. B2 = (1/3 + 1/5) + (1/5 + 1/7) + (1/11 + 1/13) + … According to Brun’s theorem, this sum converges. The limit of the sum is Brun’s constant.

A professor of mathematics named Thomas Nicely once used a group of computers to calculate twin primes up to 1e14, computing Brun’s constant among other things.

At one point, Nicely’s computations failed. After eliminating other sources of error, Nicely concluded that the problem was a fault in the new Pentium processors present in some recently acquired computers in the group.

Nicely notified Intel, but it wasn’t until after a public relations disaster that Intel finally responded the way they should have in the first place, offering to replace all affected processors. This cost Intel $475 million.

Who knows, if they still had that extra $475 million cash in their pockets, they could have bid more and won yesterday.

 Posted by at 10:21 pm

Google, not yet evil?

 Commerce, Internet, Politics  No Responses »
Jan 172010
 

I wondered recently about Google not (yet) being evil.

If recent news are to be believed, Google decided to play hardball with the Chinese government. Good for them! I hope Google prevails, but even if they don’t, I think they should be applauded for having the guts.

Now here’s the $0.02 question (or, in the case of Google, more likely the multibillion dollar question): how long before Google’s CEO gets fired for failing to maximize shareholder value?

 Posted by at 3:43 am
 Newer Entries