If I had to place my vote as to which restaurant in the world was the most “geeky” or most technologically advanced, it would definitely go towards the “Pearl” restaurant in downtown Richmond. This Australian-based establishment, headed by Chris Lucas is in the process of moving over the restaurant’s entire menu-system to iPads. As you may gather, the Pearl will make use of it’s own specialized iPad app that will let people browse food and drink selections like never before, giving them deep and interesting options in choosing their meal.
But that’s as far as it goes. According to Lucas, there is still a very important part reserved for the waiter/waitress in actually placing the order. Keeping the customer from directly ordering the food ensures that the “cheap” fast food feel doesn’t creep in — at least that’s what I’m picking up. In the end, a restaurant where you can sit down, pick up an iPad and drill down into your meal with vivid pictures and explanations is pretty mouth watering.
For now, the Pearl only has four iPads on hand, though eleven more are on order. Cost is undoubtedly high — 15 iPads and over $40,000 in development costs on the “Pearl app” alone with more iPads obviously needed. Talk of iPads, development costs, and business models aside, this is cool — very cool….
I’ve seen plenty of stop-motion videos before. Some better than others. The “Paper Mario Decimates a Classroom and Terrorizes a Building” video that is hiding just after the jump is pretty sweet. It shows us Paper Mario’s journey starting in a classroom and eventually making his way down to the nurse…perhaps to see Dr. Mario, hmm? Pretty good stuff. Give it a look…
Say you want to get a group of kids motivated. How about starting off with the line “Don’t eat sugary snacks, snort coke instead. Ya, not exactly a winner there, is it? In much the same manner of nonsense, the CEO (John Williams) of Domtar — a paper making company — is launching a major campaign this summer geared towards kids. The message: “Put it on paper”…
Seeing as how I got to fly the skies back in January when attending CES, I can somewhat relate to this — mobile boarding passes. According to Trinity Mobile (one of the leading companies behind mobile boarding passes), 2009 saw an increase in mobile boarding pass usage to the tune of 1200%+. Talk about progress. According to their data, over 600,000 fliers opted in (voluntarily) for the paper-free boarding option as opposed to the meager ~50,000 from 2008. What’s impressive however is that there really hasn’t been any big public marketing push from either Trinity or the major airlines meaning users are opting in for this service by themselves.
As we as a society further entrench technology into our daily lives, we can expect to see the number of paper-based boarding passes shrink with each passing year. Estimations by Trinity have 2010 offering up over 2 billion mobile boarding passes with that number skyrocketing to over 15 billion by 2014.
I honestly can’t see why anyone would favor a paper boarding pass over a mobile/electronic one. It’s exponentially more convenient, which is why I only use such things. Who else has gone electronic on their voyages across the planet? If you have opted out of paper-based boarding passes, how easy or not easy has the whole experience been for you?
FYI: I’ve only flown out of major airports so I would expect them to be more on the up and up technologically speaking. A small regional airport may not quite be there yet. Drop a comment.
I personally don’t have the patience for too many crafty hobbies. Even though I can surely look ahead to how good the finished product will make me feel, I still get held up in the present, thinking about how long it could/would take me to finish said hobby. While I may have my own patience issues, I can certainly enjoy the fruits of someone else’s extensive efforts. Case in point: The *literal* Paper Mario motion picture, stop motion picture that is.
A crafty young fellow on YouTube who goes by “Smartkid82504″ put together a 300 frame Mario Bros. stop motion movie for an Art and Alternative Media course at Boston College. 36 hours after the idea’s conception, Smartkid82504 was rockin’ his new stop motion movie for the whole world to see. Heck, even 36 hours is a long haul for me. What can I say, I’m easily distracted. Enough small talk. Give the vid below a looksie and let us know what you think.
When trying to grow your business, especially one in this digital age with competitors cropping up by the hundreds if not thousands, shooting yourself in the foot with poor business decisions doesn’t seem like a very good way to continue rolling in the dough. For Newsday (which is owned by Cablevision) a paywall isn’t necessarily the best idea as many customers expect a free web portal, the way they are going about it is all wrong. The likely scenario would seem to be as such:
Customers who already subscribe to Cablevision TV or Newsday print papers can access Newsday online for free.
New customers who do not subscribe to either Cablevision or Newsday products will pay a $10/month fee
Seems reasonable for a paywall scheme does it not? Well, they got part of it right — current customers of Cablevision or Newsday do in fact get access to Newsday online for free. New to the Newsday online scene are ya? That’ll be $5 — per week. *rolls eyes*
Are they trying to kill themselves? If you block off new subscribers who simply don’t want Cablevision TV service or an actual Newsday print paper showing up at their door step by charging them for online access, they’re just going to go elsewhere. If your business — the newspaper industry — isn’t doing so hot, bringing in new customers to would seem like a pretty high priority. I guess Cablevision didn’t spend that long talking to newspaper industry sources when they originally purchased Newsday and admitted they had no idea on how to run a newspaper business. Mass defect coming soon.
You may have stumbled across an article last week by TUAW that highlighted an iPhone 3GS user’s (“Lgvoyagerguy”) massive 13,000 page AT&T phone bill. The reason for the Amazon execution was the seemingly impossible “record” of 662,258 text messages being sent…in ONE month. We all know how AT&T loves to save paper. However, looking at the numbers in greater detail, that 662,258 text messages in one month breaks down to roughly 22,075 per day which breaks down to ~15-16 text messages per minute. While it would be a challenge to send 15 text messages in one minute, it isn’t out of the question. Though it’s worth noting that text messages would be a character or two at most. Though plausible, keeping up this rate for a full month is impractical and likely the result of machine intervention. What exactly is that?
Lgvoyagerguy most likely had help by signing up for text message based alerts — every single one he could possibly find I imagine. When you’re getting constant texts from outside sources, the number can definitely get racked up. Though it wouldn’t in the case that we didn’t have to pay for incoming content such as texts, calls, etc. But that’s an entirely different issue. So in the end we’re left second guessing this claim. While the video over at TUAW does in fact prove this guy really sent/received 662,258 text messages and did receive an equally large amount of tree’s in a box, the “real world” ability to hit this number is anything but. Thoughts?
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When trying to grow your business, especially one in this digital age with competitors cropping up by the hundreds if not thousands, shooting yourself in the foot with poor business decisions doesn’t seem like a very good way to continue rolling in the dough. For Newsday (which is owned by Cablevision) a paywall isn’t necessarily the best idea as many customers expect a free web portal, the way they are going about it is all wrong. The likely scenario would seem to be as such:
