June 26, 2006
From armchair traveller to practical traveller. We came across a good cheat sheet today about overseas A.T.M. You never know, NYT these days does a lot of service journalism. In a piece entitled, “How to Get the Best Exchange Rate (and Avoid Fees)”, Daivd Kelly recommends -
Withdraw money from an A.T.M. from European banks, as they almost always offer lower rates than commercial exchange counters.
The caveat is, if you use your Citibank card to withdraw money from your checking account at a foreign Citibank A.T.M., there’s still a foreign exchange fee of 1 percent of the transaction in dollars.
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David Warsh’s book, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations, has received rave reviews since it was published last month.
Paul Krugman wrote at the NYT that the book is for those who “like reading stories of high intellectual drama,” especially those who “want to know the origin of ideas.” Tim Harford at the FT called it a “riveting read.” The Economist considered it does a fine job exploring “the riddle of technology and prosperity,” and the best book since Peter Bernstein’s “Capital Ideas”.
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According to its own logs, New York Times served 25 million unique readers in April via its NYTimes.com Web site whereas its paper circulation was only 1.1 million.
The paradox for MSM is as much as people may have given up the newspaper habit, their appetite for news has become insatiable. To avoid an agonizing death, they must adapt and migrate to the web where news blogs thrive. If you’re an au courant, you’ll know -
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“Screens,” a new New York Times blog by television critic Virginia Heffernan on media convergence.
Her opening shot: “With television and the Internet converging at last, who’s going to watch all this here-goes-nothing online video?” Of course, Heffernan will blog the revolution, uh, “all of that web video, viral video, user-driven video, custom interactive video, consumer-generated video, embedded video ads, web-based VOD, broadband television, diavlogs, vcasts, vlogs, video podcasts, mobisodes, webisodes and mashups.”
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FT’s catchy headline definitely caught our eyes.
C-Ice, a drink made with tea and cannabis, claims to boost the immune system as a result of the vitamins, minerals, omega oils and amino acids found in cannabis. Of course, THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the psychoactive substance found in the cannabis plant, has been removed, according to the report.
C-Ice is the latest attempt by entrepreneurs to capitalize on consumers’ increasing appetite for soft drinks with health benefits. In the last few years, bottled water, fruit drinks and so-called “functional drinks” in the “better for you” category have all seen a surge in demand. Notable examples include energy drinks such as Red Bull, sports drinks such as Powerade and nutraceuticals such as Sirco, a fruit drink claimed to thin the blood.
WSJ reports today that bloggers find financial backers for their independent news sites in the attempt to turn them into businesses.
Previously, gossip and personal opinion sites characterize much of the investment in the medium. The just announced investment by venture capitalist Alan Patricof in ContentNext Media Inc., the parent company of the popular digital media news site, PaidContent, indicates investors’ confidence in the viability of blogs as an outlet for journalism.
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Amid the hype about Digg, YouTube, etc, much has been written lately about user-generated content, citizen journalism, group intelligence, etc. James Surowiecki, business columnist at The New Yorker, calls it “The Wisdom of Crowds“, in his 2004 book subtitled “Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.”
The idea is that large numbers of loosely connected strangers are better at solving problems and predicting the future than a few elites. Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition, coordination and cooperation and argues that “wise crowds” need the following four elements in order to produce better outcomes than individual experts.
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