Category: Business

The other guys in digital TV

The other guys in digital TV | Tech News on ZDNet
Over the past year or so, a group of small companies–Vizio, Syntax-Brillian, Westinghouse Digital and Polaroid–have gained a greater share of the TV market in the U.S. than the name-brand computer companies.

Costs are kept low due to the company’s structure. Vizio employs only about 55 people in the U.S. and most of them work the customer support desk, according to Wang. There are a few additional employees overseas. “We like to keep it really lean,” Wang said. Second, Vizio sold TVs through Costco and Sam’s Club, although it now sells some models in Circuit City. These retailers, which are selling an increasing number of TVs, typically are looking for gross margins on their products only in the 10 percent range, said Young. Electronics retailers are looking for 25 percent or more.

Don’t Sit Up Straight

“Don’t Sit Up Straight,” Some Experts Are Advising
Almost from childhood, people are told to sit up straight. New research suggests it could be bad advice.

Researchers at Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen, Scotland, found that sitting upright with a straight back and thighs parallel to the floor increases the strain on lumbar discs in the lower back, a prescription for pain. Waseem Amir Bashir, M.B.Ch.B., F.R.C.R, author and clinical fellow in the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta Hospital in Canada, delivered the researchers’ findings at the November meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago.

The RSNA press release said the newly-designed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine the researchers used provides a full view of the back in sitting position. It’s a positional scanner, which means patients can be scanned seated or standing. Traditional scanners require patients to lie flat, a position that places different strains on the back and can mask causes of pain associated with varied movements or postures.

“A 135-degree body-thigh sitting posture was demonstrated to be the best biomechanical sitting position, as opposed to a 90-degree posture, which most people consider normal,” Dr. Bashir reported. The study indicates that less strain is placed on the spinal disks and associated muscles and tendons in a more relaxed sitting position. See Times of London Graphic.

Say Yes to Mess

Say Yes to Mess « Librarian’s place
An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.

To a professional organizer brandishing colored files and stackable trays, cluttered horizontal surfaces are a horror; to cognitive psychologists like Jay Brand, who works in the Ideation Group of Haworth Inc., the huge office furniture company, their peaks and valleys glow with intellectual intent and showcase a mind whirring away: sorting, linking, producing. (By extension, a clean desk can be seen as a dormant area, an indication that no thought or work is being undertaken.)

His studies and others, like a survey conducted last year by Ajilon Professional Staffing, in Saddle Brook, N.J., which linked messy desks to higher salaries (and neat ones to salaries under $35,000), answer Einstein’s oft-quoted remark, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk?”

OpenTable Restaurants and Restaurant Reservations

OpenTable Restaurants and Restaurant Reservations
Make Restaurant Reservations Online
Free – Instant – Confirmed
6,000 Restaurants with 30 Million Diners Seated

We were able to see what was the 1st day when we could get a table at prime time (around 7) at a popular local eatery, even while the place was closed.

Exotic Dancers Spray on Latex Coverings

Exotic Dancers Spray on Latex Coverings – Forbes.com
Under Alabama’s strict law regulating exotic dancers, any skin that would normally be covered by a modest bikini must be swathed in an opaque covering. But the law doesn’t specify what kind of material must be used, so, in the legal sense, a nylon swimsuit and spray-on latex are virtually the same.

“You can get it that matches your skin color,” said Patterson. “The only thing I hear from the girls is that it can be kind of irritating.

DVD players finally outnumber VCRs

DVD players finally outnumber VCRs
Although DVD players dropped below the magic $100 barrier some time ago, they have only just caught up with the VCR, according to Nielsen. The media tracking firm says that DVD player ownership has finally surpassed VCR ownership for the first time.

During the third quarter of 2006, 81.2 percent of all US households reported owning at least one DVD player compared to 79.2 percent for VCRs. That figure marks a 6 percent increase in DVD player ownership from the same period in 2005, while VCRs ownership fell. It’s a far cry from 1999, when Nielsen first began tracking DVD ownership. At the end of the 90s, only 6.7 percent of households owned a DVD player, compared with 88.6 percent owning VCRs.

Iran’s oil exports may disappear

Report: Iran’s oil exports may disappear
Iran is suffering a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports, and if the trend continues income could virtually disappear by 2015, according to an analysis released Monday by the National Academy of Sciences.

Iran’s economic woes could make the country unstable and vulnerable, with its oil industry crippled, Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University, said in the report and in an interview.

Iran earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. The decline is estimated at 10 to 12 percent annually. In less than five years exports could be halved and then disappear by 2015, Stern predicted. Photo of shop in Esfahan, Iran. Continue reading “Iran’s oil exports may disappear”

The New UberRich

The Atlas of New Money – WSJ.com
Just as the hedge-fund industry is remaking the global economy, so too is it remaking the world of wealth. A surge of money is reshaping these wealthy communities as drastically as did the dot-com boom of nearly a decade ago or the wealth of such industrial icons as Rockefeller and Carnegie did a century ago. In less than a decade, hedge funds have created a class of centimillionaires. Lightly regulated, with a propensity for high risk, hedge funds have drawn wealthy investors and institutions looking for bigger paydays than they can get from stocks and bonds.

The roughly $1.2 trillion controlled by the world’s 8,000-plus hedge funds is dwarfed by the $10 trillion in U.S. mutual funds, which are regulated and make their investments public. While mutual funds generally charge fees of 1% or 2% of assets, hedge-fund managers typically add on an additional 20% or more of any profit. Last year, according to Hedge Fund Research, hedge funds returned 9.3% on average. The top 26 hedge-fund managers last year received pay averaging $363 million — up 45% from 2004, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.

Like other booms, this one could bust. Hedge funds have returned about 11% this year — down from more than 31% in 1999, according to Hedge Fund Research, a Chicago firm.