New Scientist: Space pioneer Burt Rutan foresees space tourism companies running like a fast-food franchises, with his company licensing spacecraft to tour operators. But he says he may have trouble cutting through federal regulations to get there. His company, Scaled Composites, built SpaceShipOne, the rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize for private space flight in 2004. Scaled Composites […]
Space Tourism Franchise
Wearing the Game
Iconoculture: Baseball caps are de rigueur for Sunday afternoon games. Now the entrepreneurs behind GameWear have stitched together a baseball necklace they hope becomes standard attire. A fan can send GameWear a commemorative baseball for fashioning into a “wearable trophy” necklace made from the ball’s leather and 108 stitches. While diehards aren’t likely to part with an autographed Cal Ripken, […]
Mobile TV
The Mobile Technology Weblog: Mobile TV is going to be a gold mine and errr…bigger than a big thing on Planet Big, if we’re to believe a new report by ABI Research. This will surely have mobile operators celebrating in the streets and and writing out Purchase Orders to buy copies of the report telling them how clever and successful […]
TV Advertising Trends
The New York Times: One of the great contradictions of modern American life is that almost everyone watches television while almost no one agrees anymore about what it really means to watch television. True, we know that as spring gets under way, new episodes of ”Desperate Housewives” and ”C.S.I.” and ”American Idol” will battle for prime-time supremacy in the overnight […]
Technologies for 2025
CFO.com: When CFO began publishing, back in the primordial ooze of 1985, each issue contained a sizable amount of technology coverage. The editorial slant made sense. The arrival of IBM’s original personal computer just a few years earlier, and the subsequent release of Lotus 1-2-3, had turned the finance function on its head. Suddenly liberated from the drudgery of manually […]
Dynamic In-Game Advertising
CNet: Be prepared for such moments to become a regular occurrence, thanks to a new service that inserts dynamic ads into video games. After several months of beta testing, New York start-up Massive is set to launch its in-game advertising network on Monday, with support from several major game publishers and mainstream advertisers such as Coca-Cola and Intel. In-game advertising […]
Targeting Blogs
NetImperative: Carat Interactive in the US has launched a new practice dedicated to using blogs as an advertising medium. The practice will focus on three key areas including: planning and buying ads on blogs and blog networks; “blog initiation”, which is thought to be a contract blog operation; and blog monitoring, which will track comments on key brands throughout the […]
Why I Bank With Umpqua
FastCompany: The residents of northern California got their first taste of Umpqua Bank last July when the ice-cream trucks rolled in. Only days earlier, the little-known Oregon community bank with the weird name had made headlines when it announced the acquisition of a local 27-branch bank. Now, here came Umpqua’s advance guard: trucks filled with free ice-cream sandwiches. Corny? Maybe. […]
High-Tech Threads
New York Times: A knitted bag holds a weakened heart, helping it pump blood. Electricity flows through the threads of a battery-powered fleece jacket, keeping the wearer warm. Carbon fibers are braided into structures that look like mushrooms, but are actually prototypes of automotive engine valves. Other fibers are shaped into bicycle frames and sculling oars. Textiles are no longer […]
Hooah! Energy Bar
Iconoculture: “Heard. Understood. Acknowledged.” That’s “Hooah!” – a military term, sure, but also an energy bar that has been officially fueling American soldiers in Iraq. Now available to civilians, too, the bar was developed by the Department of Defense and meets the performance-based combat requirements of MREs (meals ready to eat). The bar also has a minimum shelf life of […]