MetaFilter posts tagged with commerce

The best of the web - that'll be $30, please

Gyan — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 05:37:48 -0800

Open access: The true cost of science publishing

All this energy calling me, back where it comes from....

zarq — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:42:16 -0800

The Cleveland Memory Project is an archive of photos, postcards, videos, recordings, clippings, ebooks, personal papers, maps and other historical "goodies" about the city. "It's a collaborative endeavor of many local historical societies, public libraries and government agencies who have mounted their own local history." On Flickr. The site contains over 50,000 photos. Print and video interviews with the Project's chair: librarian Bill Barrow.

Retweet to add additional diamonds to your shopping basket

Wordshore — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 05:03:32 -0800

Twitter is experimenting with online shopping: "American Express card holders who connect their card numbers to their Twitter accounts can post on Twitter to trigger a purchase of select products, including discounted American Express gift cards, Kindle Fire tablets from Amazon.com Inc. and jewelry from designer Donna Karan. The program will roll out over the next few days." CNET report the mechanism for purchasing an item: "Amex cardholders first sync their card with Twitter. Then, when they come across products that are eligible to purchase under the plan -- products that American Express will promote through a Twitter feed -- they simply send out a tweet that includes a special hashtag. Amex will then send them an @-reply with a confirming hashtag. Finally, the buyer has to send out a second tweet with the special hashtag within 15 minutes." Adweek adds: "...Once they do, Amex will process the order and send the product via free two-day shipping." CNN have more on the first sale offer: "The two companies announced the partnership on Monday and kicked it off with a single product offering, a $25 American Express gift card for $15. Other products will be available starting Wednesday morning." The Atlantic wire hedge their bets on whether this will be successful or not: "There are a lot of things about this arrangement not to like, but we'll leave it to our commenters to point them out. Suffice it to say that this strange new social shopping idea is both strange and new. It could fail fabulously, or people could be really into it. Kind of like Twitter, circa 2007."

The Old Corner Bookstore is Now a Chipotle

Rustic Etruscan — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 20:21:59 -0800

"'Personally, I think it’s slightly sad how easy it was to get,' Jessica says, referring to the building. She brightens. 'But everyone at Chipotle was really excited to get this spot because of the history, the chance to be a part of Boston’s history. This is the oldest retail location in Boston.'" (via)

Spockanalia sounds dirty

Mezentian — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:11:23 -0800

Fan fiction has, arguably, existed in some form since 1614, and it has certainly been in existence since the Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia was published in 1967, while derivative works and unofficial adaptations have long existed (such as Edison's Frankenstein) in the mass market, most obviously Nosferatu (unofficial trailer, whole film) and the infamous Tijuana bibles, but in the modern world of extended copyright and Internet commerce are fan fiction and fan art legal?

Letters to Both Sides

Artw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 11:43:42 -0800

Patton Oswalt’s Letters to Both Sides - Oswalt addresses "all of the comedians in the room" and "all of the gatekeepers" at Montreal’s Just For Laughs 2012 about living in a living in a "post-Louie world".

Time To Corner The Market On Passenger Jet Wing Assemblies!

cortex — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 11:07:52 -0800

Economies of Scale is a free, web-based multiplayer business/commerce simulation game under development by Scott Rubyton (aka Ratan Joyce). Players use starting capital to build production/wholesale/retail businesses from the ground up in a basic economic model, competing for market share while collaborating through business-to-business trading of goods and materials. It's more fun than getting an MBA! Also much less expensive. The game is not overly complicated to play, and has a brief tutorial that covers the core bits, but it can be a little dizzying to figure out how the pieces interact at first, so here's a quick breakdown: - There are three kinds of facilities you can build: Factories, such as plantations (grow raw fruits and veg!) or food processing plants (turn raw crops into processed ingredients!) or beverage factories (turn ingredients into consumable beverages!); Stores, which you can stock with niche-specific (farmer's market, sporting goods, high-tech gadgets) inventory that you've produced or purchased and resell it at retail at a price you fix; and R&D, buildings that research ingredients (wheat) or products (bread rolls) or processes (sugar refinement) to raise the overall quality of what your factories produce. A business might use only one or all three types of facilities, depending on what segment of the market it's aiming at. - There's a simulated international import/export wholesale market (which buys low and sells high, prices updated nightly, good for moving surplus product at small but reliable margins), a simulated retail market (which buys Store inventory based on quality of product and current market saturation/demand), and a wholly player-driven B2B market where players can buy things being sold by other players. A business might rely primarily on one of these markets to move product or on a mix; likewise, businesses might produce their own materials or rely on the B2B or import market to get their source materials. - Every facility produces output based on its current size; new facilities are 10 square meters, and can be expanded in increments of one square meter, with facility output currently directly proportional to the size of the facility (so stores sell proportionally more inventory, factories produce proportionally more product, R&D researches proportionally faster). Choosing when to invest in greater square footage (meterage?) for one or more of your facilities can be an important part of growing your business once you've got some revenue established. - The game covers a wide variety of industries under the same general template; businesses can get into everything from fresh produce to chemical refining, haberdashery to airplane manufacturing. Finding a market that isn't already over-saturated and focusing on doing one sort of thing well is a good way to start a business that makes really solid profits. (Everyone in the game starts with a fruit farm; consider anything other than being a fruit farmer as a long-term goal!) A few misc. helpful newbie tips: - The game makes a distinction between the player and their company; you can transfer cash that your player is holding to your company's cash-on-hand by visiting the Bank in the City. - There's a "welfare center" link at the bottom of the page that dispenses a small but nothing-to-sneeze-at bit of cash once daily; if you need another $100K to keep things liquid and don't mind a handout, drop by. (And then check your bank account!) - You can start any sort of business you like, but picking one thing to start with and doing it well with maybe three or four total facilities will give you more spare cash and flexibility to build up those individual facilities as you learn than trying to start up an entire vertical supply chain from scratch and spending most of your starting cash on a bunch of different 10 square meter facilities. - Materials used in a factory's production run are locked up when production starts, and the produce of that run doesn't go into your warehouse until it's done (so you won't see a real-time trickle of new inventory). If you need some materials for something else, or need to get at the output of production, you can interrupt production by clicking on the factory and hitting the big red X button. This has essentially no cost. Don't feel trapped! You can safely start a big production run knowing you'll probably interrupt it at some point. - While you're still a smallish business (so at least the first few days of gameplay), you can instantly finish building or expanding a facility for free. This perk goes away when you get your feet under you, but it's great at the beginning for letting you get right back to making/selling/researching stuff instead of having to wait for a construction to finish. - In a pinch, you can resell facilities for about 2/3rds of their cost. You'll take a bit of a bath, but if you decide to streamline your business or change industries, don't be afraid to liquidate stuff you aren't using and reinvest in something you actually want. The game plays out in real time, so most of what you do is set things up and then let them do their thing, checking back in now and then to set up new production runs or update a store's inventory, or to shop on the B2B market in case there's a good deal on something other players are selling. More of a daily-checkin game than something you'll need to spend a bunch of time at a sitting on; if your business model is simple enough you could spend about five minutes once a day just restarting production runs once things are going smoothly.

"Any nation, at any time, has the capacity to create a hero."

lazaruslong — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:33:53 -0800

Neil deGrasse Tyson gives testimony on March 7, 2012 before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation (Majority member page) (Minority member page) Eight minutes of speech followed by questioning and response. 25:49, focuses heavily on arguing for the positive economic and social benefits of space exploration. Previously 1 2 3 4 5

Death of a Fucking Salesman

Trurl — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:56:10 -0800

Glengarry Glen Ross endures mainly as a spectacular display of verbal warfare and alpha-male gamesmanship. There’s a musical quality to it, with a great composer and a great chorus hitting the complicated runs of broken dialogue and solos that weave into profane poetry and nuggets of philosophical wisdom. Perhaps the greatest sign of the movie’s success, owed equally to Mamet’s script and this cast, is that it does a great sales job in itself, convincing us that there’s nobility to men who lie for a living — a bill of goods we’re all too happy to buy. ... this film is the sort of subversive art that used to get people blacklisted. No one wants to hear that America is a perverted whorehouse, where people come together only out of selfish need. No one wants to know that they too would lie, cheat, and steal in order to maximize their own bottom line, especially when so many want to believe in the benevolence of big business. Trivia note: The only words spoken by a woman in the film - "Slow tonight" - are performed by Lori Tan Chinn, who played Iris the hairdresser on Roseanne.

The means of production

Artw — Wed, 04 May 2011 11:46:56 -0800

‘Everyone is a worker.’ That is a powerful statement, if you think about it. Richard Scarry wasn’t afraid to paint contemporary American society in such bold strokes. Nor was he afraid to explain commerce and capitalism to children. - What Do People Do All Day.

Renting a read from 'newspaper landlords'

reenum — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 06:29:09 -0800

The poor in Ethiopia are often unable to buy newspapers, so they 'rent' papers for 20-30 minutes at a time from local entrepreneurs.

The Brisk, Shady Sale of ‘Loosies’

reenum — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:37:32 -0800

With the crackdown on smoking and higher cigarette taxes in New York City, people who sell individual cigarettes, also known as loosies, are rapidly gaining new customers.

I was so happy when this young person took from me

Potomac Avenue — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 13:20:54 -0800

Over the course of 45 years in the film business, Francis Ford Coppola has refined a singular code of ethics that govern his filmmaking. There are three rules: 1) Write and direct original screenplays, 2) make them with the most modern technology available, and 3) self-finance them. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script. Copyfight has an excellent response

The Economics Of Art

The Whelk — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:28:06 -0800

How much money do you make with that webcomic internet thing? Dorthy Gambrell of Cat And Girl Answers.

10% of models in Brazilian fashion week 'must be black'

VikingSword — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:25:34 -0800

São Paulo Fashion Week, the nation’s most important fashion event, has been forced by local prosecutors to ensure that at least 10 percent of its models are of African or indigenous descent. The model scouts see it differently - it's all about what sells. "The goal" Brazilian model scouts say, "is to find the right genetic cocktail of German and Italian ancestry, perhaps with some Russian or other Slavic blood thrown in. Such a mix, they say, helps produce the tall, thin girls with straight hair, fair skin and light eyes that Brazil exports to the runways of New York, Milan and Paris with stunning success." Yet, "on the pages of its magazines, Brazil’s beauty spectrum is clearer. Nonwhite women, including celebrities of varying body types, are interspersed with white models. But on the runways, the proving ground for models hoping to go abroad, the diversity drops off precipitously." "Prosecutors investigating discrimination complaints against São Paulo Fashion Week found that only 28 of the event’s 1,128 models were black in early 2008." "The Sao Paulo state prosecutor's office had threatened legal action against the organisers unless they increased the number of black models. Companies which fail to meet the new target could face fines of up to $120,000 (£76,000), prosecutors said. The agreement is also largely seen as a response to threats from a black rights group which planned to disrupt the fashion week." "Clóvis Pessoa studies facial traits that are successful on international runways and looks for towns in the south that mirror those genes." "Yet Brazil is not the same country it was in 1994, when Gisele Bündchen, the world’s top earning model, was discovered in a tiny town not far from here."

Sleepwalking into Oblivion

Artw — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:24:36 -0800

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger on paywalls and the future of journalism.

Fundable.com is closed permanently

clockworkjoe — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:51:23 -0800

Fundable.com is closed permanently. According to the site's current index, there is bad blood between the two founders of the site, Louis Helm and John Pratt. The recent story of Mary Robinette Kowal being ripped off was apparently the final straw. (as a personal note, I've run 2 fundraisers/ransoms for my podcast through fundable and have no complaints. My third ransom was still underway and I have no idea if the money will show up or be refunded to the donors.)

More Web Magazines

netbros — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:35:28 -0800

The New York Review of Ideas is a web magazine reporting about New York commerce, literature and politics. The Manzine is actually £2 for the print version, but some of the its best is also online.

The Northwest Passage

Glibpaxman — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:14:23 -0800

Scientists are now revising earlier projections about the speed at which global warming will impact the arctic ice sheet. By 2013 it could very well disappear in the summer months, opening up new sea lanes for commerce and, potentially, "a quarter of the earths oil and natural gas resources". Several arctic countries are thinking ahead, while it appears others have been for quite some time.

Better World Books

divabat — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 02:50:44 -0800

Better World Books - Recently recognized by Fast Company as one of the best for-profit social enterprises of 2008, they offer a wide selection of new and used books with free shipping in the US and less than $3 shipping elsewhere. A portion of the profits go to fund literacy organizations such as Room to Read and WorldFund, and their shipping is carbon-neutral. The only thing missing is the ability to import Amazon wishlists.

Train Runs Through Market

phrontist — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 05:43:26 -0800

Train runs through bangkok market. (via)

Peddling toward Utopia

Toekneesan — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:49:26 -0800

“Our intentions are to be as sustainable a city as possible,” said Mr. Adams, Portland's city commissioner in charge of transportation. “That means socially, that means environmentally and that means economically. The bike is great on all three of those factors. You just can’t get a better transportation return on your investment than you get with promoting bicycling.” Many city planners agree that bikes make sense, but after two riders recently lost their lives in Portland one must wonder, is there a better way?

Whole Planet

chuckdarwin — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 03:06:19 -0800

Whole Foods takes London. This South Kensington flagship store is the "quasi-messianic" company's biggest ever, comprising 80,000 square feet spread out over three floors offering 10,000 grocery items. In true American style, shoppers can choose from 1,000 different wines, 425 cheeses, 40 types of sausage, 55 in-store chefs, a pub called The Bramley, a sushi bar, a champagne and oyster bar and a DJ-booth to play music for late-night shoppers. The locals seem overwhelmed by it all.

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

ThePinkSuperhero — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 08:47:20 -0800

Busted! In one of the biggest counterfeit busts in years, a 19-month investigation reached its climax on Tuesday as federal officials conducted early-morning raids throughout the NY metropolitan area, arresting 29 people, seizing more than $230 million in merchandise and ultimately dismantling three operations believed to have imported more than $700 million in fake products over the last 24 months.

Dana Gioia says, "I don't think that Americans were smarter then, but American culture was."

cgc373 — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 10:38:59 -0800

Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

The prepared text of the speech delivered by Dana Gioia at Stanford University Commencement on June 17, 2007.