GirlHacker's Random Log

almost daily since 1999

 

The annual economic indicator that is Vogue’s September ad count has posted a solid gain. The tally is 727 ad pages, more than 100 over last year. It still remains to be seen if the retail season will be strong through back-to-school and Christmas shopping. I may need to purchase a stronger shelf for my heavy collection of September Vogues though.

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Violin teacher Elizabeth Faidley traveled to New York to find a new violin and left with an instrument she didn’t want and a plan to hook the salesman, Jonathan Solars, who knew it wasn’t the right violin for her. Her plan consisted of calling him once a week for a month to ostensibly discuss the violin’s unsuitability. Their story makes for a musical Vows column in the N.Y. Times, which includes a video of the two playing a duet despite Mr. Solars’ confession that “Elizabeth’s horrible to play music with because she has to be in charge.” He eventually found a violin bold enough for her personality. And their wedding was suitably filled with music from friends and students.

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Puffin photos! From Project Puffin in Rockland, Maine.

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Shopping carts are so easy to roll off and so handy to cart off your shopping to the bus stop, your home, your car parked a few lots away. City officials estimate that 100 carts are abandoned in east Bellevue every day. So they are going to crack down on this “blight and a safety hazard” by creating regulations for store owners to contain their carts. “Cart-containment plans” and fines in Renton have been effective at reducing the number of carts littering the landscape.

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Was Hitler’s record collection really sitting in an attic near Moscow all these years? Alex Ross (the New Yorker’s classical music writer) doubts it. Stephen Moss of the Guardian is also suspicious. But sensational headlines sell, and the original reports focus in on the recordings of Jewish soloists and music from those Nazi classified “subhumans”: Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Rachmaninoff.

Written by ltao

August 9th, 2007 at 3:47 am

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Diners certainly differ in their waitstaff tipping philosophies and the many reader comments on a Seattle Times article about gratuities show how strong those opinions can be. A reader whose sick of tipping writes “get some training so you can get a better job!” Another anti-tip commenter says he only tips because he doesn’t want servers to put anything nasty in his food. One ex-server claims that the tip jar contents at Salumi goes straight to the owner (or did when he worked there; he says he was fired for mentioning it). There’s a lot of bitterness in these comments.

Written by ltao

August 9th, 2007 at 3:21 am

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When you sell ads you need to give your customer some idea of who will see the results of their investment. That explains this rather odd partnership of two sister companies: Erudite Inc., who makes tracking and security devices for shipping containers, and GBoards Inc. who is selling advertising on those shipping containers. In a promotion related to the 2008 Olympics, the companies have created the China8 Project. In May a dragon-headed ship will sail to China carrying humanitarian aid and merchandise giveaways. The trip will test out Erudite’s tracking and be, literally, an advertising vehicle. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, offshore cell phone provider SeaMobile has signed on as the first advertiser. A 40-container advertising package is $1.2 million and the plan is to place the ad-covered containers in various locations in Shanghai and Beijing for 180 days.

Written by ltao

August 8th, 2007 at 4:27 am

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In 2000 McDonald’s decided to diversify and bought the Boston Market (Chicken!) chain. The same initiative spurred investments in Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc., Donato’s Pizza and Fazoli’s Italian fast-food. But now the company is refocusing on its core burger business and Boston Market has just been sold to Sun Capital Partners who had also picked up the Fazoli’s stake. Chipotle was taken public in 2006 and McDonald’s divested its investment. Donato’s was sold back to its founders in 2003. Sun Capital Partners is a private investment firm whose other food holdings include Hickory Farms.

Written by ltao

August 8th, 2007 at 4:09 am

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The Minnesota bridge tragedy prompted several Seattle locals to put fingers to keyboard and compose Letters to the Editor regarding our aging infrastructure. The list of expensive endeavors and proposals whose dollars are cited as being better spent on things like the aging 520 bridge and Alaskan Way Viaduct include: light rail, free health care to the children of illegal immigrants, “President Bush’s recent gift of $250 billion of our tax money to the richest 8,000 families”, the $30 million parking garage at Woodland Park Zoo, bicycle paths, a new arena for the Sonics, and, of course, the war.

Written by ltao

August 7th, 2007 at 4:59 am

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In 1997 I was working for a little games company called Purple Moon, spun out of Paul Allen’s Interval Research. Our target market was girls aged 8-12. Those of us on the website team who’d already been interacting online for years saw and realized the potential for the community website that we were building, though much of the company’s marketing and mindshare was spent on computer games and merchandise. By the time the company went under there was a healthy community of young girls busily exchanging postcards and electronic treasures on purple-moon.com. Yesterday I got acquainted with Facebook, the community site that these same girls are likely using nowadays, and I found a delightful surprise. There’s a small Purple Moon group on Facebook. These young women, now of high school and college age have remembered the site as a significant enough part of their lives to form and find a group devoted to it. I joined the company hoping to make a difference in girls’ lives and never really believed I had done so, until now.

Written by ltao

August 7th, 2007 at 4:27 am

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