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17,000 USB Drives Left in Laundries

1 Mar

Today in pointless studies… a PR firm in the United Kingdom interviewed 400 dry cleaners (all located within the United Kingdom) and asked them how many USB drives they recovered from washing machines from forgetful clients. Thankfully, as anyone would expect, these businesses keep meticulous records about the number of USB drives left behind. Those 400 laundromats claimed that 17,000 were left behind in their establishments alone.

Do you know what that means? Throughout the world, there are probably millions of lost USB drives lonely waiting in washing machines because their owners left them behind. Thank you, Cresdant Technologies for alerting us to this epidemic. Don’t let this happen to your USB drive.

USB Drives

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Amanda Hocking Shows Power of Kindle

1 Mar

Amanda Hocking is what you would call an indie book author. She has never been formally published. Her blog (run by Blogspot) is called “My Blood Approves” and doesn’t look much different from this blog. She’s 26 and has self-published 8 books and one novella. All of those are available for download on Kindle, Barnes & Noble or other platforms. What’s the big deal then? Well, in January she sold 450,000 copies of those books (of which 99 percent were e-books). Those are really good sales figures for any author, let alone someone who is not traditionally published.

People in the book publishing world should take note. Hocking sells her books for $3. On Kindle, she keeps 70 percent of all sales with Amazon keeping the other 30 percent. The low costs of adding one’s books to these sites, combined with the potential payoff, have led many more fledgling authors to self-publish their works. More than 20 million people read e-books last year. With those numbers bound to increase, the publishing world must adjust its model or be left behind.

Amanda Hocking proves more and more people don’t need to follow the traditional path to success in the book world.

Amanda Hocking

South Korea Tries to Incite Unrest in North Korea

25 Feb

Balloons from South Korea

Hot on the heels of the unrest in the Middle East, South Korea wants North Korean citizens to begin their own uprising. They’ve employed a low tech solution to provoke them. In the past couple of days, members of the South Korean military began to fly balloons filled with leaflets on the unrest in the Middle East over the border and into North Korea.

The messages contain news of the uprisings in Egypt and Libya, suggesting “a dictatorial regime is destined to collapse.” More than 3 million leaflets have been sent to North Korea. When the balloons burst, the leaflets scatter.

There is no word on whether any protests have occurred in North Korea to date. The official news channel in North Korea has not reported on the situation in the Middle East. Earlier this week, China blocked phone access and the internet to prevent uprisings similar to those in the Middle East from occurring in their country.

A documentary about the situation in North Korea:

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Red Cross Employee Gloria Huang Sends Out Hilarious Tweet

18 Feb

This past Tuesday, Red Cross Social Media Expert Gloria Huang learned of some important news. She had to share it with her followers on Twitter. The problem? She accidentally sent the tweet from the official Red Cross Twitter account (anyone who uses HootSuite can relate to her error). Here’s what she sent:

Gloria Huang's Tweet

The company took the error in stride, and responded shortly afterward.

Because this is the internet, the story has a happy ending. Huang was not fired for her tweet, but the Red Cross actually received an increase in donations. The brewery in question, Dogfish Head, blogged about the incident and the the craft beer industry responded with donations to the Red Cross as well.  Bars began offering people free pints of Dogfish Head beer if they could prove they had donated to the Red Cross.

Go social media go!

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Daily Deals Resales Increase

10 Feb

Have you ever bought a deal from Groupon, Living Social or Tippr that you had a hard time using? If yes, then rest assured that several websites waiting to sell you someone else’s unused coupon have sprung up. According to Mashable, websites like CoupRecoup, DealsGoRound, Lifesta and Dealigee have emerged to sell unused daily coupons to other consumers.

Often times, users cannot use the coupons they purchase in time. This tiny niche has allowed for these new companies to emerge. With estimates suggesting that the daily coupon market could reach $5 billion in value this year, that small niche could also become profitable. Again according to Mashable, only 85 percent of coupons are actually reedemed, meaning that 15 percent of all purchases could go towards these new companies.

Keep an eye on this growing market.

Living Social, Groupon, Tippr

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