Connecting the dots ...
The Chodovar Family brewery in Chodova Plana offers beer baths, beer massages and beer cosmetics in what may very well be the world’s first Beer Spa. I wonder if they are using Open Source Beer. 
I can’t wait to see a Wine Spa open in Napa – just make sure you dip in white, not red 
Tags: beer, spa, beer spa, health spa, Napa, wine, wine spa, wine country
Those were the famous words Ed Sullivan used to launch the Beatles (already hot in the UK) in the US. Here they are, back again: Apple vs. Apple.
“IT IS the ultimate battle of the generations over an image of a half-eaten piece of fruit.” claims the UK’s The Times. The New York Times also reports. Apple Corps, the business arm of the former Beatles and their heirs took Apple Computer to court for the third time.
It is the second, 1991 settlement that bound Apple Computer to steer clear of the music business, for which the Beatles’ company retains the famous trademark. Of course my third point above is a joke, I could not possibly predict the outcome of this lawsuit, but it’s no laughing matter, the least it will do, without considering the outcome is to divide the music fans into two camps. Hardcore Beatles fans might just take their business elsewhere. And if Apple (Steve’s Apple, not Sir Paul’s) has to pay up again … well .. this is the real thing folks, not the bogus rumors about Jobs dumping his stock.
Update (3/27): “ The best part? The case will be heard by (no joke): Mr. Justice Mann.” (via MacUser)
Related posts:
Tags: Apple, itunes, ipod, Beatles, Lawsuit, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Steve Jobs, music
Oh, this is bad: the lawyers reached the Blogosphere. I received an invitation to the “The First Comprehensive Conference On Blog Law & Blogging for Lawyers”.
Is it time to look for “malblogging insurance”? 
Update (3/30): Vinnie coined the term of Blawging 
Tags: Blog Law, blogs, blogging, blogosphere, lawyers, blawging
STRANGE though it seems, a typical microwave oven consumes more electricity powering its digital clock than it does heating food.
Leaving our appliances – DVDs, computers, etc, – in stand-bye mode costs energy worth $3 billion and causes pollution equivalent to 18 million cars.
Read the Economist article for details.
Everyone who speaks a language, speaks it with an accent. When people listen to someone speak with a different accent from their own, they notice the difference, and they may even make certain biased social judgments about the speaker.
Browse 500+ sound clips from all over the world. Released under a Creative Commons License.
It’s raining … and one of these giant Street Sweepers just passed my house. Gotta put in those hours… after all WE are paying for it.
“LONDON – A British court awarded six prison officers damages and legal costs reported to be in excess of 1 million pounds (US$1.75 million, euro1.45 million) Wednesday for “walking into a scene of gothic horror” where an inmate had strangled his cellmate and then disemboweled him” (full article here).
Wow. I hope this does not create a whole new wave of lawsuits in the US. Can you imagine the ripple effect through the economy of damages paid to police, emergency services, doctors ..etc who have to see crime scenes, accidents, casualties?
Update (3/16): Jury awards $6.5M to panic disorder patient in job bias suit
Tags: lawsuit, legal system, damages, police, law enforcement, emergencies, casulties
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking. We are currently 30,000 feet over Los Angeles. Fuel prices have risen 2.7% during this trip down from Seattle. Please insert your credit card into the seatback in front of you in the next twenty seconds if you want to avoid being ejected before San Diego. Thanks.”
Relax, dear reader, it’s not real life (yet), just Paul Kedrosky extrapolating the trend shown by Northwest’s announcement that they will charge extra for certain prime seats in coach — exit-row seats or aisle seats near the front of the cabin.
As much as I hate the degradation of air travel (for someone having flown a lot in Europe and Asia, our domestic air travel is like taking a Greyhound bus), and being nickel-and-dimed, in this case I happen to agree with some of Paul’s commenters: if there are seats that passengers “fight for”, that means those seats represent premium value, why not use a market-mechanism to assign them, vs. random luck. I still love the post, one has to appreciate Paul’s humor.
Tags: airlines, air travel, airline pricing, NorthWest, humor
Winnie Mirchandani started a series of posts on business processes that badly need “angioplasty“. Processing rebates is certainly a most convoluted process – unfortunately often by design. Here’s another classic case, served up by Circuit City. It’s also on digg.
Tags: rebate, rebates, customer service, customer disservice, retail, deception, business process angioplasty
I often write about SVASE, especially the VC Breakfast Club series I sometimes moderate. These session are typically hosted by corporate sponsors, often Law– or Accounting firms. One of our gracious sponsors in the City is Mike Sullivan, Director at the Law firm Howard Rice Nemerovsky 
Canady Falk & Rabkin (wouldn’t it be nice to have Web 2.0 style names for lawfirms?
) Throughout these sessions I came to know Mike somewhat – or so I thought.
Well, I was wrong, I’ve only known the businessman / lawyer. Today the San Francisco Chronicle introduces the “other” Mike: the nature-lover, tree-expert, tree-hugger one. “On a recent tour through Cole Valley, Sullivan passed a pop quiz with a perfect score — pointing out 10 trees from as many countries on just two blocks of 17th Street.” He knows the stories behind many a tree in San Francisco. “Just outside 1401 Shrader St., the former home of socialite Pat Montandon, is the leftover trunk of the tree, which Montandon commissioned to be sculptured into a nearly 10-foot-tall angel.
“Urban legend has it,” Sullivan says, “that the sculptor was nearly fired when Montandon noticed that the angel’s face was strikingly similar to that of his girlfriend.”
Mike’s book, “Trees of San Francisco” breaks down a list of the best trees in each of the city’s neighborhoods, complete with where to find them. He does more than write about books; he and his fellow tree-lovers at Friends of the Urban Forest plant thousands of trees every year.
SF Trees is Mike’s personal yet tree-focused site. (Perhaps one of my Web 2.0–savy readers will volunteer to give the site a facelift)
Congratulations, Mike, and thanks for doing all this!
Update (3/12) Related posts:
Tags: trees, San Francisco, city trees, tree friends, tree planting, preservation, san francisco trees, nature,
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
I do most of my business blogging there, with occasional asides here. More...
Recent Comments