When the Welsh aren’t busy gouging gonads, they occasionally find ways of making money off of what they do best. From everything2 comes the story of a Welsh entrepreneur who took his country’s most famous talent and turned a profit:
The Mosquito is the invention of one Howard Stapelton, Managing Director of Compound Security Devices of Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, and is simply a device that emits a piercing high frequency sound which has been described as a “cross between fingernails down a blackboard and a dental laser” which is apparently only audible to the under-twenties. It is thus put forward as a possible solution to the eternal bane of the British shopkeeper; that small crowd of anti-social teenagers who have nothing better to do than loiter outside their shop and deter older customers who actually have money to spend.
With an effective range of between fifteen and twenty metres Compound Security Devices claim that “field trials have shown that teenagers are acutely aware of the Mosquito and usually move away from the area within just a couple of minutes” and “that is completely harmless even with long term use”. The Times reports that the device was first used at a Spar shop in Barry where the owner Robert Gough was enthusiastic about the device’s success in driving away the local youth that he found so disquieting. “Either someone has come along and wiped them off the face of the earth, or it’s working” he is quoted as saying.
Whereas this might appear to be a hoax or some kind of scam, it seems that there is a very real medical phenomenon known as presbycusis or age related hearing loss which, according to The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, “begins after age 20 but is usually significant only in persons over 65″ and “first affects the highest frequencies (18 to 20 kHz)”. Thus it seems quite true that it is possible to generate a high frequency sound that is audible only to teenagers.
The answer to the prayers of grumpy old men and women the world over, the Mosquito unit can be yours for only £495 plus VAT, with an optional security cage available at £35 plus VAT, all inclusive of postage and packing.
“Mosquito” is the perfect name for a product that promises to be even more irritating than a weekend in Swansea. Wales’ other successful businessman, Lucian James, can be buzzed here.
So what's up with this Cyber Monday idea? A little bit of reality and a whole lot of savvy marketing. It turns out that Shop.org, an association for retailers that sell online, dreamed up the term just days before putting out a Nov. 21 press release touting Cyber Monday as "one of the biggest online shopping days of the year."Every other day
The idea was born when a few people at the organization were brainstorming about how to promote online shopping, says Shop.org Executive Director Scott Silverman, who answered his phone, "Happy Cyber Monday." They quickly discarded suggestions such as Black Monday (too much like Black Friday), Blue Monday (not very cheery), and Green Monday (too environmentalist), and settled on Cyber Monday. "It's not the biggest day," Silverman concedes. "But it was an opportunity to create some consumer excitement."
The genesis of the concept goes back even further. Shop.org member Shmuel Gniwisch, chief executive of the online jewelry site Ice.com, recalls getting an e-mail from Shop.org last year, suggesting that online retailers come up with their own marketing hook to match Black Friday. "The online guys got together and said, 'Let's give people something different,'" he says. "The reality is, we didn't notice anything special" on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
noun 1. (in chasings games) being the person currently tagged or tipped and having to chase the other players. 2. sexual intercourse. 3. sex appeal. 4. the one chosen: Okay, you're it. --phrase 5. with it, a. in accordance with current trends and fashions; fashionable. b. well-informed and quick-witted.Some people just don't get it.
Assuming a gathering of friends but not of wine snobs, you want good wines that will complement the food but not be the star attraction. Anyway, star attraction wines -- well aged clarets, cabernets, or burgundies -- don't mesh well with Thanksgiving Day.
For those of us whose taste in wine is governed by the name on the label rather than the contents of the bottle, the Quipping Queen of the Wordboard recommends her own selection of nifty names for nectars of the gods.Home electronics retailer Best Buy has pulled out all the stops in a winning effort to edge out Ikea for honors as this year’s most annoying retail experience. Yes, the Apple stores have over promised and way under delivered, and Ikea is so badly run that only the insane return, but Best Buy is an aggressively bad experience.
Yesterday Best Buy made four separate attempts to get my address and phone number. I went in to buy a satellite radio and a DVD player. They refused to sell me the Sirius receiver without me coughing up my verifiable home phone number, so no sale. They then offered me a 59-dollar warrantee on the DVD player, which of course required my address and phone number, so again, no sale. Next was my free subscription to some magazine, which of course would have meant an address and phone number. Finally, the clerk pointed out that my receipt contained a survey that if filled out with my address and phone number would enter me in drawing for a 500-dollar Best Buy shopping spree.
Get Sirius, fellas, that’s a lot of personal information to give out just to get the best buy on a
Religion Free DVD Player.
We have moved our office to a cool new space in the heart of downtown San Francisco, a block from Union Square. All the details and a little map can be found on our Contact page.
In May we named our show "Open Source" and we named our non-profit production company "Open Source Media." ...LP at fbihop says, "Let's get one thing straight right off the bat - Open Source Media is not open source."
Hm. A company that used to call itself Pajamas Media now calls itself Open Source Media, which is — scroll down to our legal notice — kind of exactly what we call ourselves. They’ve collected $3.5 million in venture capital, and, to celebrate their re-naming of our already-named name, they’re holding an event at the Rainbow Room.
So what to do. A couple of blogs — Atrios, Stephen den Beste, Dennis the Peasant, Begging to Differ, Homocon — have picked up on this already, unprompted, perhaps because if you Google "open source media", we’re the third result. Presumably the new "Open Source Media" Googled their new name before they settled on it?
Now I’m even more confused aboutRoger Jacobs, at 8763 Wonderland, blogs it best: "Paint a Stupid Button on Open Source Media."PajamasOpen Source Media. I just tuned in from Munich to their Rockefeller Center event and they’re into a panel about fashion. The first person says she doesn’t blog and thinks blogging is absurd and never reads them and is liberal and feels like Ann Coulter in a room of Democrats. What is it with the fashion? How is this going to be open source? What did they need $3.5 million for once the lunch is paid for? Oh, and by the way, are they paying Judy Miller to speak? What’s it all about, Alfie?
And a friend who wishes to remain anonymous writes:Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.
I don’t wanna get into the comments fray, but I was thinking…
"Os Media" suggests the mouth of a uterus. Cross that with this "Open Sores" meme that’s spreading like, well, herpes, and you have some rather unsavory connotations at the outset. I wish they’d put the PJs back on!
Igor recently named a new audio company. The job required a name that would help them own the idea of sound, carry some excitement, and imply a bit of the ol’ European / Germanic hi-tech audio expertise brand equity.
There was only one name that could capture all three of these ideas and that name is Zounds. From the Zounds website:
Zounds was founded by Sam Thomasson, who has a hearing impaired daughter. When he would hug his daughter as a young girl, her hearing aids would squeal, causing pain to her. For years, he promised himself and his daughter that he would develop a hearing aid that would address these and other related hearing aid issues. Zounds’ breakthrough technology is the fulfillment of a father’s promise to his daughter, and intends to be a wonderful gift to others globally with hearing impairments.
Here are a few other notable occurrences of Zounds:
“Zounds! I was never so bethumpd with words since I first call’d my brothers father dad!”
Batman: Obviously! That’s the puzzle. “Z” is the most enigmatic letter in the alphabet, old chum. Think of the words that begin with “Z”: zigzag, zither, zodiac…
Robin: Zounds!
Batman: Exactly! “Zounds” is a Shakespearean interjection of wonder or surprise.
Ned: Zounds, I did thee mightily smitily!
“Zounds, someone took our gazebo.”
In one of the stranger cosmic coincidences, “Zounds, someone took our gazebo” was the tagline we had independently created for our client.
