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Vol. 27, No. 9 • September, 2009

www.Freeman-Spicer.com

Cash Is King . . . . . . . Cash may still be king, but in Japan there’s a new rival for the throne: Millions of people there use their mobile phones to buy everything from vending machine sodas to train tickets. To pay, a user passes a chip-enabled handset over a reader. Transactions take a fraction of a second. But it will take a few years for the U.S. market to catch on. Americans are already flush with credit and debit cards and merchants are heavily invested in equipment to process them. Still, mobile is the wave of the future. Your cell phone can be the electronic equivalent of a credit card-stuffed wallet. And if you lose it, you can simply disable it. (CFO)

Facebook Fogies . . . . . Facebook started out in 2004 as an online hangout for college students. Now it looks like the baby boomers are crashing the party. Membership on the social-network site of U.S. users age 55-plus shot up 25%, to 7.3 million, in the one-month period ending Aug. 4, according to Washington researcher iStrategyLabs, which collects data Facebook gives to advertisers. That’s more than triple the rate of growth for all U.S. users on the site in the same period. Older Facebook users now represent about 10% of the total 77.7 million registered with the site in the U.S., according to iStrategyLabs data. The graying of Facebook has been under way for some time, but it really accelerated this year. During the first half of 2009, the number of people in their 50s on the site “more than doubled,” notes Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker. “Most likely the trend started with younger people convincing their parents and grandparents to engage,” says Danah Boyd, who tracks social media for Microsoft Research. And the dramatic increase in this demographic group may be the result of these early converts spreading the social-networking religion among their peers. Older members find the site a convenient way to rekindle bygone friendships. Christine Drost, a 55-year-old nurse who lives in Randolph, N.J., decided to join in early August after finding out her old friends from a drum corps she played with more than 30 years ago had started a group on the site. “That was the final push I needed,” says Drost, who now uses the site to share pictures and update friends and family on her whereabouts. Boomers are also attracting new advertisers, such as Dove and 1-800-FLOWERS.com, to Facebook, which relies on ads for the bulk of its estimated $500 million in revenue. Will younger users flee Facebook whey they realize mom and dad might be peering over their shoulders? In an effort to help the generations coexist on the site, Facebook announced in July it’s testing new privacy controls that will permit members to choose exactly who’s allowed to see each message they post. (BusinessWeek)

An Elderly Gentleman . . . . . Had serious hearing problems for a number of years. He went to the doctor and the doctor was able to have him fitted for a set of hearing aids that allowed the gentleman to hear 100%. The elderly gentleman went back in a month to the doctor and the doctor said, “Your hearing is perfect. Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again.” The gentleman replied, “Oh, I haven’t told my family yet. I just sit around and listen to the conversations. I’ve changed my will three times!” (Bishop)

The Burning Sun . . . . . . . Why doesn’t the sun burn up, seeing as how it’s a ball of hydrogen gas and ought to go Woof! like the Hindenburg? Hopefully you are sitting down: The sun is not on fire. Repeat this to yourself. The sun is not burning. It is “fiery” only in the loosest sense of the adjective. If it were on fire, it would have burned out long ago. The sun is largely a ball of hydrogen gas and lacks the key ingredient for fire as we know it: Oxygen. No oxygen, no fire. The “flames” are bright streamers of hydrogen shooting out into space. The heat and light are generated from a process vastly superior to fire: thermonuclear fusion. (Why Things Are)

Microsoft - Windows 7 . . . . . . . . . . If you decide to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP or Vista, (market date, October 22) here are some options and what they will cost:

How Much For Your Apps? . . . . . Hypothetically, let’s say you really love iPhone apps to the point you’re willing to buy all 55,732 available as of July 6, 2009. How much would it cost you? According to Busted Loop which actually did the math, you’d fork over a cool $144,326.06, spending an average of $2.59 per app when taking free apps (12,538) out of the equation. $16,427.94 of your money would go to Iceberg Reader, which has 1,206 paid apps available. (PC Today)

Basketball Shoes . . . . . . . . In 1923, basketball evangelist Chuck Taylor partnered with Converse in what may have been the first iteration of the modern shoe-endorsement deal - and the Chuck Taylor All Star was born. Converse added Taylor’s signature to the ankle in 1932, and the canvas-and-rubber shoe has essentially remained the same since - though now in many colors and zany patterns. The All Star was the official shoe of the Olympics from 1936 to 1968, and Chucks have served as the shoe of American youth for much of the past 80 years - including devotees like Dennis the Menace, Ferris Bueller, Iggy Pop, and Rocky Balboa. (The Handbook of Style)

Someone’s Deadly With Scrabble . . . . . . . Dormitory: When you rearrange the letters: Dirty Room. Astronomer: When you rearrange the letters: Moon Starer. Desperation: When you rearrange the letters: A rope ends it. The Eyes: When you rearrange the letters: They see. The Morse Code: When you rearrange the letters: Here come dots. Election Results: When you rearrange the letters: Lies - Let’s recount. Snooze Alarms: When you rearrange the letters: Alas! No more Z’s. Eleven Plus Two: When you rearrange the letters: Twelve plus one. (Bishop)

Curtain Rods - Priceless . . . . . . On the first day, she sadly packed her belongings into boxes, crates and suitcases. On the second day, she had the movers come and collect her things. On the third day, she sat down for the last time at their beautiful dining-room table, by candle-light; she put on some soft background music, and feasted on a pound of shrimp, a jar of caviar, and a bottle of spring-water. When she’d finished, she went into each and every room and deposited a few half-eaten shrimps dipped in caviar into the hollow center of the curtain rods. She then cleaned up the kitchen and left. On the fourth day, the husband came back with his new girlfriend, and at first all was bliss. Then, slowly, the house began to smell. They tried everything; cleaning, mopping, and airing-out the place. Vents were checked for dead rodents, and carpets were steam cleaned. Air fresheners were hung everywhere. Exterminators were brought in to set off gas canisters, during which time the two had to move out for a few days, and in the end they paid to replace the expensive wool carpeting. Nothing worked! People stopped coming over to visit. Repairmen refused to work in the house. The maid quit. Finally, they couldn’t take the stench any longer, and decided they had to move, but a month later - even though they’d cut their price in half - they couldn’t find a buyer for such a stinky house. Word got out, and eventually even the local Realtors refused to return their calls. Finally, unable to wait any longer for a purchaser, they had to borrow a huge sum of money from the bank to purchase a new place. Then the ex-wife called the man and asked how things were going. He told her the saga of the rotting house. She listened politely and said that she missed the old home terrible and would be willing to reduce her divorce settlement in exchange for having the house. Knowing she could have no idea how bad the smell really was, he agreed on a price that was only 1/10th of what the house had been worth . . . . but only if she would sign the papers that very day. She agreed, and within two hours his lawyers delivered the completed paperwork. A week later the man and his girlfriend stood smiling as they watched the moving company pack everything to take to their new home.

....... and to spite the ex-wife, they even took the curtains and curtain rods! (Nieman)

Body Work - Sunlight Will Heal The Scratches . . . . . . . Scratch-Be-Gone. It’s Murphy’s law: Park a new car at the store, and a shopping cart will scratch it. Soon, however, a sunny hour-long drive will allow the paint to repair itself. Scientists at the University of Southern Mississippi used chemicals found in crab shells to make a polyurethane paint that reconnects molecular bonds under ultraviolet light, even down-to-the-metal scrapes that current resin-based healing paints can’t handle. The new paint could be ready for automakers in two years. (Popular Science)

Stop Stacking the Deck Against Consumers . . . . . Hank Johnson - U.S. representative (D-Ga.) and member of the House Judiciary Committee: “Most consumers have no idea they’re signing away their right to sue when they fill out a job application, put an elderly parent in a nursing home, sign up for a credit card, get a cellphone, or buy a car or a home. But most of these contracts come with a mandatory arbitration clause. That means any dispute you have with the service provider will be decided out of court by an arbitrator or a panel of several arbitrators. It’s an unfair system. The arbitrators are generally chosen by the company. Consumers are often forced to travel to arbitration hearings, which can be thousands of miles from their homes. And there’s no meaningful way to appeal the decision. That’s why Senator, Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) and I have proposed new legislation that would give consumers the right to take a service provider to court to settle their grievance. We’re not trying to ban arbitration. We just want consumers to have a choice.”  (As told to Senior Writer Donna Rosato of Money Magazine)                                                                

Sincerely,

Edward C. Levy

President