Centives

The Economist took a look at not only the advancements in rail technology but, just as interestingly, why we don’t really pay attention to them:

• To the casual observer trains are a throwback to an earlier era, before the widespread adoption of automobiles and airplanes.
• However trains have been getting increasingly advanced. People notice the technological development of automobiles because people buy their own cars and car companies advertise the newest features to consumers. In contrast nobody buys their own train.
• Moreover people don’t notice rail developments because trains last a lot longer. Any new technology could take several decades to work its way through the rail systems of the world.
• But things are changing. Some technologies, for example, allow the energy harvested from a braking train to be used to speed up a train that’s looking to accelerate on another track. Others simply feed the energy back into the national grid.
• Another idea is to abandon the concept of ever having to stop a train altogether –a process that wastes a lot of time and energy. Instead a moving platform would dock with a train so that passengers could board without the train ever stopping.
• A proponent of the idea of moving stations points out that this is similar to docking crafts in space – and those seem to go off without a hitch.

Read much more about the fascinating and exciting technologies being developed for trains, and why people have such a vested interest in making trains more efficient over here.

Source: The Economist

David Bosco took a look at the issues related to the compensation of UN Peacekeepers:

• Peacekeeping has increasingly become an activity that is undertaken by the poor and paid for by the rich. It has been described as the UN’s caste system.
• For every soldier that serves as a UN Peacekeeper, the United Nations pays the member state which the troop belongs to $1,028 a month.
• This amount hasn’t changed much in almost 20 years – and because donor countries are often delinquent in their payments, the money is usually paid late.
• Yet the kinds of missions that Peacekeepers are getting involved in are more dangerous and complicated than ever before.
• Donor countries in a time of austerity are unwilling to increase the amount they pay for Peacekeepers since despite the low price, it can still be a money making opportunity for poorer countries who rely on the revenues from UN Peacekeeping operations to sustain their armies.
• Bangladesh, for example, made $1.28 billion between 2001 and 2010 and used this money to maintain advanced military equipment.

Read more about the compromise that the UN is arriving at, the challenges that remain, the individuals who have died trying to keep the peace, and the quest for Security Council reform over here.

Source: Foreign Policy

Long derided as the tacky underbelly of the mall shopping experience, carts and kiosks are now rapidly spreading and dominating sales writes John Grossmann:

• In an evolution from the early days, malls have adapted to better serve kiosks by installing electrical outlets and better lighting in the middle of mall walkways.
• The kiosks have also used technology to boost sales. Tablets are used to showcase merchandise and send commands to a warehouse to ship products directly to a customer’s home.
• Kiosks have some natural advantages over standard retail stores. By being in the very center of the mall they don’t have to draw customers in – instead customers flow by and the open nature of the kiosks means that customers are exposed to all of the products available.
• Kiosks also pay lower rent, cost less to construct, and employ fewer people thus lowering labour costs.
• Experts believe that some kiosk chains do over $100 million in business every year.

Read more about the rise of kiosks, stories from those who have run successful chains, and some myths about kiosk stores over here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

Julie Bosman looked at how daily deals are transforming the e-book industry:

• Amazon’s Kindle Daily Deal and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Daily Find cut the price of ebooks to a fraction of their standard price for a limited period – usually 24 hours.
• In one case a book that sold less than one copy a day saw more than 10,000 sold over the 24 hours in which it became a ‘daily deal’.
• For authors and publishers having a book featured on the list can be like winning the lottery – not only because of the windfall in sales, but also because there is a halo effect where readers buy other (full price) books from the author. And even after the daily deal is over, the book’s sales stay above average for a while.
• Some in the industry though fear that by discounting books too much and too often, consumers will have unrealistic expectations of what a book should cost.
• As brick and mortar book stores disappear daily deals will become an important way for readers to find good books to read.

Find out which day ebook sales peak on, the book that made it to the top of the New York Times’ best seller list after being featured as a daily deal, and the sites that help you find deals across a variety of online retailers over here.

Source: The New York Times

Leo Widrich took a look at how colours affect our perceptions of brands:

• Different colours elicit different emotions as the infographic above shows. Red suggests excitement while Centives’ own yellow suggests optimism, clarity and warmth.
• These emotions are then used to guide specific actions. Red’s excitement is used to advertise clearance sales. The power we associate with black is used to sell luxury products.
• Different genders react to different colours differently and it’s possible to tell who a certain product or service is targeting based on its colour scheme alone.
• Women, for example, are quite fond of purple, while men greatly dislike it. Both genders like blue and green and dislike brown and orange.

In the full article Widrich presents several more fascinating infographics. He also looks at how colours can help people instantly identify certain brands, the importance of testing hypotheses and why hyperlinks are blue. Read it here.

Source: Fast Company

When countries buy arms from a defense manufacturer in another country it is common for there to be an offset agreement – where the company selling the arms agrees to make investments in the buying country’s economy. The Economist delved into this murky world of defense offsets:

• Offsets are popular with developing countries since they can be recorded as foreign direct investment, making the government’s economic management look good.
• These offsets could be used to develop the country’s own defense industry so that a country can become more self-sufficient in arms manufacture – or the money goes to completely unrelated ventures such as a (now failed) shrimp farm in Saudi Arabia.
• Yet academic research indicates that these offsets rarely create sustainable employment, or help develop a country’s economy.
• While in theory it is the defense firms that are paying for the offsets, ultimately the buying country has to foot the bill through higher prices. Belgium, for example, found that it paid up to 30% more for military gear due to offsets.
• Thus the tax payers bear the costs of the offsets. But the benefits accrue to individuals and institutions determined by the government – leading to opportunities for cronyism and corruption.
• Perhaps this is why ‘offset’ has become a dirty word. The industry now prefers the term “industrial participation”.
• While some think that offsets will decline as developing country’s become more self-sufficient in their arms production, others think that at least in the short term they will increase as defense firms in rich countries with shrinking budgets try to more aggressively market to developing countries.

The full article has much more and looks at (in)famous examples of offset deals, how these liabilities often aren’t declared, and how offsets have become one of the main criterion in evaluating defense contracts. You can find it by clicking here.

Source: The Economist

Facebook, Google, and Apple are all building new corporate headquarters. Jimmy Stamp took a look at what the design of each of them said about the companies:

• Tech companies used to have college-like campuses which would appeal to youth. Now the companies seem more interested in building giant monuments to themselves.
• Apple’s headquarters will be a massive ring (pictured above). It is a walled garden made for the “cult of Mac” that keeps the rest of the world out.
• Facebook is planning a single quarter mile long room with moveable chairs that can easily be rearranged. The fancy design and constantly changing configuration is an apt metaphor for Facebook itself.
• Google is building nine separate buildings connected by bridges. When designing the building Google’s engineers used an algorithm that optimized the amount of “casual collisions” that would happen among workers.
• Google’s hope is that this will lead to new creative ideas – although as with some of Google’s recent misfires, many won’t be fully thought out and will quickly be forgotten.

See what each of the headquarters looks like over here, and read about the opportunity that the companies have to define architecture.

Source: Wired

Michael Catalini took a look at why the government is finding it difficult to fire Lois Lerner, an official who admitted that the IRS targeted conservative groups:

• Americans laws have been set up so that politicians can’t interfere with government posts. This is to prevent precisely the kind of controversy that the IRS is embroiled in today.
• However the laws may be a little too effective. Workers in many government agencies are more likely to die of natural causes than to lose their jobs.
• To fire a government employee requires a fair amount of paperwork and managers generally just don’t want to go through the hassle.
• However this creates perverse incentives – government employees know that it’s unlikely they’ll lose their jobs and this may lead them to underperform.

Read more about the 1883 legal framework that affects the employment of government employees, and why taxpayers should be concerned over here.

Source: National Journal

Before astronaut Chris Hadfield played and sang David Bowie’s Space Oddity on the International Space Station in a performance uploaded to Youtube, he made sure to clear up any copyrights issues with Mr Bowie’s representatives. If he hadn’t then he would’ve stepped into a legal quagmire writes The Economist:

• At a ‘mere’ 400 kilometers above the earth’s surface, intellectual property rights still apply to the International Space Station.
• The problem is which country’s rights should apply? The spacecraft flew over several as Hadfield played the song.
• The International Space Station itself is made up of modules assembled by various countries. The laws of each individual country apply to the module built by the country. Hadfield went through modules built by America and Japan as he performed, and thus he was subject to the laws of each country.
• As private space launches become more widespread these copyright issues will become more complicated and music groups may have grounds to sue entire countries if an individual chooses to start singing a song while on board a spacecraft.

Kottke helpfully points out that we now “live in a world where sending a guitar into space is trivial while ironing out rights agreements is the tough part.” Read more about the issues that Hadfield might have created by performing in front of other crew members, the legal rights that intellectual property owners have in space, and more over here.

Source: The Economist

Via: Kottke

The Economist took a look at the struggling British sex industry:

• Demand for the services has fallen as Britain’s economy continues to struggle. Sex, unlike food or the payments on a mortgage, is considered by most to be a luxury and is easily cut back upon.
• At the same time the supply of sex workers has increased as people find ways to supplement their income. This has put downward pressure on prices – some have had to cut prices by up to 50%.
• The industry is also struggling with higher rent and energy prices.
• The news isn’t all bad – budget brothels have been doing well as they offer greater value for money.

Read more about the dangerous situations that prostitutes are having to deal with, how it’s no longer possible to be a full time prostitute, and how this reflects broader trends in the British economy over here.

Source: The Economist