Space in the city

Great article on Trader Joe's Business philosophy and history. ( Saw it on Yahoo ) Some take aways from the article: >> Strike a balance between choice and customer experience " Swapping selection for value turns out not to be much of a tradeoff. Customers may think they want variety, but in reality too many options can lead to shopping paralysis. "People are worried they'll regret the choice they made," says Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore professor and author of The Paradox of Choice. "People don't want to feel they made a mistake." Studies have found that buyers enjoy purchases more if they know the pool of options isn't quite so large. Trader Joe's organic creamy unsalted peanut butter will be more satisfying if there are only nine other peanut butters a shopper might have purchased instead of 39. Having a wide selection may help get customers in the store, but it won't increase the chances they'll buy. Read More  Learn M...

Watch The slide Show on CNBC  - The 10 Best Business Books Multipliers On The Brink Delivering Happiness Blind Descent The Big Short Adventures Among Ants The End of Wall Street The Upside of Irrationality Rework The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind To read more detail review on business books visit Gloria McDonough-Taub CNBC.com blog, "Bullish On Books"

Here in an article in Yahoo Finance via cnbc Remember that old saying from the 1920s retailer, John Wanamaker ? He knew half his ad budget was wasted, now if only he knew which half. Google promised to change all that. Instead of focusing ever harder on its core-providing smarter search results and better-tailored ads for what you're looking for, thereby boosting the only real revenue stream the company has-Google has wanderlust. Goes on to compare it to Sun Microsystem Read More Fools.com evaluate Google Moat and found the following For a company in a constantly evolving industry, Google has a surprisingly sustainable series of competitive advantages over its peers. Read more about the Moats fools.com analyzed (namely Intellectual property rights. Customer switching costs, The network effect, Cost advantages) Mark Hulbert: An exclusive Google birthday party Hulbert Financial Files - MarketWatch Mark Hulbert warns it's a mistake to assume other tech IPOs will see the s...

Yesterday Thomas French was interviewed on CN about his new book "Zoo Story: Life and Death in the Garden of Captives" (Kindle) Locate a local Independent Store - at IndieBound Reviews: "Inside the zoo, time was not human. Time moved outside human expectations. It did not settle into a single groove," French writes. "Zoo time was fluid, changeable, unpredictable. It unfolded in different rhythms, at variable speeds, calibrated to the heartbeat and breathing patterns and behavior of each species."  Read full Review on USA Today Listen/Read NPR Interview - The 'Zoo Story,' Both Beguiling And Repellent The Colbert Report Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Thomas French www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

Did Warren Buffett increase/buy Stake in PFE (Pifzer)? Bloomberg TV reports Yes - Watch Bloomberg to find out more Warren Buffett's Stock Buys - This website provides an interactive list of Warren Buffett's current stock portfolio holdings This Google Spreadsheet Tracks Warren Buffett's Portfolio Read this 1999 Article in Businessweek about Warren Buffett's Investment

Jonah Peretti Viral Meetup Talk Saw it at MediaMemo blog by Peter Kafka

Look out for (Key Words) - Reverse Merger, Auditors, Unproven Business, Require More Research. Watch this Marketwatch video " Hype and Hope for Small-Cap Chinese Stocks " Global Hunter Securities hosted China Conference (July 11 – 13, 2010) at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco that featured approximately 100 China-based companies, most of which have shares that trade on U.S. exchanges. More information at pwcast video blog

Clearwire , through its operating subsidiaries, is a leading provider of wireless broadband services. Clearwire's 4G network is currently available in areas of the U.S. where approximately 51 million people live and the company plans to continue to expand its 4G coverage. Clearwire's open all-IP network, combined with significant spectrum holdings, provides an unprecedented combination of speed and mobility to deliver next generation broadband access. The company markets its 4G service through its own brand called CLEAR® as well as through its wholesale relationships with Sprint, Comcast and Time Warner Cable. Strategic investors include Intel Capital, Comcast, Sprint, Google, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks. LightSquared is building a state-of-the-art open wireless broadband network. This open network will unleash the full power of the mobile Internet, driving innovation in devices, applications, and services. LightSquared will offer network capacity on a whole...

Bloomberg Reports Survivors are told the death benefit is being placed in a secure interest-bearing account, and they are given what the company calls a “checkbook” to spend the money when they want. In fact, insurers place the so-called retained-asset accounts in their own general corporate accounts and keep most of the investment earnings. The money isn’t guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the “checks” are IOUs for money in the insurer’s account.

NaturalReader is a Text to Speech software with natural sounding voices. This easy to use software can convert any written text such as MS Word, Webpage, PDF files, and Emails into spoken words. NaturalReader can also convert any written text into audio files such as MP3 or WAV for your CD player or iPod. Read more in 2007 article AT&T Natural Voices is an award winning text to speech technology developed by AT&T Laboratories and distributed by Wizzard Software. Natural Voices is believed by many to be the most natural sounding TTS available, the "highly scalable" multi-threaded technology can automate and add tremendous interactive and humanistic value to a wide variety of applications and projects. - Version 4.2 AT&T Natural Voices Server Text to Speech (TTS) for Windows or Linux - Implemented with a developers software developer kit (SDK) and distributable runtime software - Dynamically converts text into voice for a wide variety of applications - Applaude...

Product developer and marketer can gain much needed insight into customer behavior by diving into the question as to how people make choices and how choices influence their happiness. Watch the following videos on the current thinking on choices.   Video #1 - Malcolm Gladwell makes a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness – Embracing the diversity of human being you will find a sure way to happiness. Move away from search for universals and search for variability. Video #2 - Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. Her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions. Video #3 - Paradox of Choice - freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied. Video #4 - Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our "psycho...