Super Jellyfish

I just tried and failed to buy Radiohead tickets for Kane.

So then, to see how I could improve my “Ticketmaster skills” I did a blogsearch on Google for “Ticketmaster.” Instead of getting tips on how to successfully buy high-demand tickets, I just found a lot of hatred and anger towards Ticketmaster.

Despite fans’ rabid hatred, though, it seems like people use Ticketmaster anyway. They have no alternative! It looks like Ticketmaster will mark up fees 60%+ for concerts. How can they do that? Why do they have the power to do so?

It seems to me whenever there are multiple parties between and different motivations of decision makers, egregious pricing can result.

Ticketmaster has contracts with concert facilities, who negotiate the convenience fee the fans pay. Since the facility isn’t paying the fee, they are less incented to reduce the fees. In fact, it seems they have incentives for the fees to be higher (they are getting a cut I think.) (more…)

• Not-Just-For-Profit
  This group seeks to organize “not-just-for-profit” companies… interesting. I couldn’t find a list of groups they were affiliated with or any links on their site for that matter.
  (tags: socialventure business)
• Brown Paper Tickets - The first and only fair-trade ticketing service!
  This site claims that they are “not greedy.” How can that be true? When someone says they aren’t working in their self-interest (aka not greedy), it’s confusing and also it seems like they are being slightly dishonest. What do you think?
  (tags: greed)
• Mossberg dings Samsung’s Q1 - the new UMPC
  I think it’s a great idea, even if it’s kind of too pricey ($1000+?!).. I think the lack of keyboard is probably okay though
  (tags: gadgets geeky)
• Bluetooth Virtual Laser Keyboard [Amazon]
  M brother pointed this out to me yesterday. Looks really cool. It’s basically an invisible keyboard!
  (tags: gadgets portable)
• Doctors Object to Gathering of Drug Data - New York Times
  Gosh big pharma sure is aggressive
  (tags: drugs)

• Entropia Universe Players Can Cash Their Online Earnings at the A.T.M. - New York Times
  You can withdraw real money from this virtual world!
  (tags: money economics)
• Inside 17th St Productions [Harvard Independent]
  The Harvard Independent takes a closer look at book “packaging” companies, specfically the one that packaged Kaavya Viswanathan’s book
  (tags: books)

ShopWiki is a website that I noticed last week.

I think it’s a great idea! The site is essentially a shopping guide / wiki which indexes everything that can be purchased online.

So part of the site is sort of similar to My Simon or Froogle in that it lets you do price comparison. Where I think the site takes off in comparison though is that there are wikis on the site where users can add information/facts on buying something.

When I first came across it, I sort of thought it was neat, but wasn’t sure if I would ever use it. Then today I was thinking about making a purchase, but I wanted to do some research beforehand. Right now there’s not really any single place to look to do research. If ShopWiki can be a kind of content aggregator of some sort, for example, linking to all the product reviews on a certain type of product and collecting information and putting into an easily searchable place, I think it could be really awesome.

Before people make a purchasing decision, they need objective information to figure out what they’re going to buy. There’s tons and tons of reviews and articles on things everywhere on the web, but right now they are sort of all over the place. Having one place to find information is really appealing. Also, the community aspect of sharing and people helping each other out is another awesome characteristic of this site.

Of course, they still need to build up their content, but it looks like team behind the site has pretty impressive Internet credentials. Let’s see what happens with this site! I also think it’s neat the company is based in NYC, home of tons of media/advertising firms.

Sorry if this sounds like a commercial, I don’t know anyone involved with the site and just came across it on the Internet… I just think it sounds like a neat idea.

• Threadless T-Shirts - $10 t-shirt sale!
  They are a bit slow to ship though..
  (tags: saving shopping)

A9 seems to be using Windows Live as its search engine now and it really sucks!!

When I search I often get 2 or 3 results compared to Google’s thousands, and when I did a search for “time in nyc” they sent me to website squatter rather than a real website!

I wonder why they are using Windows Live? Must be cost/other Microsoft incentives…. at the long-term expense of attracting users to A9… bleh!!