This is odd. Were you aware that EasyJet does not own its brand?

From Wikipedia: “unlike most other airlines. Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder and largest individual shareholder of EasyJet, has sole ownership of the ‘easy’ brand and licenses it to the airline (as well as to all other easyGroup businesses). For most ‘easy’ businesses, the business pays a specified fee to Stelios for the use of the name. However, given the strength of the EasyJet brand and the high amount of free advertising and publicity it lends to the other ‘easy’ businesses, it was agreed at the time of flotation that EasyJet could use the name on a perpetual license for 1.

Saturday, April 22, is World Water Day, “an international day of observance and action to draw attention to the plight of those without access to safe drinking water.” This year’s theme, Sanitation!

NPR of course has been all up in the hizzat this week about it with Science Froday host Ira Flatow quite literally, maybe, peeing his pants about the devastating prospects of an almost guaranteed global water shortage. (Hey Ira, treat that spill and it’s potable!).

The future global water situation is something you better just ignore because it. is. horrific. That whole Darfur thing George Clooney keeps getting his handsome undies in a bunch about between robbing Las Vegas casinos with Mr. Jolie? Yep, all started because of water. And it’s only going to get worse. Read about it if you must (we recommend against it because, IT’S SATURDAY! Ugh.)

But seriously, you ask, what can I do how can I get rich off this?
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Recently, Portfolio magazine looked at the potential spending for this year’s presidential election and settled on a probable figure of $1 billion. That, Portfolio rightly noted, is a serious bargain.

Porfolio’s reasoning is that, comparatively, $1 billion buys a lot more than, say, Microsoft’s $500 million to promote Vista. One gets you written into the history books and access to the purse strings to the most powerful nation on earth; the other, a substandard OS upgrade that will be replaced in a half-decade But by these guidelines, the Presidency is nothing compared with the bargain that is health care.

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Digging through a mountain of old papers the other day I came across a business plan written in 2003 for a New York area YWCA. Which reminded me of the simple money-maker than is Amazon Associates.

Are you a blog or a non-profit or some other small business that has a loyal following? Are you trying to find (additional) revenue streams but just do not have the bandwidth to take on any large projects or the investment dollars to sink? Are you ready to admit that selling self-branded mouse pads and t-shirts does not work? Then Amazon Associates might be for you.

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Are you one out of 1,000? The one of 1,000 that can smell sound? It is a psychological phenomenon called synesthesia, in which an individual can smell a sound or hear a color. Most of these people are not aware they are synesthetes: they think the way they experience the world is normal. This accoriding to Science Daily.

Continue reading…

In order of estimated number of speakers

Based upon a 1998 survey. There are also three other languages that are spoken by more than 100 million people each: German (128 million), Japanese (126 million), and Urdu (105 million).

Source: Opusfourfour.com

To read more fun word and language factoids, and get some ideas for brand or product names, visit: http://www.opusforfour.com/language.html

This is an oldie, but a goodie and sort of contradicts our Smart Tip of the week, where we suggest that you should boil down your PowerPoint slides to as few words as possible. But, hey, we like to hear all sides of an argument and challenge our own Smart Tips.

This article from the New York Times December 14, 2003 discusses Edward Tufte’s (the famous theorist of information presentation) 28-page pamphlet that claimed that Microsoft’s PowerPoint forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension.

What do you think?

“It costs six to thirty times more to get a new customer than it does to service and maintain the satisfaction and loyalty of an existing customer. Companies struggle to cut costs without realizing that customer attrition might be the single largest cost they have. Keeping customers happy has the same bottom line effect as cutting costs. Increase your customer retention by 5%, and you could increase your profits 25% to 100%.”

Source: JoAnna Brandi

Business cards (extremely important) are presented after the bow or handshake. Present your card with its Japanese side facing your colleague. Handle the cards you receive carefully - don’t put them in your pocket or write on them.

Source: getcustoms.com

Young men are the most frequent online video viewers, but US Internet users of all ages are getting into the act.

That is the main finding of BurstMedia’s “Online Insights” report, conducted in December 2007.

70% of users surveyed had viewed online video content. A majority of all age segments had watched online videos, including more than half of respondents age 65 and older.

Young men were viewing most often. More than a third of the 18- to-24-year-old male online video viewers in the survey reported that they watched once a day or more.

-eMarketer