FoxTrax Blog

Kent Couch's second lawn-chair-and-balloon-flight was a complete success. On July 5th, 2008, he traveled over 200 miles from Bend, Oregon and landed in a field in Cambridge. Cambridge, Idaho, that is.

Lawn-chair-and-balloon-flight aficionados were able to watch his progress online via his GPS device. Thank goodness the prevailing wind was Easterly, because if he'd gone 200 miles the other direction, he would have been over the open ocean.

So what did you do with your 4th of July weekend? Some people launch/watch fireworks. Some people dress up in red, white, and blue. Some sing patriotic songs. Some visit their families. Some barbecue and drink beer. And some tie a bunch of helium balloons to a lawn chair and fly across state lines. To quote Pink Floyd: "Shine on, you crazy diamond!"

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Labels: current events, GPS

The national average price for gas broke another record today, rising to $4.087 per gallon from the previous record set yesterday, which was $4.086 per gallon.

Thank you CNN.com. It's not enough that we are all already thoroughly depressed by the rising gas prices, but you have to let us know about a record-shattering 1/10th of a cent increase in the average price. You know, on the off chance that someone had forgotten.

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Labels: current events

A friend of a friend of a friend is in the Missouri National Guard, and was having a hard time deciphering an acronym that showed up in an e-mail. He scoured the manuals trying to figure out what this new acronym "ROFL" might stand for until someone kindly clued him in:

"Rolling On the Floor Laughing"

Not so much a military term, just another product of the instant message culture. And ROFL is just the tip of the iceberg--whole sub-dialects of English have emerged, ushered into existence by text and instant messaging and the need to save time/characters by abbreviating common phrases. New "words" emerge regularly--indeed, half the fun seems to be in guessing what some of the new acronyms might mean, and sometimes they can get a little bawdy. The letter "F" shows up quite often, but unlike the above example, it typically doesn't stand for "Floor".

This is proving to be problematic for the DMV, who try to avoid issuing plates that say rude or potentially offensive things. It seems the North Carolina DMV issued several plates that began with WTF (a very popular acronym, not at all new, standing for "What", "the", and... use your imagination) before someone's teenager let them in on the joke.

Of course the real problem for the DMV is that the language of text messages is ever-evolving. Something innocuous today might turn out to be horribly obscene in two years. And it's not enough to know what things mean, you have to also keep track of how popular they are, because it should be no surprise that an overwhelming number of 3-4 letter combinations are acronyms for something, often for several things.

For example, NASA, which we know as the "National Aeronautics and Space Administration", also stands for "National Auto Sport Association" and "North American Saxophone Alliance", and Space-NASA has been ubiquitous for decades. What about the wealth of acronyms that serve as short-hand for, I dunno, skinheads or call-girls? Most people wouldn't recognize those acronyms, but some people would, and they can be truly, deeply offensive. It's not a huge feat to imagine that these might slip through and be issued (accidentally or otherwise), and it's not much more of a leap to think that maybe a few already have.

Part of me wants to believe that anyone old enough to drive a vehicle is old enough to behave sensibly and maturely about the accidental possibility of unintended and obli1que references to obscenity. But it doesn't last long.

So the DMV is probably going to have to let things slide and learn responses like "you didn't think WTF was offensive when we issued you the plate". In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if we got another form to fill out that shifts liability from the issuer to the issue-ee, something to the effect of "My name is John McCain and I approve this license plate."

Either that, or we're going to start seeing more license plates with their characters seated letter-number-letter-number-letter-number.

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Labels: current events, humor

Here's a strange story coming out of New York City. The street performer known as the Naked Cowboy is suing M&M for trademark infringement. He plays his acoustic guitar in the Time Square wearing only a cowboy hat, boots, and underpants, and has become something of a New York icon.

Enough of an icon, in fact, that the Mars Corporation dressed a blue M&M up as him on a billboard and people got the joke. The problem is that the "Naked Cowboy" image has in fact been trademarked by Robert Burck, the street performer who created the persona. He's suing for $100 million in punitive damages.

That's a little steep, in my opinion. It's like, what, 400 gallons of gas (in New York)? In all seriousness, though, if M&M is going to use his likeness to sell their product, it stands to reason that he should be compensated, but if they had approached him about it and he had asked for $100 million, methinks that M&M would have gone a different route.

But I have one burning question. Actually, I have a lot of questions, but most of them are sarcasm and rhetoric. What I want to know is: how much money is he making as a street performer that he trademarked his appearance?

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Labels: current events, humor

Today Kent Couch has announced that he will be taking to the skies again next month. Last July he flew 193 miles, no small feat when you consider the type of craft Couch pilots.

He flies a lawn chair.

He uses some amateur instruments to measure speed and altitude, five gallons of water for ballast, 105 large helium balloons for lift, and a parachute for landing. He'll be tracking his progress using a GPS device and you'll be able to track him as well in real time on his website: www.couchballoons.com.

Couch's original flight took him from Bend, Oregon to Union, just shy of the Idaho border. His launch is scheduled for July 5th.

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Labels: current events, GPS

I have a fond memory of a commercial that used to run on local St. Louis stations. It featured 3 people in faux gypsy garb standing an area rug that had been blue-screened in front of a helicopter shot of the arch. It was supposed to look like a flying carpet. Instead, it looked like three mid-westerners dressed as pirates on a blue-screen stage. It was poorly acted, had that grainy shot-with-a-home-VHS-camera look, yet it had a certain charm, nonetheless.

Yesterday I was pointed to a site called Spot Runner that makes pre-fabricated, customizable TV advertisements and sells them for as little as $499 apiece (they do other things as well, but this is what caught my attention). They've been fairly successful, and their success in the small business advertising realm led them to branch out into another lucrative field.

Politics.

For $500, you can make a classy political ad. Fade from a statue of Thomas Jefferson into your face while you talk to police officers (about issues, of course, not your overdue parking tickets). They have lots to choose from, even attack ads ("A vote for Jon Doe is a vote against public education"). I don't know whether to be frightened or impressed. On the one hand, it gives less-well-funded (read as "third party") candidates a slightly more level playing field, since they are able to produce quality ads on a budget. On the other hand, it does point out the vapid, generic nature of political advertising.

Then again, maybe that's a good thing.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
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866-686-2780

Labels: business, current events, technology

So I ran across the following headline on CNN.com:


My first thought was, "that's not a very nice thing to say about Iowans", but I read on and learned that Iowa is actually the home of North America's lead orangutan and bonobo research centers. Research has been at a standstill with the rising water.

I don't mean to make light of an ongoing catastrophe, merely to comment that science and technology are wonderful things, but apparently we're still beholden to natural disasters. Decorah, Iowa, issued an order to its citizens to not flush their toilets for fear that the sanitary system might fail. And it got me to thinking. Today it is virtually impossible to get around in life without a cell phone. Ten years ago this wasn't the case, but today we take that technology for granted. My grandparents have a cellphone. It's considered a necessity.

And I imagine suddenly having to do without a flushing toilet might change one's perspective on that.

The good news is that, thanks to the experience with rising rivers in 1993, Iowans have been better-prepared for this flood and a lot of the potential damage has been averted (although a lot of damage has still occurred). The estimated death toll is between 1 and 6, which is pretty encouraging as disasters go. Also, the citizens of Decorah are allowed to flush their toilets again (albeit they're encouraged to do so carefully... whatever that might mean), and the apes, well, the apes are just fine.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
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866-686-2780

Labels: current events, weather

I think it’s hard to say whether the iPhone will kill traditional GPS.

First, this kind of application has been available on phones for a while. My phone has Google maps and Microsoft maps. Both work fine. Neither are anywhere near as good as my wife’s $250 Garmin Nuvi.

Second, there's the concept of “Ergonomic niches.” There is an ergonomic niche for a device with a big screen that sits in a suction-cup mount attached to the windshield and does nothing except find restaurants, find gas stations, show maps and deliver directions.

There's also the technical limitations of tracking on a phone. Battery life is one issue. And, oh, by the way, what do you do when you to make and receive calls while driving? I guess that he figures everyone will finally get on the Bluetooth bandwagon after 10 years of not doing it. But we know that won’t happen because nobody can keep track of the little headsets.

The price of dedicated GPS navigators continues to drop as well. Many people will look at the convenience and continue to decide that it is worth the price to have a reliable dedicated navigation device in the car.

So I think that there is an ergonomic niche for a navigation device that you don’t also hold up to your head and talk on. Mapping on smart-phones is great but will not replace dedicated units.

My guess is that Garmin’s stock is not dropping because of the iPhone. It’s dropping because they are in a competitive market in which the easy pickings have been taken.

Labels: business, current events, GPS, technology

Wall Street seems to be recovering slowly from the 400 point drop at close of business Friday. Of course, it's only 10 am now, so the day's fire sale may be yet to come, but I'll be cautiously optimistic that prices will pick up at least a little throughout the day.

This has not been a good year for stocks in general, but last week's dip was triggered by the new jobless numbers, which were much higher than expected. To count d(i.e. to be counted) as "unemployed" a person must actively be seeking employment. A full-time homemaker, for example, doesn't count as unemployed because he/she isn't trying to find work. Analysts suggest that the numbers were high, not because people have been out of work, but because more people entered the workforce than was anticipated. You get a spike this time of year anyway, what with high school and college graduates suddenly throwing their names into the labor pool. So why were the numbers so high this time?

Well, there are a couple of possibilities. First of all, it could be that fewer high school grads are going to college (I have no numbers to support this, by the way, just a theory). In that case, the added spike now will eventually be offset by a reduced spike four to five years from now when those people would have left college.

But I've got an even better theory. One of my old econ profs told me that one of the shortcomings of only looking at those actively seeking employment was that it left out people for whom employment was only one viable option. For example, if someone found themselves out of work at the start of an economic downturn and reasoned that they would likely be out of work for a few years, then they might decide to go back to school and complete their masters or something like that. They would effectively be taking themselves out of the workforce and not be counted as unemployed, even though they would have been employed if the economy were stronger.

People in this situation are essentially under-reported by the current unemployment index. So here's my idea. The post-9-11 prolonged economic downturn (or stagnation, or recession--whatever you call it, it's not a boom) has steadily driven people into continuing their education and now, six years on, they've run out of schooling and are trying to re-enter the workforce. That caused (at least partially) the spike in unemployment which led to the surge in oil speculation, etc, etc, etc.

Just a theory.

Bonus rant: the other drawback to the unemployment index is that it doesn't count "underemployment", e.g., people who have a degree in meteorology and work at McDonald's. It is another sign of economic strength, but it isn't represented. That said, the unemployment index is quite useful in spite of its imperfections, so I don't mean to rag on it too much. Any metric is going to be a mix of uses and shortcomings.

Labels: current events

Found this courtesy of the Windsor Star. Ah, those wacky Canadian criminals.

In Leamington, Ontario, a funeral director went outside the funeral home to discover that his hearse had gone missing. Two men had stolen the six-month-old Buick while the service was going--the keys were inside.

Apparently the funeral staff were accustomed to leaving vehicles unattended for the 15-odd-minutes at the end of the service before the procession. And (because I know what your next question is) while the news article I read didn't state anything explicitly, I'm assuming that the body hadn't made it into the vehicle at the time of theft. Seriously though, what if there had been a body in there? Which leads to a whole series of bizarre questions: Do chop shops handle caskets? Would a criminal organization dispose of a body that they weren't responsible for? I digress.

The hearse was equipped with OnStar's GPS service, so the vehicle was quickly recovered and the thieves were apprehended. And that's a comfort, body or no. We here at FoxTrax are of the opinion that GPS technology, when properly used, can save lives. It's nice to think that it can save the dead as well.

Labels: current events, GPS, humor

Well, it's Friday, and the boss has left early to catch a plane. He's going to go watch one of his buddies from the Navy command the space shuttle, which is scheduled to take off tomorrow and will include a much-needed toilet for the International Space Station.

No, I'm not making any of this up.

He's only been gone for about half an hour, so we haven't broken out the pony keg or anything like that (yet). Mostly, I'm struck by what an odd news week it has been. The toilet goes out on the space station. Corn syrup overtakes I-270. Rachel Ray is a terrorist.

Rather than come to any point or informed opinion about any of this, I'm simply going to sit back and be thankful that the world is a very odd and entertaining place.

Have a good weekend everybody.

Labels: current events, random

File this under amusing current events:

Yesterday in Maryland Heights (St. Louis suburb, one township over from where I live), there was an accident that took out I-270, which loops around the city and is one of the major North-South arteries for the non-downtown areas of the city. 270's usually a mess anyway. As my boss is fond of pointing out, St. Louis has a North-South traffic problem, there just aren't that many major through-ways, and the ones that exist don't go very far. So when one of them gets shut off...

At 8:30 am, a four car accident caused a semi to empty its load of corn syrup all over the highway, completely shutting down the Southbound half of the freeway. Traffic was at a total standstill for an hour, and remained congested most of the day, finally clearing up in time for the evening rush hour.

And right now I'm just trying to think of something that would be harder to clean up than corn syrup. According to authorities, a lot of it oozed into the median and was soaked up, some of it got shoveled up, and then they brought in sand to clump up the rest. Still, I would think road would also need a thorough hosing-down before it was safe enough for cars.

Labels: current events

It's official, the world's largest self-portrait is a fake.

An artist named Erik Nordenenkar had announced that he was going to mail a GPS unit around the world via DHL and that the bread-crumb trail it left behind would be an image of the artist. You can see the picture at www.biggestdrawingintheworld.com.

It's an interesting idea, but there are a couple of flaws (that led many to rightly suspect the verity of this claim). Why, for example, would DHL make a giant loop in the middle of the South Pacific? Do they really deliver to coordinates?

Then there's the fact that, unless you're chartering a jet, you're going to be very limited in terms of the paths available. You can't send a package from Oxford to Atlanta and expect it to go in a predictable line. It will need to stop through various stations on the way.

At any rate, the artist has admitted that it was fictional, and DHL's cooperation (footage inside the plant, etc) indicates a publicity stunt.

Still, it's a fun idea, no?

Labels: current events, GPS

So the big news in e-tail this month? New York plans to start enforcing their sales tax on internet purchases.

The nerve...

Technically, New Yorkers are already supposed to line-in internet purchases on their annual tax form and pay the sales tax voluntarily. And many of them do--last year this brought in $45 million. But it's estimated that over $100 million went unreported. So the new law, the so-called Amazon Tax, forces e-tailers doing over $10,000 worth of annual business with NY to collect sales tax on all purchases going to the Empire State. There are a few problems I foresee:

For starters, we have no idea if we're going to do $10,000 worth of business with New Yorkers or not. We very easily could--50 Mini-MT's at $199.99 a pop would put as at $9,999.50. So if we were to sell 51 devices, or 50 devices and, say, a toothbrush, we'd have to have collected sales tax that year. Actually, there may be provisos for this written into the law--maybe you collect based on projections from the previous year, or maybe they're hoping most e-tailers will opt in so they can err on the side of caution. I'd love to know for sure, but I've been having all manner of trouble finding details on this law, even such mundane trifles as the goes-into-effect date have thus far eluded me.

Second, New York state doesn't have one sales tax. It has 30! And it's a small state, geographically speaking. If other states follow suit (and they want to), then we're looking at hundreds, nay, thousands of distinct sales tax rates that need to be applied and collected and then mailed to 46 different locations (if not every single municipality). So you have the added administrative burden on top of that.

But there's a bigger question to consider: is this law even legal? Can a New York law actually effect a company based in Missouri like, say, for example, I dunno, us!?!?!

We'll see. Something tells me Amazon will go ahead and start charging the tax while it's lawyers fight the good fight behind closed doors. As for the rest of us? Well, we'll get this all sorted one way or another. No one likes being buried in paperwork, but no one wants a cell next to Wesley Snipes either.

Have a good weekend.

Labels: current events