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WTF ??
'Where's George' is a website that tracks the natural geographic circulation of American paper money.

The site was established in December 1998 by Hank Eskin, as 'The Great American Dollar Bill Locator'. Eskin, who holds an MBA from the prestigious Wharton School and has a day job as a database architect, says the idea for the site struck him on the way to lunch. "I thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool to track bills?' A Web site seemed the perfect medium." He says revenue from advertisers (yes, advertisers) roughly offsets operating costs.

How does it work?
A user registers an e-mail address at the site and enters the serial code and year of each bill he or she wants to track, as well as the Zip code where each bill was found. The user then writes "www.wheresgeorge.com" on the bills and spends them.
With any luck, a future owner of one of those bills will notice the writing and check out the Web site. If a finder joins and enters the bill in the system, the site will alert the person who registered it. It's "a hit," as "Georgers" say.

JWT launched AnxietyIndex.com, an interactive site that helps brands to understand and navigate the anxiety experienced by consumers today. The intention is to operate the site as a place where people can discover and discuss how brands are responding and consumers in their handling of the current global recession.

Alan Landers was the perfect choice to be the face of America's best-selling cigarette brand. As the Winston man, he appeared in hundreds of magazine and billboard advertisements in the 1960s and 1970s, portraying smoking as stylish and attractive.
Update: Alan Landers, has died while undergoing treatment for throat cancer. He was 68.

"They created the illusion that smoking was cool but they knew when I was doing the campaign that it caused lung cancer and that it was the most addictive drug the world has ever known," said Landers, who endures daily radiation therapy near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. "They should be held accountable for killing people."

The ad said, "I won't settle for anything less."

Theory say's that lipstick purchases are a way of measuring the economy.
During times of economic uncertainty, women load up on affordable luxuries as a substitute for more expensive items like clothing and jewelery. This phenomenon is called The Lipstick Effect. The theory was first identified in the Great Depression, when industrial production in the US halved, but sales of cosmetics rose between 1929 and 1933.
However as a theory it was proposed by Leonard Lauder, chairman of Estée Lauder Companies. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, which affected the U.S. economy on a large scale, Lauder noted that his company was selling more lipstick than usual.

Another trivia is Revlon's history, this famous cosmetic company was founded in the middle of the Great Depression, 1932, by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed to " L "in the name of REVLON.

This rare footage is from a 1983 Macintosh conference featuring Steve 'Apple' Jobs hosting a 'dating game' starring Bill 'Microsoft' Gates.

Another one

Trivia: First keyword was sold by Yahoo! and it was 'Golf' not 'SEX'!!

This animation, excellent in fact, shows a brief summary of the history of marketing and advertising, also leaving a glimpse that, these days very few brands have something interesting or different to offer (and say) to their customers.

The manufacturer Ty Inc. claims that their name choices of "Sweet Sasha" (left)and "Marvelous Malia" were totally random and not at all related to anyone.

Hong Kong returned to occupy its top-spot for the 15th consecutive time, in the ‘Index of Economic Freedom’.

WTF this ranking is all about?
This ranking/study is done by the Heritage Foundation and the "Wall Street Journal.", to quote them

We measure ten components of economic freedom, assigning a grade in each using a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the maximum freedom. The ten component scores are then averaged to give an overall economic freedom score for each country. The ten components of economic freedom are:
Business Freedom | Trade Freedom | Fiscal Freedom | Government Size | Monetary Freedom | Investment Freedom | Financial Freedom | Property rights | Freedom from Corruption | Labor Freedom

Where are we (Indian?)
Very well placed at 123th spot out of 183 nations, doing well against China, Nepal, Niger etc etc . Anyway we can say that like any other ranking , this is also of dubious nature, reason is simple: Pakistan is placed at 102.


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The Web, predominantly under its latest avatar of "2.0" offers many great things and these things do require a username to login. Sometime we do all the hard work of registering as a new user with a desired id, only to later getting a disappointing message as “This username is not available”. If , this is the same wit you also then do visit www.usernamecheck.com

The webpage reviews 68 Web Services (more will be added soon) one after another, and tells you whether a user name is available or not.

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Satyam has been ranked the ‘3rd Best Company To Work For In India’ by BT–Mercer–TNS, for its exemplary Human Resources practices, and commitment to Associate Delight.

2008

“We are truly in the business of building leaders who in turn can relate to what needs to be done and deal with it well, ” says Ramalinga Raju 2008

Adidas Originals is celebrating "60 Years of Soles and Stripes" by creating its largest global brand campaign. The Originals currently accounts for 20% of Adidas sales and in the collection are evergreens such as the classic Stan Smith tennis shoe. Adidas brought out its stars from the worlds of music, fashion and sport to take part, including: David Beckham, Missy Elliott, Kevin Garnett, Ilie Năstase, Kimora Simmons, Katy Perry and Mark Gonzales and Russell Simmons.

Tintin, the young Belgian reporter whose adventures have delighted children and adults worldwide, has turned 80. Created by Belgian artist Georges Remi, this comic strip first appeared in a children's supplement to Belgian daily ‘Le Vingtième Siècle’ on January 10, 1929.
Tintin, who was born graphically to the public in 1929, is designated by the single name. In 1978, Hergé has suggested that "Tintin" is rather a name or a nickname (freely chosen by parents) and not a family name (dictated by descent).
Profession: Tintin is presented as a reporter working for Le Petit Vingtième, the newspaper which also publishing his adventures.

The Vatican is endorsing novel technology which will bring the book of daily prayers used by priests straight onto iPhones, via iBreviary, an iTunes application.
This iBreviary is a book of prayer created by the Italian priest Paolo Godfather along with few programmer, it contains all the prayers of the church year, and is available in Italian, English, Spanish, Latin and French, but later will launch versions in Portuguese and German.

Today I was asking Lokesh, is there is no microfinance institution (MFI) in Nepal , he replied they have and infact bank’s name is quite interesting, and the name of Nepal’s biggest MFI is Nirdhan Utthan Bank Limited.

Nirdhan Utthan Bank Limited, "the bank for upliftment of the poor" is a microfinance bank established in November 1998 under Company Act of Nepal 1997 (now Company Act 2006). Nepal Rastra Bank, the central bank of Nepal granted a license in April 1999 to undertake banking activities under the Development Bank Act 1996. It started its formal operation from July 1999

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