Cinnamon: The Smell of Christmas (Retailers)
December 20, 2011 by Dane Carlson | Ideas
Martin Lindstrom:
Carefully camouflaged tubes strategically placed amongst the tinsel and glitz were piping in the sumptuous smells of Christmas: a perfect mix of cinnamon and pine.
Although it seemed I’d gotten to the nub of the issue, I was still perplexed. I mean, can a tube dispensing cinnamon and pine really compel me to embrace the Christmas spirit way ahead of time? Surprisingly, yes. Dr. Gemma Calvert, who is an expert in modern brain imaging based in Oxford, England, discovered the remarkable ability smells have to reactivate childhood memories. She exposed a group of volunteers to cinnamon and then viewed their reactions, using an fMRI scanner. As they breathed in the sweet spicy scent, their brains fired up — including the region responsible for authentic emotional engagement. It seems cinnamon is one of the main ingredients associated, over time, with baking and cider-making rituals and can kick-start an emotional journey whenever it wafts our way.
So while it might seem as though retailers are concentrating on everything that delights your eyes and ears, they also might be surreptitiously enticing you to buy more through your nose.
Martin Lindstrom is the author of Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy.
Photo by Timmary/ShutterStock.
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Tags: Christmas, cinnamon, smell
Brain Swaggle: Where Scrabble Meets Chess
December 20, 2011 by Angela Shupe | Inventions
Vindy.com:
Brain Swaggle is an interactive game that combines Scrabble and chess, making for an online game that’s strategic and stimulating, said Downing, the game’s creator, who is from Cortland.
“I thought that it would be cool if somehow a game could be created combining the strategy of chess with the vocabulary skills needed for Scrabble,” Downing said. “It’s kind of like sparring with letters.”
Downing said the game is played online. Currently the only option is to play against a computer challenger.
Each player takes turns picking a letter to spell a word, Downing said.
“You can choose how long you have on each turn — 15, 30 or 60 seconds,” he said. “It’s really tough to plan ahead because as soon as the computer makes its move you might have to rethink your word.”
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Tags: Games, Internet
Parli-Cards Makes Parliament Fun
December 20, 2011 by Angela Shupe | News
Trying to find a fun way to educate your kids about government-related topics? Mary Jo Joyce found a way to do that with her unique card decks.
The three Parli-Cards games produced so far test a player’s knowledge of American history, U.S. presidents, the political process and even the federal government’s abundance of agency acronyms and initials.
The original idea, Joyce said, stemmed from her lifelong interest in education and a desire to take the boredom out of learning. And as a consultant who works frequently in Washington, D.C., as a liaison for introducing products or technologies to government agencies and other businesses, government has become an area of expertise.
Joyce said she thinks people who play the games will learn more about how things work politically in the United States.
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Tags: Education, Games, Women
Curbing Employee Fraud
December 20, 2011 by Angela Shupe | News
Small businesses do what they can to protect themselves from being robbed, but what about employee fraud? Fraud is occurring in companies of all sizes, and it is up to you to find ways to help prevent it from happening in your company.
While small business owners may not have the man power to employ a full-fledged fraud detection unit, there are procedures they can implement to curb employee fraud.
“Segregate accounting duties to the greatest extent possible,” recommended Ken Stalcup, certified fraud examiner and certified public accountant at Somerset CPAs. “No one person should be responsible for an entire accounting cycle, meaning no one person should be allowed to approve vendor invoices, prepare checks to go back to that same vendor, sign the checks, post the checks to the general ledger and reconcile the bank account.”
A system of checks and balances should also apply to inventory. “If you are a business that includes inventory, make sure your shipping and receiving departments are separate departments handled by separate employees,” advised Marc Bourne, vice president of Know It All Intelligence Group. He added that annual inventory counts should be done by a third-party vendor or an employee that is not responsible for the involved departments.
Photo by theilr.
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Tags: Advice, Small Biz
Niche Biz: Electronics Charging Kiosk
December 18, 2011 by Angela Shupe | Ideas, News
Chicago Sun Times:
His winning idea is to put cellphone-charging kiosks at malls, airports, grocery stores and other sites where people are in a hurry. A 10-minute charge at the Charge N Go kiosk would cost $1, and would juice up smartphones, laptops and tablet computers. Users could lock their device inside the kiosk while they ran a quick errand.
“It all started when I joked that my phone was always going dead when I was at the mall,” said Driver, an 18-year-old freshman at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Driver won his entrepreneurial bona fides through the Future Founders program, sponsored by the Chicago-based Future Founders Foundation. The foundation is a newly created spinoff from the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, aimed at introducing young people to a variety of career ideas.
Photo by Karl Baron
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Tags: Electronics, Niche, Teens
