Schwippy

Worlds Oldest Business Is No More

Just try to make a guess on how old the world’s oldest business would be. 50 years? Nah, Carl’s J.R. restaurants are older than that. How about 100 years? Not even close. Ok, ok… enough senseless guessing. The worlds oldest business record is held by a Japanese company called Kongō Gumi, which has built many famous Japanese temples. Kongō Gumi has been in the temple building business for over 40 generations. 40 generations! What does that work out to in years? Try 1,428!

According to Wikipedia:

Headquartered in Osaka, the family-owned construction company has origins dating back to the year 578, when Prince Shotoku brought Kongō family members from Baekje, Korea to Japan to build the Buddhist Shitennoji Temple, which still stands. Over the centuries, Kongō Gumi has participated in the construction of many famous buildings, including the 16th century Osaka Castle, Hōryū-ji in Nara, and Shitennō-ji.

But it looks as though the business has finally lost its ongoing record. While they still hold the record for the longest running business, they lost the record for the oldest business still running when they were bought by the Takamatsu Corporation.

Now heres the question… Who is the world’s oldest business that is still running? It doesn’t look like many people have an answer for that one.

Business Week [Via BoingBoing]

Interesting Advertising by KFC

KCF has it all figured out. They have been using technology to advertise like never before. I just learned that last year, KFC had a commercial that told the world how to get a free sandwich at any location just by saying a secret password. They even told you the password right in the advertisement…. except for the fact that it was only put in a couple frames of the entire commercial. The only way to figure out the password was to record the advertisement and play it back in slow motion, most easily done with TiVo, or another DVR.

This was great for KFC. For one thing, it singled out a certain group of individuals for the promotion, and whenever this happens, there is ALWAYS going to be people trying to get into this group that otherwise wouldn’t be in there. Even if they really dont want the free sandwich, they want to be able to get into something they otherwise are not able to do. Thats just human nature. So eventually, word got out of the password all across the internet and everyone found it. Now they have a password, and only one thing to do with it. Go get a sandwich, and KFC hopes a drink and some tater’s too.

Another thing that made this a great marketing strategy; it is relatively uncommon. Almost unheard of for real promotions. And what more would geeks want than to tell everyone else about something weird and new about technology? Its that reason that KFC gained a lot of free press across the internet. Just the simple fact that people like to tell other people about interesting stuff. Look at what im writing about right now. Im giving KFC some free press.

Anyways… that was a while back. Im posting about yet another way KFC is using their ultra high paid advertising monkeys to churn out even more evil advertising. They are using the technological fact that younger people are able to hear different tones than older individuals.

This technology has been used in a few situations that I can think of off the top of my head such as cell phone ring tones that teachers couldn’t hear, but the kids could. Also I just saw a review on a device that was supposed to ward off teenagers from certain places that were more adult oriented (The review was horrible btw. It didnt work).

KFC’s new strategy is simple: insert a semi-ultrasonic tone into one of their advertisements. The advertisement looks and sounds completely normal to the elderly ear, but the commercial also says that there is a secret tone located somewhere in the commercial, and the first 1,000 kids to call a certain phone number with the correct location of the advertisement will get a free KFC menu item.

If you catch this commercial on the air and dont have one of your kids around to tell you where the sound is, I have a better idea. Go get your dog, set him by the television, and wait til the advertisement comes on again. When all of a sudden, your canine companion starts going into an epileptic seizure, you can bet that you just found that hidden sound.

Heres the commercial. I could hear that annoying sound perfectly, but just to be fair, this may be due to the video being transcoded into a digital medium. It may actually be a lot harder to hear on the TV.

KFC Mosquito Tone Commercial @ Engadget

One Dollar Silk Ties!

Quick! Amazon has a bunch of silk ties, cuff links, leather wallets, and silk squares all marked at $1!

I just found the deal online and ordered $20 worth, haha… i dont know how that happened, but whatever. Theres quite a lot of Christmas and other holiday ties, but if you sort through those, theres some nice ones lyin around there. And $1!

Ha!

Amazon $1 Deals [Via Bargainist]

X Prize Wants Their MPG

The X Prize foundation is probably most notable for their past sponsorship, the Ansari X Prize; an $10,000,000 prize to the private group who could first get a spacecraft into space and return safely. That contest was finally put to an end in 2004 when Burt Rutan and Paul Allen finally succeeded.

Since then, the X Price foundation has come up with another contest that should spawn the ideas and improvements we desperately need in the world today.

The proposal states it will give an unnamed amount in prize money (Probably the standard $10M) to the first group that can make an automobile that can successfully break the 100 MPG mark.

Whats the record right now, like 50ish or something? Hold on…… ok, a quick googling shows 76 MPG (Dont quote me on that though). But anyways, how awesome would it be to be able to have a car that could get you across the country on a single tank of gas? The foundation isn’t looking for a car that was just made by some MIT students in a dorm room. They want something that can actually be manufactured and sold. They have 2 classes so far; a 4-wheel / 4-passenger model, and a 2-passenger model with an unspecified amount of wheels.

With the rediculous gasoline prices around these days, this has got to be one of the most needed things in our world. Everything should go pretty well too, as long as Chevron doesnt get their hands on the winning prototypes. We would never hear about it again.

Automotive X Prize [Via Slashdot]

Get rid of Coinstar’s Commission

If you’ve ever walked into a supermarket within the past 10 years or so, you’ve probably seen a Coinstar change counter.

They are the devices that let you take a jar full of change, dump it all in there, get a receipt, then take that receipt up to a register and trade it in for some cold cash. So far so good, right? Well, now step in evil corporations.

According to Coinstar, they need to charge you a percentage of your cash just to be able to dump it into a machine. Last time I checked, it was free to do this in any casino in Las Vegas.

In my area, Coinstar charges you 8.5% of however much change you have. Thats not cool with me.

And apparently, it wasnt cool with other people either. It seems that Coinstar heard about the fact that they are evil, so they tried changing some things around. They now give the coin holder the option to either get cash with the percentage taken out the same way they have been, or they can choose to completely bypass that percentage commission and elect to instead receive a gift card. If you select a gift card, the machine will ask you where you want the gift card to be used at. You actually get some good choices here too. Places like iTunes online store, Amazon.com, Target, and many others.

The whole gift card idea made me have an entirely different opinion on the evil Coinstar company (Yes, I still think they are evil).

Recently I read about a way to totally confuse the Coinstar machine and pretty much combine the two methods of monetary trade. Basically what it lets you do, is get cash with no commission taken out!

YES! Best of both worlds right there.

Its a very simple way of doing it, but it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Heres the steps of getting your cash without paying the percentage for it.

1. Start the Coinstar machine.
2. Tell it you want to trade coins for a gift card.
3. Select a gift card. It doesnt matter what one, you wont be getting it anyways.
4. Give it your hard earned couch coins.
5. Discretely go around back and unplug the telephone wire
6. Wait a few minutes while it keeps trying to dial, then finally gives up.
7. Watch it give you a receipt to bring to the register and get cash.

What we effectively did here was disable all communication the machine has with its central servers. This makes it unable to put funds into a new gift card for you.

After it decides that the connection just wont work, it gives you the cash receipt. Since you never selected that you wanted cash, it never had a chance to ask you if you agreed to the condition that it charges you a percentage!

Without your consent, the machine cant take anything out of your money.

Now go cash in that receipt and buy some baseball cards….. or whatever it is you kids are spending your money on these days.

[Via Zedomax]