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

Fake Photo Detection Software

When journalists are writing for a newspaper, they know the rule: no digital photo manipulation. In other words, no using that beloved stamp tool in Photoshop to take out that pedestrian that ruined your perfect shot of the president.

But sometimes, the temptation is just too much for the reporter and they decide they have enough Photoshop experience and talent to get away with changing some elements in their shot.

This is becoming such a problem, that the Associated Press actually has a third party help them out with it. They contract the help of Hany Farid. Hany has made special software that analyzes photos to determine if it is genuine or not automatically. The software looks for certain red flags about the photo that the normal eye just wouldn’t catch without a magnifying glass. Things like repeating pixels patterns, or unnatural shadows, pixel patterns due to rescaling, and especially the pupil reflections of multiple people in the shot.

It make sense when ya think about it. What is reflected in one person’s pupil should also be reflected in another person’s, to an extent.

Forgery has been around ever since… well…. authenticity. Theres no way to eliminate it. But even so, things need to be done.

“This is an arms race,” Farid says. “I can already tell you how it’s going to end: We’re going to lose. It’s always going to be easier to create a forgery than detect a forgery. But we’re going to take the power to create forgeries out of the hands of amateurs. We will raise that bar up until you have to be very, very good to do it.”

Computing Photographic Forgeries [Via Boing Boing]

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]

How DreamWorks is Changing the World

According to DreamWorks, in the year 2009, every one of their movies will be produced in 3-D! The technology to make animated movies is nothing new, and in fact you’ve probably even seen a few 3D movies yourself. The reason that DreamWorks says 2009 is for the mere fact that the percentage of theaters that can show 3D digital movies is ub3r small in the U.S.

DreamWorks will not just be making all of their movies in 3D, but doing so exclusively. In other words, there won’t be ANY 2D versions of the films hitting the big screen. Just the DVDs. This is going to do a couple things. For one thing, its going to mean that you wont be able to find any more DreamWorks titles at the smaller movie theaters anymore. This COULD even put them out of business, unless they are able to cough up the costs to upgrade their equipment (which is going to be a pretty big cost). But on the reverse side of the spectrum, that means that all of the larger theaters (Regal, Edwards, etc) are going to upgrade every one of their theaters to hold 2 digital projectors for each screen that will show the 3D movies. Thats why its going to take 2-3 years before they start making exclusive 3D movies.

But along with the ability to display 3D movies, the digital projectors would be able to display a multitude of higher quality movies of all types (Think IMAX).

But heres the drawback… and its a pretty big one, in my opinion… you’re STILL going to have to wear some goofy glasses. Theres just no way around it… not with single screen projection anyways. The positive side of the negative side is the fact that they wont be those retro red and blue glasses… they would be the perpendicular-polarized lens kind (I honestly don’t know what they are called, i just know how they work).

This is the one thing that would keep me away from the theaters. I just don’t really think I would like having to wear uncomfortable glasses for almost 2 hours.

But this COULD be an interesting trend if you think about it. If every one of the theaters are transforming to the 3D projectors, then that means that there will be more productions in 3D that just DreamWorks’. There will actually be an available market for it. Nobody will have to be scared of making a 3D flick in fear of no theaters buying the reel due to the fact that they wouldn’t be able to use it.

If it gains even more popularity, then this will bring another kind of manufacturer into the scene…. yup, you guessed it… polarized glasses makers. You will be able to buy your own 3D glasses for the movies. You would have your own pair that you could leave at home and whenever you want to go watch a movie, you grab your nice comfy glasses that you hand picked yourself. Or hell, theres no reason why regular glasses couldn’t be perpendicularly polarized! You wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference, and they could still block out the sun on those extra bright California days. Go ahead and click the linky linky to see the press report on DreamWorks asking Bank of America for some money to do this with, haha.

DreamWorks Exclusively in 3D [Via Gizmodo]

Stupid 7-11

Well apparently, 7-11 has made some kind of deal with The Simpsons crew. 11 of the stores are going to be transformed into, you guessed it… the Kwik-E-Mart. All to promote The Simpsons Movie

I’ll admit it, thats gonna be pretty funny. But Ill also tell you straight out that Im not that excited about the movie. Im just as much of a Simpsons fan-freak that can recite every episode from the first 6 seasons as the next, so I think I have the right to say that the quality of The Simpsons has gone way way down over the past 5 years. But anyways, back to 7-11.

Besides just changing the name to the Kwik-E-Mart, they are going to change a few select items to coincide with the cult hit. Such as the Squishy (What flavor did you get? Blue), Buzz Cola (Twice the sugar, twice the caffeine!), and Krusty-O’s (Now with flesh-eating bacteria in every box!). Unfortunately, theres no confirmed word about offering Duff (Duff-man does not approve!).

Along with the changes, there will also be the usual store-wide sponsored ads (Think ‘MMMM… donuts’).

Seeing as how there are more than 4,700 stores nation-wide, and only 11 are getting the new clothes, unfortunately it seems that not many people will get to see the changes. The locations haven’t even been released yet.

Ya know what would be great though? If Wal*Mart started the same thing. At least if they did it, you KNOW you would finally be able to go buy yourself an authentic Li’l Bastard Clock-Tampering Kit.

Real Kwik-E-Marts [Via Boing-Boing]