| The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments: What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It's amazing and completely insane. The first part of this video demonstrates a simple geyser, and the second part shows just how extreme it can get. Over one hundred jets of soda fly into the air in less than three minutes. It's a hysterical and spectacular mint-powered version of the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas, brought to you by the mad scientists at EepyBird.com. | |
Saturday, July 01, 2006
eepybird diet coke and mentos exposition
Discover Card Aims Small Business
Discover Financial Services LLC was introducing on Monday its first credit card for small businesses, aiming to make it easier for owners and their employees to pay their bills.
The Discover Business Card will carry cash-back bonus rewards like those offered on Discover's consumer cards, said Roger C. Hochschild, president and chief operating officer of Discover Financial.
In addition, he said, small businesses will be able to obtain fee-free checks to pay merchants and suppliers who don't accept credit cards. The checks will show up on the small business' monthly card statement and be eligible for rewards, he added.
small businesses owners, who can qualify for credit limits of up to $50,000, also will be able to get cards for their employees and customize the limits on them, he said.
"This is a single payment option for businesses that will solve some of the core issues they have and transform the ways small businesses pay for purchases," he said.
Discover Financial, which is based in Riverwoods, Ill., is a business unit of Morgan Stanley, the New York-based investment bank.
Discover is the latest card company to beef up its offerings to the fast-growing small business category. Bank of America, which is headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., recently introduced a free payroll product for its small business customers. Other card issuers have changed award mixes.
Sastry Rachakonda, director of Discover's business card program, noted that just 10 percent of small business spending currently was via credit cards, making it a potentially strong growth market.
He said small businesses customers will have online account management tools and will get quarterly and annual statements that can be used for tax preparation.
The Discover Business Card will carry cash-back bonus rewards like those offered on Discover's consumer cards, said Roger C. Hochschild, president and chief operating officer of Discover Financial.
In addition, he said, small businesses will be able to obtain fee-free checks to pay merchants and suppliers who don't accept credit cards. The checks will show up on the small business' monthly card statement and be eligible for rewards, he added.
small businesses owners, who can qualify for credit limits of up to $50,000, also will be able to get cards for their employees and customize the limits on them, he said.
"This is a single payment option for businesses that will solve some of the core issues they have and transform the ways small businesses pay for purchases," he said.
Discover Financial, which is based in Riverwoods, Ill., is a business unit of Morgan Stanley, the New York-based investment bank.
Discover is the latest card company to beef up its offerings to the fast-growing small business category. Bank of America, which is headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., recently introduced a free payroll product for its small business customers. Other card issuers have changed award mixes.
Sastry Rachakonda, director of Discover's business card program, noted that just 10 percent of small business spending currently was via credit cards, making it a potentially strong growth market.
He said small businesses customers will have online account management tools and will get quarterly and annual statements that can be used for tax preparation.
Fake Luis Vuitton made in China
China Should stop this SHADDY business RIGHT NOW.
Last year, the home entertainment giant began selling selected movies with price tags of only US$2.75 (euro2.19) in major Chinese cities, aiming to carve out a market for relatively affordable but high-quality, legitimate versions of movies in a sea of counterfeit products selling for less than a dollar.
"The reason why piracy's come along is that there weren't enough products at the right price soon enough," said Tony Vaughan, managing director of CAV Warner Home Entertainment Co., Warner Bros.' joint venture distribution company in China.
Warner's strategy has been "to build a legitimate, viable offering for the Chinese consumer," he said.
U.S. Fights Flood of Fake Goods
By the time David S. Pearl II finally saw one of the knockoff versions of his company's refrigeration testing devices, the damage had been done.
For more than 35 years, Uniweld Products Inc. had painstakingly built its reputation in the air conditioning hungry Middle East. But as the cheap counterfeits entered the market, sales plummeted. Workers were laid off, consumer confidence destroyed.
The reason for Uniweld's misery sat before him, just out of an express-mail package: a Chinese-made, nearly identical version of the real thing, one of a flood of pirated American products, the bulk from China, that the United States blames for costing thousands of jobs, robbing companies of profits and seriously harming the U.S. economy's ability to compete.
In Pearl's case, the bogus equipment matched the original right down to the name, trademark, address and phone number of his manufacturing company's headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The differences, though, were crucial: The fake products cost half as much as the real ones, and they didn't work. Pearl estimated that over the years Uniweld lost well over a million dollars, a significant amount for a small company.
"You look at them side by side, it is absolutely amazing how well they copied them, and it's scary," Pearl, Uniweld's executive vice president, said in a phone interview. "The United States is a country of thousands and thousands and thousands of small businesses, who employ the majority of the employees in the country. For them to be hammered by Chinese counterfeits is a serious problem."
For more than 35 years, Uniweld Products Inc. had painstakingly built its reputation in the air conditioning hungry Middle East. But as the cheap counterfeits entered the market, sales plummeted. Workers were laid off, consumer confidence destroyed.
The reason for Uniweld's misery sat before him, just out of an express-mail package: a Chinese-made, nearly identical version of the real thing, one of a flood of pirated American products, the bulk from China, that the United States blames for costing thousands of jobs, robbing companies of profits and seriously harming the U.S. economy's ability to compete.
In Pearl's case, the bogus equipment matched the original right down to the name, trademark, address and phone number of his manufacturing company's headquarters in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The differences, though, were crucial: The fake products cost half as much as the real ones, and they didn't work. Pearl estimated that over the years Uniweld lost well over a million dollars, a significant amount for a small company.
"You look at them side by side, it is absolutely amazing how well they copied them, and it's scary," Pearl, Uniweld's executive vice president, said in a phone interview. "The United States is a country of thousands and thousands and thousands of small businesses, who employ the majority of the employees in the country. For them to be hammered by Chinese counterfeits is a serious problem."
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