Category Archives: The Economist

As the internet becomes intertwined with the real world, the resulting “geoweb” has many uses

Sep 6th 2007

“EARTH materialises, rotating majestically in front of his face. Hiro reaches out and grabs it. He twists it around so he’s looking at Oregon. Tells it to get rid of the clouds, and it does, giving him a crystalline view of the mountains and the seashore.”

That vision from Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash”, a science-fiction novel published in 1992, aptly describes Google Earth, a computer program that lets users fly over a detailed photographic map of the world. Other information, such as roads, borders and the locations of coffee shops can be draped on to the view, which can be panned, rotated, tilted and zoomed with almost seamless continuity. First-time users often report an exhilarating revelatory pang as they realise what the software can do. As the globe spins and switches from one viewpoint to another, it can even induce vertigo. (more…)

Jul 26th 2007

Can e-mail newsletters recommending cultural events in the world’s big cities maintain their credibility as they grow?

THIS Monday in New York, those so inclined could have toured Brooklyn’s pizzerias, sweated to “outer-planetary” dub or attended a modern recasting of “Eurydice”. But which was worth your time? Deciding what to do in any big city can be difficult, making it tempting to stay in and catch up on e-mail instead. But that might in fact be the answer. Two companies—Flavorpill in America and le cool in Europe, acting separately—publish free, weekly e-mails that narrow the torrent down to the two dozen very best events. (more…)

Competition is transforming the buying and selling of flowers

May 10th 2007 | NAALDWIJK

A BUNCH of flowers can appear beguilingly simple, but it is a miracle of distribution. Its delicate blooms may have grown on farms scattered around the world, yet they arrived at your local florist within days of harvest. Along the way, crowded with millions of others, your stems may have been part of the endless parade under the fluorescent lights of the Dutch flower auctions.
AFP Now that’s a bunch of flowers

Run by co-operatives of local growers, the auctions embody logistical virtuosity. Each lot of flowers—30% of them grown abroad—is unpacked, placed in buckets of water, wheeled under an electronic clock before a gallery of bidders, and then packed up again and shipped to its new owners, all before 9am each day. Over 17m stems are sold each day beneath the 39 descending-bid clocks at FloraHolland and Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer, the two biggest flower auctions. Jacques Teelen, boss of FloraHolland, boasts that within 36 hours a flower can reach any florist in Europe.

Read it on the Economist’s site…