1990s

Apple: From Beleaguered to Skewered — When Apple was on the ropes in the late 1990s, beleaguered as many were fond of saying, believers rallied in support of the company. Now that Apple is strong and prosperous, the tendency of some in the community is to switch to satire, even ridicule.  This time, it's not Apple bashing, but just basic human behavior.  How Apple reacts will be critical.  ... [Tags: 1990s, apple, human behavior, ropes, satire]

Mary Meeker and the blogosphere's identity crisis — One might make the argument that of all the Wall Street personalities who made names for themselves in the internet boom of the late 1990s and in the bust that soon followed, Morgan Stanley's Mary Meeker was the most important.... [Tags: 1990s, blogosphere, bust, identity crisis, internet boom]

A New Look for McDonald’s — McDonald's is rolling out new designs for its food packaging aimed at fortifying the brand and staying ahead of obesity concerns.   McDonald's (MCD) is busily remodeling its U.S. locations, accessorizing interiors with flat-panel televisions and plush chairs—even the exteriors are made of real brick these days (BusinessWeek, 5/15/06). Now the Oak Brook (Ill.) chain is turning to its packaging. In early November the king of cheap eats began rolling out new packaging across its 13,900 U.S. restaurants that aims to make the containers for its sandwiches, french fries, and soft drinks more relevant to today's consumers, and not look... [Tags: 1990s, brick, businessweek, cheap eats, consumers]

Elisabeth Mahoney's radio review — Waking up early yesterday in a remote rural setting, Farming Today (Radio 4) was the obvious listening choice. Having done the naive townie thing all weekend of thinking how stress-free countryside living might be, the programme came as an emphatic reality check. Presenter Anna Hill discussed links between organophosphates in sheep dip and sheep farmers falling seriously ill. Many listeners had contacted the show with their own stories of illness after years of handling the products, which all sheep farmers had to use from the 1970s to 1990s. One woman detailed a terrible range of symptoms, which ultimately led her... [Tags: 1970s, 1990s, amp, conclusion, countryside]

73 Months — That's how long the post-9/11 recovery lasted:The previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months.... [Tags: 1990s]

Revisiting Now That’s What I Call Music #1 — Now That's What I Call Music Volume 29 is perched near the top of the Billboard charts this week, which got me to reminiscing about the origins of this bestselling monster we call the NOW series (the U.S. compilations starting in the late 90s, not the 80s U.K. things) and how far it's come since that first commercial from 1998 that aired so many damn times, I had the order of the song clips (and the corresponding images of Marcy Playground sticking through the floor) memorized. The original NOW #1 tracklist reads like a time capsule from some lost 1990s... [Tags: 1990s, billboard, civilization, comic genius, compilation cd]

Pop Quiz: When Did The Recession Begin? — Quick! Wrong. According to the folks who keep track of this sort of thing, the U.S. recession began a year ago -- Dec. 2007. For the record:The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met by conference call on Friday, November 28. The committee maintains a chronology of the beginning and ending dates (months and quarters) of U.S. recessions. The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion... [Tags: 1990s, business cycle, chronology, conference call, economic activity]

Confirmed: U.S. in a Recession (Since Dec. 2007!) — Photograph by jayKayEss on Flickr The private research organization the National Board of Economic Research says its economists have confirmed the U.S. is in a recession--and has been in on since December 2007. The Daily News adds, "What will they tell us next - that oxygen is good for the lungs?!" You can read the full text of the NBER statement here, but here's an excerpt:The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of... [Tags: 1990s, cnn, cnn money, credit markets, economic activity]

US Recession Began One Year Ago, Government Says — The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met by conference call on Friday, November 28. The committee maintains a chronology of the beginning and ending dates (months and quarters) of U.S. recessions. The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months. A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy,... [Tags: 1990s, business cycle, chronology, conference call, contraction]

Windows 7, June 2009 and the technologies of antitrust — Is Microsoft gettting its ship together? Radio Reg Bundling’s come a long way since Microsoft was dragged through the US courts in the 1990s for wrapping Internet Explorer into Windows.…... [Tags: 1990s, internet explorer, microsoft, radio]

Roy Greenslade: FT settles libel suit with ex-Cypriot president — The former president of Cyprus, Tassos Papadopoulos, has withdrawn a long-running libel suit against the Financial Times after an agreed statement in court. The case concerned a report, published in July 2002, following an FT investigation into the Belgrade government's illegal transfer to Cyprus in the 1990s of billions of dollars in cash in order to avoid UN trade sanctions. (Via Financial Times)Financial TimesPress & publishingCyprusGreenslade on Europeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds... [Tags: 1990s, amp, belgrade government, billions of dollars, cypriot]

Following hot on the heals of the Sega Saturn case mod we saw last month, the gang from Akiba PC in Japan are back with the Dreamcast PC. This machine sports a Sony NEC Blu-ray drive, an AMD mini-ITX mainboard with 780G Chipset and ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics, HDMI output, 4GB RAM and 160GB storage. We thought that the four USB ports (previously the console's controller ports) were a particularly nice touch. Manufactured for ¥100,000 (roughly $1,045), the machine is unlikely to go on sale any time in the near future, but if you're so inclined feel free... [Tags: 1990s, amd, ati radeon, case mod, controller ports]

Dust-up at Training Zone — Some readers of an interview with me that appeared in today’s issue of Training Zone has generated a dozen critical comments and even some name-calling. First, the interview. Then, the comments. And after that, my response. Jay Cross, the man who coined the term ‘elearning’, believes the web is revolutionising the way we learn. Not through the kind of elearning of the 1990s but via the explosion of online communities which effectively democratise the way we learn. Cross believes the era of traditional course-led training is coming to an end and that informal, social learning is the way forward.... [Tags: 1990s, blended learning, brains, ceo, critical comments]

Future of Media Framework adapted into Portuguese — The Future of Media Strategic Framework is still getting plenty of attention 2 1/2 years since it was created - we're up to around 150,000 downloads and it is still used extensively by companies and consultants in strategy development. I regularly hear new stories of how it's been used, and I continue to use it in my strategy projects for media clients, along with other strategy tools. The latest use of the framework is an adaptation into Portuguese in the interdisciplinary information management journal Liinc em Revista, as below. To see the article and original image, go to Liinc em... [Tags: 1990s, adaptation, brazil, document management systems, downloads]

Sexy, Scary Undeath Done Right [Found Footage] — Twilight's undead romance between vampire and teen already looked bad, but it looks downright spaztastic when you compare it to this intense, gothic-ghetto death scene from Candyman. One of the best horror flicks of the 1990s, Candyman is about the vengeful ghost of a black man who was brutalized and murdered when he and a white woman decided to marry. Now he haunts the Chicago projects, destroying those who don't believe in him. Told from the point of view of a white graduate student who is studying the urban legend of Candyman, the movie is a creepy and smart... [Tags: 1990s, best horror flicks, black man, candyman, city of chicago]

Geithner Pick Mystifies Some Traditional Democrats Constituencies — As a young Treasury aide in the late 1990s, Timothy Geithner once said his proudest accomplishment was helping assemble more than $100 billion in international rescues to combat financial instability in Asia and Latin America. Compared with meltdowns prior to the late 1990s, "the world proved much more resilient in confronting the recent crisis, because of the strength of the policy response and the financial force we mobilized in support of strong policies," the career civil servant, then 37 years old, told a reporter at the time.... [Tags: 1990s, 37 years, accomplishment, asia, civil servant]

Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig's Foreign Clients At Times At Odds With US — As a top Washington lawyer, newly named White House counsel Greg Craig has represented high-profile clients, from Bill Clinton to John Hinckley to Alexander Solzhenitsyn to Elian Gonzalez's father. But less well known is Craig's work in the 1990s for at least four foreign governments or leaders facing a variety of tricky situations in Washington.... [Tags: 1990s, alexander, alexander solzhenitsyn, bill clinton, elian gonzalez]

Geithner, Treasury Secretary — Justin Fox:One thing Geithner doesn't have much background in is economic policy other than financial policy (at Treasury his big job was jetting around the world fighting the emerging markets financial crises of the late 1990s). So the other names on the economic team that Obama is set to announce Monday are going to be important. They're likely to be the ones designing a stimulus package while Geithner spends his days trying to make the banking system work again.James Surowiecki:The Geithner appointment doesn't solve the interregnum problem, obviously. But it does reassure Wall Street that a smart, capable person --... [Tags: 1990s, automakers, banking system, capable person, economic policy]

Addressing The Threat Of Deflation — As central banks continue to slash interest rates almost to zero, prices can plummet. It creates a liquidity trap, as it did in the 1930s and in Japan during the 1990s. Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff outlines what deflation could mean for modern America.» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us... [Tags: 1930s, 1990s, central banks, deflation, e mail]

Zillionaire.com infomercial — Everything is Terrible found this funny infomercial from a long gone company Zillionaire.com, pushing a site called dotplanet.com ("the world's only lifestyle destination portal"). If George Bush would have ran an Internet business in the late 1990s, he would have had the same spiel and delivery style of Zillionaire.com CEO Hubert Humphrey (Not the politician): "I firmly believe that Dot Planet is the most powerful phenomenon to ever hit the Internet. Our goals are just mind-boggling. We will be the fastest portal to ever hit one million users, two million, three million and all. Our vision is limitless. And... [Tags: 1990s, america online, compensation plan, delivery style, destination portal]