The history of the demand for organic food starts where you would expect: at a little farm in the country, with a farmer picking his way through his field.
That's nice and quaint, but not business for the masses. Co-ops brought the food to more people. Farmers markets caught on, even blocking traffic on busy streets in big cities like New York and Washington. Whole Foods transplanted the idea into corporate America, helping the growth of vast fields of organic produce throughout California.
Now there is organic fast food, and the options for it in the Washington area are about to grow. Organic to Go, a Seattle company founded in 2004, said yesterday that it has purchased locally based High Noon's four cafes, as well as its catering operation, and plans to turn the lunch hot spots into places where office workers can flee their cubicles and devour a meatloaf sandwich made with organic beef.
"We're trying to get more food that is of higher quality from organic and natural producers in the path of where people work, and that will in turn help to grow our company," said Jason Brown, Organic to Go's founder and chief executive.
The company is taking the Whole Foods prepared-food concept out of the grocery store and into places where people work and spend their days. With High Noon, Organic to Go gets District locations in busy business downtown corridors, including at 15th and K streets, and 19th and F streets. "If you stand outside High Noon and look around, there are great offices all over filled with people," Brown said. "That's who the customers are."
The average lunch customer is probably different from a decade ago, when standard fast-food fare would have done just fine. People who eat meals out increasingly want more nutritious food.
Full Article
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
The "Healthy" drinks that do more harm than good
Whether you are on a hardcore diet trying to lose major pounds or just someone trying to stay in good shape, you should be aware that there are a lot of so-called "healthy" drinks out there that will do you more harm than good. To help you steer clear of these devilish drinks, Men's Health has compiled a small list of 5 of some of the most unhealthy drinks. The drinks, inside...
5. Worst "Healthy" Drink
Glaceau VitaminWater (any flavor 20oz bottle)
130 calories, 33 grams of sugar.
Vitamins and water might seem like a good idea but what they don't advertise is that this water contains nearly as much calories and sugar as a can of soda. It should be no surprise that this stuff is made by The Coca-Cola Company.
4. Worst Juice Imposter
Arizona Kiwi Strawberry (23.5 oz can)
360 calories, 84 grams of sugar.
These bottles which are just 5 percent juice cost 99 cents which makes them one of the cheapest source of empty calories in the country.
3. Worst Smoothie
Jamba Juice Peanut Butter Moo'd Power Smoothie (30 oz)
169 grams of sugar, 30 grams of fat
Whether you call it a smoothie or a milk shake, it has more sugar than a bag of chocolate chips.
2. Worst Summer Cocktail
Pina Colada
625 calories, 75 grams of sugar
Because of the super sweet pineapple juice and fatty coconut milk, the only wise thing to consume here may be the garnish. Try a lime daiquiri or mojito instead and save 400 calories.
1. The Unhealthiest Drink In America
Baskin Robbin's Large Heath Bar Shake (32. oz)
2,310 calories, 266 grams of sugar, 108 grams of fat
73 ingredients go into this milk shake.
66 teaspoons of sugar.
11 Heath bars equal the calories in this shake
8-12 minutes to consume this drink.
240 minutes on a treadmill running at a moderate pace to burn it off.
Full Article
5. Worst "Healthy" Drink
Glaceau VitaminWater (any flavor 20oz bottle)
130 calories, 33 grams of sugar.
Vitamins and water might seem like a good idea but what they don't advertise is that this water contains nearly as much calories and sugar as a can of soda. It should be no surprise that this stuff is made by The Coca-Cola Company.
4. Worst Juice Imposter
Arizona Kiwi Strawberry (23.5 oz can)
360 calories, 84 grams of sugar.
These bottles which are just 5 percent juice cost 99 cents which makes them one of the cheapest source of empty calories in the country.
3. Worst Smoothie
Jamba Juice Peanut Butter Moo'd Power Smoothie (30 oz)
169 grams of sugar, 30 grams of fat
Whether you call it a smoothie or a milk shake, it has more sugar than a bag of chocolate chips.
2. Worst Summer Cocktail
Pina Colada
625 calories, 75 grams of sugar
Because of the super sweet pineapple juice and fatty coconut milk, the only wise thing to consume here may be the garnish. Try a lime daiquiri or mojito instead and save 400 calories.
1. The Unhealthiest Drink In America
Baskin Robbin's Large Heath Bar Shake (32. oz)
2,310 calories, 266 grams of sugar, 108 grams of fat
73 ingredients go into this milk shake.
66 teaspoons of sugar.
11 Heath bars equal the calories in this shake
8-12 minutes to consume this drink.
240 minutes on a treadmill running at a moderate pace to burn it off.
Full Article
Is mobile a good thing?
Just about everyone I talk to is very excited about mobile Internet.
In 2006, the Japanese government proudly announced that more people used the Internet through their mobile phones than through their computers. Online services are all talking about their "mobile strategy" and VCs are flocking to fund the latest "mobile startup".
I don't think there is anything wrong with mobile or with some of the great new mobile applications and devices, but we have to be careful to remember that most mobile networks that actually work are built on infrastructure that is operated by a small number of mobile operators who use a lot of regulated and closed technology.
The reason that we have vibrant startup driven innovation is because the Internet is open by nature. Anyone can participate without asking permission and anyone can compete with anyone else at every layer of the stack. This DNA of open and free competition (except for the occasional semi-monopoly) is what allows startups like Google to come in and displace incumbents. If it weren't for the Internet, I'm positive that the telcos would have determined that it was the most efficient that THEY design and operate the "online directories".
We can criticize Google for becoming large and dominant in the market, but a huge percentage of the money that Google makes goes back into distributing money to startup companies and even non-profits like Mozilla. Google acquires many companies and buys equipment from vendors that mostly create open platforms.
The money that the mobile operators make mostly goes to boated and expensive internal R&D and paying for equipment from a small number of vendors that make the telecom equipment.
People point to the hacked iPhone as an example of how "we're making mobile open." I do applaud it and I think it's great that we can now run our own apps on the iPhone. However, what do you get at the carrier level. Yay, you now can chose Vodaphone or Sprint instead of AT&T. This doesn't solve the basic problem that at the carrier level, we're still closed.
In the short term, MVNOs like e-mobile will help drive prices down, but they are still built on an architecture that isn't really open to competition and the prices will only go down so far. What we need in the long run is open spectrum and alternatives to 3G.
In Japan, services like Mixi have announced that their web usage is decreasing, their mobile usage is increasing and that more of their users are using their services from mobile and than the web. I don't think mobile monetizes as well (for the company) as the web. I think that if we move over to mobile too quickly we're risking moving our game to a platform where the DNA is not what we're used to on the Internet and most importantly, putting money in the pockets of people who do not redistribute it to startups, but instead feed giant vendor ecologies instead.
Maybe those smart companies in the mobile space like Vodaphone and Nokia who see the future should create a fund to invest in open innovation on mobile. We definitely could make the argument that in the long run, a healthy ecology on mobile is better for at least the strong companies involved in the ecology, just like the Internet increase the telecom economy as a whole. It reminds me of the big oil states investing in alternative energy. If this could happen, this could be a good thing and I'd be happy to help. ;-)
David Farber
I really do not believe companies like Vodaphone and Nokia would ever do anything against their monopoly.
It reminds me the arrogance of companies like Epson which sell printers and earn on the Ink refill.
Printing is so expensive not because of the cost of the technology or the ink, but because it is a monopoly.
And I also have problems in believing that the microwaves and other waves are safe for the health.
Looking at the increasing number of brain cancer and altzehimer disease, I would think these have something to do with the waves pollution...
In 2006, the Japanese government proudly announced that more people used the Internet through their mobile phones than through their computers. Online services are all talking about their "mobile strategy" and VCs are flocking to fund the latest "mobile startup".
I don't think there is anything wrong with mobile or with some of the great new mobile applications and devices, but we have to be careful to remember that most mobile networks that actually work are built on infrastructure that is operated by a small number of mobile operators who use a lot of regulated and closed technology.
The reason that we have vibrant startup driven innovation is because the Internet is open by nature. Anyone can participate without asking permission and anyone can compete with anyone else at every layer of the stack. This DNA of open and free competition (except for the occasional semi-monopoly) is what allows startups like Google to come in and displace incumbents. If it weren't for the Internet, I'm positive that the telcos would have determined that it was the most efficient that THEY design and operate the "online directories".
We can criticize Google for becoming large and dominant in the market, but a huge percentage of the money that Google makes goes back into distributing money to startup companies and even non-profits like Mozilla. Google acquires many companies and buys equipment from vendors that mostly create open platforms.
The money that the mobile operators make mostly goes to boated and expensive internal R&D and paying for equipment from a small number of vendors that make the telecom equipment.
People point to the hacked iPhone as an example of how "we're making mobile open." I do applaud it and I think it's great that we can now run our own apps on the iPhone. However, what do you get at the carrier level. Yay, you now can chose Vodaphone or Sprint instead of AT&T. This doesn't solve the basic problem that at the carrier level, we're still closed.
In the short term, MVNOs like e-mobile will help drive prices down, but they are still built on an architecture that isn't really open to competition and the prices will only go down so far. What we need in the long run is open spectrum and alternatives to 3G.
In Japan, services like Mixi have announced that their web usage is decreasing, their mobile usage is increasing and that more of their users are using their services from mobile and than the web. I don't think mobile monetizes as well (for the company) as the web. I think that if we move over to mobile too quickly we're risking moving our game to a platform where the DNA is not what we're used to on the Internet and most importantly, putting money in the pockets of people who do not redistribute it to startups, but instead feed giant vendor ecologies instead.
Maybe those smart companies in the mobile space like Vodaphone and Nokia who see the future should create a fund to invest in open innovation on mobile. We definitely could make the argument that in the long run, a healthy ecology on mobile is better for at least the strong companies involved in the ecology, just like the Internet increase the telecom economy as a whole. It reminds me of the big oil states investing in alternative energy. If this could happen, this could be a good thing and I'd be happy to help. ;-)
David Farber
I really do not believe companies like Vodaphone and Nokia would ever do anything against their monopoly.
It reminds me the arrogance of companies like Epson which sell printers and earn on the Ink refill.
Printing is so expensive not because of the cost of the technology or the ink, but because it is a monopoly.
And I also have problems in believing that the microwaves and other waves are safe for the health.
Looking at the increasing number of brain cancer and altzehimer disease, I would think these have something to do with the waves pollution...
Scientists find new 'quasiparticles'
Weizmann Institute physicists have demonstrated, for the first time, the existence of 'quasiparticles' with one quarter the charge of an electron. This finding could be a first step toward creating exotic types of quantum computers that might be powerful, yet highly stable.
Fractional electron charges were first predicted over 20 years ago under conditions existing in the so-called quantum Hall effect, and were found by the Weizmann group some ten years ago.
Although electrons are indivisible, if they are confined to a two-dimensional layer inside a semiconductor, chilled down to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and exposed to a strong magnetic field that is perpendicular to the layer, they effectively behave as independent particles, called quasiparticles, with charges smaller than that of an electron. But until now, these charges had always been fractions with odd denominators: one third of an electron, one fifth, etc.
The experiment done by research student Merav Dolev in Prof. Moty Heiblum's group, in collaboration with Drs. Vladimir Umansky and Diana Mahalu, and Prof. Ady Stern, all of the Condensed Matter Physics Department, owes the finding of quarter-charge quasiparticles to an extremely precise setup and unique material properties: The gallium arsenide material they produced for the semiconductor was some of the purest in the world.
The scientists tuned the electron density in the two-dimensional layer – in which about three billion electrons were confined in the space of a square millimeter – such that there were five electrons for every two magnetic field fluxes. The device they created is shaped like a flattened hourglass, with a narrow 'waist' in the middle that allows only a small number of charge-carrying particles to pass through at a time.
The 'shot noise' produced when some passed through and others bounced back caused fluctuations in the current that are proportional to the passing charges, thus allowing the scientists to accurately measure the quasiparticles' charge.
Quarter-charge quasiparticles should act quite differently from odd fractionally charged particles, and this is why they have been sought as the basis of the theoretical 'topographical quantum computer.' When particles such as electrons, photons, or even those with odd fractional charges change places with one another, there is little overall effect. In contrast, quarter-charge particle exchanges might weave a 'braid' that preserves information on the particles' history.
To be useful for topologically-based quantum computers, the quarter-charge particles must be shown to have 'non-Abelian' properties – that is the order of the braiding must be significant. These subtle properties are extremely difficult to observe. Heiblum and his team are now working on devising experimental setups to test for these properties.
Source: Weizmann Institute of Science
This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com
Fractional electron charges were first predicted over 20 years ago under conditions existing in the so-called quantum Hall effect, and were found by the Weizmann group some ten years ago.
Although electrons are indivisible, if they are confined to a two-dimensional layer inside a semiconductor, chilled down to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and exposed to a strong magnetic field that is perpendicular to the layer, they effectively behave as independent particles, called quasiparticles, with charges smaller than that of an electron. But until now, these charges had always been fractions with odd denominators: one third of an electron, one fifth, etc.
The experiment done by research student Merav Dolev in Prof. Moty Heiblum's group, in collaboration with Drs. Vladimir Umansky and Diana Mahalu, and Prof. Ady Stern, all of the Condensed Matter Physics Department, owes the finding of quarter-charge quasiparticles to an extremely precise setup and unique material properties: The gallium arsenide material they produced for the semiconductor was some of the purest in the world.
The scientists tuned the electron density in the two-dimensional layer – in which about three billion electrons were confined in the space of a square millimeter – such that there were five electrons for every two magnetic field fluxes. The device they created is shaped like a flattened hourglass, with a narrow 'waist' in the middle that allows only a small number of charge-carrying particles to pass through at a time.
The 'shot noise' produced when some passed through and others bounced back caused fluctuations in the current that are proportional to the passing charges, thus allowing the scientists to accurately measure the quasiparticles' charge.
Quarter-charge quasiparticles should act quite differently from odd fractionally charged particles, and this is why they have been sought as the basis of the theoretical 'topographical quantum computer.' When particles such as electrons, photons, or even those with odd fractional charges change places with one another, there is little overall effect. In contrast, quarter-charge particle exchanges might weave a 'braid' that preserves information on the particles' history.
To be useful for topologically-based quantum computers, the quarter-charge particles must be shown to have 'non-Abelian' properties – that is the order of the braiding must be significant. These subtle properties are extremely difficult to observe. Heiblum and his team are now working on devising experimental setups to test for these properties.
Source: Weizmann Institute of Science
This news is brought to you by PhysOrg.com
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
How online newspapers should be
Anyone reading this is already well aware newspapers are making the (slow) transition to digital, and just like the preferred format of music has moved from CD to mp3, newspapers will eventually move from print to entirely web-based/RSS operations. It’s just so much better and more efficient way of receiving information. Print is still hanging around but it won’t last.
Unfortunately newspaper Web sites, on the whole, are still playing by the old rules of the Web and are not nearly as nice as professional blogs to read and follow. A few things I’ve noticed from this perspective that are especially frustrating:
Taking down stories/changing link structure
Some papers get it and don’t change links on us or take down old stories, but I’ve seen plenty of sites take down stories after 30 days or so, or change the link structure to archive a story somewhere. The Internet is not the same as print media, it is not a broadcast medium, it is a communications medium. A story shouldn’t disappear after 30 days, it should remain up there as bloggers and social media types love to do research, piece things together and remix news as they see fit. Linking to a story only to find a few weeks later it’s down is about the most frustrating thing a news site can do, and will ensure I don’t like to that site again.
Not linking to external sources to reference things
Newspapers are still clinging to the old way of things. They still have the attitude of “if we print, it, it’s true and doesn’t need to be sourced.” That’s actually false – if you have a source on something, link it for us to check it out. It makes a site far more credible. A side note, The New York Times is one of the few sites that actually gets the web, does tons of external linking and is even developing a brand new API. Should be neat to see what this looks like, they could set a good example for the industry.
Forcing users to login to view stories
Don’t news sites want more readers and subscribers? The easiest way to discourage this is to force users to create a username/password, fill out a profile, then check their email address to activate that profile before they can view a story. It leaves a bad taste in most people’s mouths, and they are losing readership by doing this. If you’re going to play by the new rules, go in all the way and don’t cling to forcing people to fill out forms before they can access content.
Full Article
Unfortunately newspaper Web sites, on the whole, are still playing by the old rules of the Web and are not nearly as nice as professional blogs to read and follow. A few things I’ve noticed from this perspective that are especially frustrating:
Taking down stories/changing link structure
Some papers get it and don’t change links on us or take down old stories, but I’ve seen plenty of sites take down stories after 30 days or so, or change the link structure to archive a story somewhere. The Internet is not the same as print media, it is not a broadcast medium, it is a communications medium. A story shouldn’t disappear after 30 days, it should remain up there as bloggers and social media types love to do research, piece things together and remix news as they see fit. Linking to a story only to find a few weeks later it’s down is about the most frustrating thing a news site can do, and will ensure I don’t like to that site again.
Not linking to external sources to reference things
Newspapers are still clinging to the old way of things. They still have the attitude of “if we print, it, it’s true and doesn’t need to be sourced.” That’s actually false – if you have a source on something, link it for us to check it out. It makes a site far more credible. A side note, The New York Times is one of the few sites that actually gets the web, does tons of external linking and is even developing a brand new API. Should be neat to see what this looks like, they could set a good example for the industry.
Forcing users to login to view stories
Don’t news sites want more readers and subscribers? The easiest way to discourage this is to force users to create a username/password, fill out a profile, then check their email address to activate that profile before they can view a story. It leaves a bad taste in most people’s mouths, and they are losing readership by doing this. If you’re going to play by the new rules, go in all the way and don’t cling to forcing people to fill out forms before they can access content.
Full Article
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