Living Social and its Success

Check out the latest article on the company, Living Social, started by Georgetown student (MSB '04, from first class of OPIM majors) Tim O'Shaughnessy.  The company has been steadily growing, from its start as "Hungry Machine", which did Facebook applications such as Visual Bookshelf, to "PickYour Five," which asked people to name their five favorite books, movies, etc.  The success of these two apps led them to change the name of their company to "Living Social" and to focus on how they could use what they knew about online marketing to drive potential customer to local businesses, among other goals.  Read more in Tom Heath's article in the Washington Post.

An eery kind of computer virus

How is a computer virus similar to a biological virus?  As biological viruses threaten biological body parts, computer viruses can pose threats to mechanical implanted body parts.  A British scientist has "infected" himself  with a computer virus as he studies how computer viruses might effect artificial parts, such as pacemakers, cochlear implants, and automated limbs.  He noted that once the RFID chip that was implanted in his body was infected, the computer virus spread to the system that the chip communicated with.  For a more complete story, see this Financial Times article.

Squareup.com

Take a look at this new technology for the iPhone, iPad and Android.  Squareup.com.  It looks to me like a nifty solution to enable users to easily accept payments on the road.  It can accept cash or cards as long as you have an audio input jack.  And they'll even send you a card reader and a sticker (for verification purposes) when you sign up.  Receipts can now be sent directly to your email or phone.  When you buy, it sends a photograph so the salesperson can check that you are who you say you are.  Your buyers are even encouraged to tip easily (with the help of a calculator that allows them to tip by percentage, even though they can still choose to tip by dollar amount.)  The keyed in rate is 3.5% +.15 and the swiped rate is 2.75% + .15.  Since, unlike similar companies,  setup and cardreader are free, there seems to be little to lose.