Old school service at Russ & Daughters

Although my trips to East Houston area typically happen after 9pm, I made an exception of spending some AM hours in the neighborhood.





They've been around since 1914 in Manhattan's Lower East Side. I tried the Classic lox and cream cheese on a bagel with onions, a tomato slice, and a few capers. I also ordered the pickled herring in cream sauce. The lox+cc bagel was tres magnifique, however, I still prefer my pickled herring in wine sauce.



There are plenty of other places in New York, many not so famous, that have equally good appetizing products. I think what keeps R&D going is the service and attention to detail. They have a relatively large staff that takes their time with each customer order, giving you the feeling that you have stepped back into a different time in New York's history.

Brain Candy

Seth Godin breaks down the elements of success for magicians, business at large

I wonder if this AMEX initiative will encourage incremental volunteerism or just reward those already doing good work pro bono. Even if it does increase the overall level of volunteerism, are those activities the ones we would want to incentivize? i.e., Do we really want people coming out to dole out soup at $5/hour? Wouldn't we rather utilize those funds to invest in social entreprenuer organizations that are scalable?

The economics of fashion

While we were playing Monopoly, the Russians were playing...

Adam Savage's (from Mythbusters) excellent speech to the Harvard Humanist Society

Big Apple Entreprenuers

The only people more interesting than entrepreneurs, are extreme risk-taking entrepreneurs; the folks bringing a completely original idea, or at least a one-of-a-kind service to the marketplace, or non-marketplace in some cases.

Here in New York, I’m impressed that a guy named Justin Gignac can literally sell garbage and, in conjunction with his wife, put his wants on canvas and sell the paintings in proportion to the wants in order to achieve said wants.

Another cool idea from Long Island, is the Something Store. You give them $10 and then send you something. Maybe it’s an iPod shuffle, maybe a travel pillow. The fun is the uncertainty.

In February 2009, my friend Kat and I visited the Free Store on Nassau, sadly only a temporary art installation, where I selected some coasters depicting different stages of Japanese history and Kat picked up a really cool Buddha statue. Total cost: $0

At Lulu & Mooky’s on Allen Street you can get liquid nitrogen ice cream in thousands of different flavors. Check out our review here.

Here are some other weird businesses around the U.S.

Piracy Is Wrong, Even if it’s Beneficial

I keep reading articles about how music sales are up even though illegal downloading is still rampant. Pirates and friends of pirates cite the spillover effects from having illegal music (and other content). I admit that the industry should probably give away more in its own self-interest and as someone who had received a cease-and-desist letter in his youth; I can say I have not always held this point of view. However, saying your theft helps the vendor by promoting the goods, you might be correct, but that doesn’t make the theft any more legitimate.

That’s akin to saying some people broke into a liquor store, stole some brandy, and shared it with everyone in the neighborhood. Now that all the neighbors enjoyed the brandy and the store is making more money because they are coming back for seconds, doesn’t make the original theft legal.

Also, people are upset about pricing. Well, I’m not a big fan of gas prices either but just because petrol firms are making a bundle doesn’t give anyone license to start hijacking gas trucks.

The solution: The bottom line is people are going to continue to pirate as long as it’s possible to do so. Just as people continue to break into homes and steal people’s identity’s because it’s possible, although difficult, people will continue to steal digital content. You can make is more difficult to get away with by increasing the penalties of engaging in such activities. But the real trick is making the mechanism by which digital copyrighted material is distributed harder to reproduce.

Back in the days when the distribution of data took place in physical forms (vinyl records, cassettes, CD-ROMs, etc.) it was difficult to make a copy of the physical entity. These barriers prevented piracy from becoming widespread. Even making a mixed tape or recording from the radio was time consuming and costly.

Attempts at locking digital formats to date have proven somewhat successful but given the ability to crack the newer formats and all the older, unprotected versions of copyrighted data, I think the Spotify model is the future. The “owner” never really owns the content or has possession of it, they “rent” it from the content providers and stream whatever they'd like on-demand, via a subscription model.