Changing prices of food

Change in price of items since 1978, relative to overall inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. The price of carbonated drinks, for example, has fallen 34 percent relative to all other prices.

Via NY Times

May 2010

Next generation of barcode technology

A replacement for the black and white stripes of the traditional barcode has been outlined by US researchers.

Bokodes, as they are known, can hold thousands of times more information than their striped cousins and can be read by a standard mobile phone camera.

The 3mm-diameter (0.1 inches), powered tags could be used to encode nutrition information on food packaging or create new devices for playing video games.

The work will be shown off at Siggraph, a conference in New Orleans next week.

“We think that our technology will create a new way of tagging,” Dr Ankit Mohan, one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers behind the work, told BBC News.

Read the rest on BBC

July 2009

Ontario buy-local grocers go independent

This is great news. For a list of buy-local Toronto markets, visit MyMarket.

Dale Kropf calls it Independence Day: On July 3, his five grocery stores in southwestern Ontario ceased to be Sobeys franchises.

Corporate policies prevented him from buying local products, he says, so he joined forces with four other former Sobeys franchisees and formed the independent Hometown Grocers Co-Op.

“We feel that local food, local presence is huge in our market and we wanted to take advantage of that,” Kropf says.
Canadians are increasingly subscribing to the “buy local” and “100 mile diet” philosophies due to concerns over imported food, Kropf adds. “The pressure was always mounting — the more recalls, the more bad press from China or wherever the product was coming from. I know that in our case, our private label pickles are made in Indonesia. I couldn’t believe that.”

As a franchisee for a large grocery chain, Kropf says, corporate policies stipulating that he only buy federally inspected meat prevented him from stocking local products. Most federally inspected meat in Canada comes from large corporations such as Maple Leaf, Cargill and Tyson.

Read more on CBC

July 2009

IAB releases interactive mobile ad guide

IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) released a simple guide to interactive mobile marketing. It can serve as a base for a very simple introduction for first-time mobile advertisers. Some compelling stats that highlight importance of interactive mobile marketing are mentioned (most are based on U.S.mobile marketplace):

• Mobile phone penetration is upwards of 4 out of 5 people in the United States and more people now have a mobile phone than have PC-based Internet access. This is especially true for older adults and lower-income individuals.
• Mobile Internet usage continues to grow. Over the last three years usage has grown approximately 25% per year. With smartphones becoming more affordable, advanced, and widely adopted, we’ll likely see a greater increase in 2009. Currently, 40-45 million mobile subscribers use the mobile Internet regularly.
• Minorities are significant mobile data users across all features and applications.
• Mobile is not just youth-focused – texting behaviour may skew a bit younger, but the bulk of the mobile Internet usage comes from 25-44 year olds.

As any stats, these are more likely skewed to reflect IAB views on the topic – it would be nice to see some true number-based stats of mobile Internet users in North America as opposed to rates of regular mobile users who might be accessing online content. And I am sure that these stats are lower in Canada (and a lot of other parts of the world), but the rate of growth in mobile Internet usage provokes some thought. My take on it – the usage numbers  and rates of growth are astounding. No wonder lower-income and minority groups are adopting mobile Internet at a great rate – there is not much need anymore for a bulky hardware investment to access data and information.

I foresee a greater investment in corporate web infrastructure and content compatibility for mobile in the next few years coming from some of the more progressive brands out there. However, much more needs to be done in Canada to allow for more transparency in mobile Internet penetration. Canadian mobile industry is driven by a few telecommunication giants like Rogers (Fido), Bell (Solo) and Telus (Koodo). Canadian mobile Internet access costs are still pretty steep, considering the lack of truly competitive mobile market – so this change in medium habits will most likely be staggered in Canada.

You can find the complete downloadable guide on IAB website.

July 2009

Next time, skip the seafood

Overfishing continues at a shocking rate, as countries break one environmental promise after another

When it comes to stopping overfishing in coastal ocean waters, there’s a whale of a gap between what nations pledge to do and what happens at sea. That’s the grim conclusion of a new study published in PLoS Biology, the first global assessment of human management of fisheries — designated areas where fish and aquatic animals are caught — whose coauthors include renowned marine biologists such as the late Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

It’s well documented that many of the world’s major fisheries are in shocking decline. Some 90 percent of the world’s big fish, such as bluefin tuna, blue marlin and Antarctic cod, have almost disappeared from the oceans since the advent of industrial fishing in the 1950s, according to a groundbreaking paper published in Nature in 2003 by Myers and Worm. And by 2048 the world’s supply of seafood will likely simply run out, Worm and other marine biologists warned in the pages of Science in 2006. As of 2008, 80 percent of the world’s fish stocks were considered either vulnerable to collapse or already collapsed.

Read the rest on Salon

Even though some of the seafood comes from farms and more renewable sources, why take a risk? Stick to fish that can be farmed efficiently and sustainably, and leave the wild stocks be. Or alternatively, skip the seafood altogether. As shown in The Tragedy of the Commons, multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long term interest for this to happen. It’s up to each one of us to encourage regulation and responsible consumption of seafood in order to avoid this massive loss of life in the ocean.

Write your local MP (or representative) about a responsible local and foreign fishing policy.

July 2009