The RFID Weblog: The Carnival of the Capitalists Goes Radio Frequency!

The Carnival of the Capitalists Goes Radio Frequency!

Filed in archive Special Events by Anita Campbell on July 18, 2004

Welcome to Carnival of the Capitalists, a traveling event that brings you examples of the best business blogging the Web has to offer.

Some of these posts will make you laugh, some will make you mad -- but they'll all make you think. And seeing as how we are here at the RFID Weblog, all posts have been tagged with radio frequency identification chips (just kidding!):

Steve Verdon looks at the minimum wage in a thought-provoking piece, suggesting that the ability of companies to pass on the cost to customers depends on supply and demand in the company's market.

One Ordinary York U Student spotlights capitalism at work on the campus of Toronto's York University. The post defends Corporate America, showing how Canadian students benefit from it, and suggests they all stop complaining.

Michael Williams espouses an interesting -- and sure to be controversial -- view on the big Morgan Stanley sex-discrimination settlement. Don't miss the underlying business point he makes.

From over at the EconLog, Arnold Kling says regulation of mutual funds is not the answer to investor foolishness and industry greed.

The ever-interesting Jeff Cornwall offers a post about how entrepreneurs can work more effectively with attorneys, over at his weblog, The Entrepreneurial Mind, which is always worth a read.

Giselle at OSCommerce Experts says don't doom your website to gathering dust in the unnoticed and untouched corners of the Web. Check out her crisp summary of Jakob Nielsen's Top 10 mistakes when designing eCommerce websites.

Want to know which new products your company should place its bet on and introduce out of the many possibilities? Set up a simulated market inside your company among your employees. That's the subject of Les Jones' intriguing post this week.

Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, that poster child for corporate greed and excess, was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department -- but not for insider trading. Know the reason? Professor Bainbridge knows.

Uh oh! That's what David Tufte says about some of the data used in economic studies -- definitely worth a read.

Dane Carlson at the Business Opportunities weblog submits a post about business opportunities for the bra business. It seems that women's underwear is more expensive than men's, but one enterprising entrepreneur has found a way around that. (And Dane wins extra points for having the guts to submit a bra post to a woman host!)

Business executives often complain about the lack of alignment between IT and business. But what is a CIO supposed to do when the organization doesn't have much of a business strategy defined? Frank Scavo at the Enterprise System Spectator explores this problem in his post "Aligning IT, when there's not much to align to."

Dan Lloyd at Catallarchy challenges us to an intriguing brain teaser about the resell price of goods, with a link to the answer at the bottom of his post. See if you can figure it out before peeking at the answer -- it's a lot of fun, not to mention being interesting and instructive.

Mike Pechar of the Interested Participant notes that the murmuring drumbeat threatening to cut jobs and to move industries outside the country is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Check out his report about DaimlerChrysler threatening to move some of its Mercedes production to South Africa.

Martin Lindeskog from the Egoist blog points out the symbolic and literal importance of the World Trade Center as a center of business and financial trading. His post suggests the WTC should be re-built.

Why the sudden fixation on what Mr. Market wants? That's the question posed by Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture, in his usual vivid way.

David Foster at Photoncourier takes a look at something many of us have longed for: an electronic replacement for paper and pen, that is better and easier to read than a computer screen. Well, Sony has just the thing, or maybe not....

Torsten at the Technology, Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship weblog highlights a piece about two DotCom entrepreneurs who managed to cash out and make a fortune twice -- selling the same company.

Over at the Mobile Weblog, Russell points out that there is no limit to the ingenuity of Japanese telecomms when it comes to squeezing yet one more function into a cell phone: to wit, the launch of the first mobile phone wallet.

The always insightful and practical Wayne Hurlbert describes how writing Internet articles can help enhance your blog, in more ways than one.

Most of the social networking sites started out as free services, and now are looking for ways to monetize their sites. Friendster seems to have found one way, through paid product placements, as Scott points out over at The Social Networking weblog.

Tim Worstall gives a spirited fisking to a piece from the American Prospect, and suggests that economics is linked to the social values of the society around it.

My co-editor over at Small Business Trends, Dave Patterson, points out that online training has been shown to increase sales of slow-moving goods by up to 20%. He predicts this will give a boost to the online training business, because online training now will be viewed as contributing more than just cost-savings.

And, finally, let's end this edition of Carnival with a little humor. Be sure to go over to The Vision Thing for a funny spoof on business books.

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Thanks to all this week's participants for their excellent posts.

Next week's Carnival will be at the Business Opportunities Weblog. Send your entries to capitalists -at- elhide -dot- com.

Want to know more about Carnival of the Capitalists? Go to the home page for more information, including details about submitting articles.