Archive: Business & Technology

Tourism is a powerful economic tool in upstate New York. All too often, the impact that conferences and meetings have on the local economy is overlooked. So are the individuals who invest their own time in coordinating those efforts.

The Tompkins Tourism Partner Award changes that. The award is presented twice a year to individuals and organizations who are not professional meeting or event planners but who devote time and effort to bring groups to Tompkins County that result in more than 400 room nights at local lodging establishments.

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Time Warner Cable differed from competitors like Comcast in that they provided a free cable modem to Internet customers.  At least they did until yesterday.  Some Internet customers were upset when they received a postcard last week saying that beginning November 1 there would be a monthly rental fee of $3.95 for cable modems.

"You do have a choice when it comes to your cable modem and the monthly lease fee," the card explained.  "You can opt to waive the fee and purchase your own modem."  Many customers did just that.

It has been reported that Time Warner stands to make between $300 million and $500 million per year from cable modem lease fees.  Some reports claim this is why the company has made it so difficult to enable modems you purchase.  Across the country, customers waited hours on hold trying to enable their new equipment, or in line trying to return it.  If it wasn't a conscious business decision, the company clearly was not ready to handle the volume of customer service calls the treat of an additional fee scheduled to begin just over a week after the notification was received would generate.

Click to purchaseThe use of money can be traced back to ancient times.  Most people can tell you what it is for… it makes trade easier.  Let’s say you make tires for a living.  If you’re paid in tires, and take a couple of tires to trade for your weekly groceries, it might work out.  But if you only need a gallon of milk, how do you get your remaining value back?  Change makes it so much easier to do. 

Even a three year old knows to ask for money to use in the candy machine. Gum or chocolate are useful; but what do you do with money?  What value does it have?  You can’t eat it.  It’s not REAL estate, nor REAL assets.  Its worth is only that it can be traded. While few are anarchists, there are even fewer on the other end of the spectrum completely trusting their government.   Even the US Government prints ‘In God We Trust’ on its money to help with credibility.  At one point it was backed by gold.  (Explaining why George Washington who couldn’t tell a lie; or Honest Abe had to back our money with precious metal… while Tricky Dick got the rest of the world to take our government’s word for it…  fodder for a sequel.)

Click to purchaseThe story of West Haven, Connecticut is not unlike the story of many other American baby-boomer generating towns.  In the 1960s, while heading downtown by way of Elm Street, one would smell the stench of rubber coming from Armstrong’s tire production plant.  This was very noticeable 45 years ago on a hot summer day using the 4 x 35* cooling system which predated automotive air conditioning.

The tire plant, along with the Miles Laboratory plant which produced Alka-Seltzer, employed a large number of people in the town.  Numerous small businesses flanked both sides of Campbell Avenue, which traversed around 5 miles from Long Island Sound toward New Haven.  The city had one high school, three public middle schools, around a dozen elementary schools, and a handful of Catholic schools.

The Ithaca Board of REALTORS® Advertising and Public Relations committee organizes and sponsors a fundraiser every year to benefit a local not-for-profit organization.  This year, The Healthy Food for All Program was the recipient of this fundraiser.

The fundraiser raised over $2,500, which will be used for the 2013 season.  Members of the Ithaca Board of REALTORS® Ad & PR committee, David Wahl, Chair , Hilda Moleski,  Carol Usefara, and Mary Weber, as well as the Ithaca Board of REALTORS® President Beth Brennan presented the check to Monika Roth on October 18, 2012.

Ithaca Carshare has moved into a new downtown office space in the Dewitt Mall, a fleet of 21 vehicles and membership surpassing 1,300. Ithacans carshare at the highest rate of any city outside Europe, with 2.6% of people in the urbanized area using the nonprofit service.   Mayor Svante Myrick and the Ithaca Downtown Alliance will perform a ribbon cutting ceremony at the new office space (Dewitt Mall (215 N. Cayuga Street), ground floor) on October 19, at 10:30 am.

Members of Ithaca Carshare have self-serve access to a fleet of 21 vehicles, available at convenient locations around Ithaca. With most locations near TCAT bus stops, carsharing works easily with transit, walking, and biking as an affordable and convenient alternative to personal car ownership, because members access and pay for vehicles only when they use them.

Click to purchaseBack to the ‘entitlement’ word…somewhere along the line this four syllable word became akin to a four letter cuss word.  Let’s cut ‘entitlements’… as if they are windfall gifts.

Pull out your pay stub, W-2, or income tax filing.  Look at the lines labeled FICA and Medicare Taxes paid. 

(To the 10% who are unable to pay these fees… we offer our sincere apologies. Unfortunately, our country’s economic policies have hampered your participation in capitalism…  The goal of this book is to generate or instigate an idea which puts you back in the game. )

Click to purchaseMany of us can remember back to the days when a doctor’s visit was to the first floor of his home… and a house call was when the doctor actually showed up at your place.  Doctors didn’t always have medical groups.  And back in those days, you actually paid your doctor for the visit.  You knew what it cost.  You went to the pharmacy and knew what the prescription cost.  If you practiced Planned Parenthood, you paid for birth control or abstained.  And heaven forbid that you had an accident or major medical catastrophe with life saving expenses… having health insurance could help avoid financial ruins or bankruptcy.

Kind of like your cars.  You pay for it at creation (new car), or adoption (used car), at check-up time (maintenance), and at end of life (disposal).  You have car insurance to help avoid financial ruin if heaven forbid you had an accident.  You know what you pay for the vehicle, its maintenance, its registration, and its insurance.

Click to purchaseEconomics are complicated for two reasons.  The first reason is the 6 billion people across seven continents, multiple cultures, governments, and currencies that make the movements of goods and services complicated.  The second reason is that most economists you hear of are ‘experts’. (At least medical doctors admit they’re practicing.) To be an expert, you either have to dazzle someone with brilliance, or baffle them with bull shit. A great way to take the baffling approach is to make up lots of complicated words. 

So let's try a simple game that you can do at home to put things in perspective.

Click to purchaseDuring our lifetimes, politicians redefined the words ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ and used them as labels to define opposite parties.  Traditionally, conservative meant risk averse.   Traditionally, liberal meant freedom loving.  This meant it was possible to be a conservative democrat or a liberal republican.

When freedom loving and risk aversion were both used to describe opinions (coupled with separation of church and state) political parties needed platforms built around issues. Placing the two non-opposing metrics in opposition eliminated the need for candidates to create or communicate sound platforms.  Now it’s just ‘Are you a conservative or liberal?’

Williamsville, N.Y. – Tops Friendly Markets, a leading full-service grocery retailer in upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania, recently announced Mary Ellen Wasikowski of Amherst, NY as the winner of $250,000.  Wasikowski won the grand prize as part of the company’s 50th Anniversary Monopoly Collect and Win “Golden Ticket” event. 

New for this year’s Tops Monopoly Collect and Win Game was the introduction of a $250,000 guaranteed cash payout in conjunction with the company’s 50th anniversary taking place in 2012.  200 “golden tickets” were distributed with regular Tops Monopoly game tickets through the course of the game.  129 of the available 200 Golden Tickets were claimed, and each customer had a chance to unlock the grand prize safe and claim the $250,000 at the Golden Ticket event on Saturday, September 15 at the West Seneca, NY Tops Friendly Markets.

"Dr. Julie A. Thering, physical therapist, was recently hired by McCune & Murphy Physical Therapy to work in the Trumansburg (44 E. Main St) and Ithaca (2359 N Triphammer Rd) offices. Dr. Thering completed her doctorate in physical therapy at SUNY Upstate Medical University. She specializes in orthopedic injuries and rehabilitation. She is a member of the American Physical Therapy Association and the New York State Physical Therapy Association. Dr. Thering is accepting new patients at both offices and plans to become an active member of the Ithaca community."

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