While reading “6 Things More Expensive Because of Marketing” published on bargainerring.com, I find about a study developed by Antonio Rangel of California Institute of Technology. Dr. Rangel and his colleagues found that if people are told a wine is expensive while they are drinking it, they think it tastes nicer than a cheap one, rather than merely saying that they do. Here is a brief explanation of their study as published by the Economist:

Dr Rangel gave his volunteers sips of what he said were five different wines made from cabernet sauvignon grapes, priced at between $5 and $90 a bottle. He told each of them the price of the wine in question as he did so. Except, of course, that he was fibbing. He actually used only three wines. He served up two of them twice at different prices. What is truth?

The scanner showed that the activity of the medial orbitofrontal cortices of the volunteers increased in line with the stated price of the wine. For example, when one of the wines was said to cost $10 a bottle it was rated less than half as good as when people were told it cost $90 a bottle, its true retail price. Moreover, when the team carried out a follow-up blind tasting without price information they got different results. The volunteers reported differences between the three “real” wines but not between the same wines when served twice.

HITTING THE SPOT: People do not just say they enjoy expensive things more than cheap ones. They actually do enjoy them more - Economist / Jan.17 2008

The article on bargaineering.com also talks about why we pay more for bottled water, enhanced water, coffee, diamonds and so on.

One of our favourite wines months costs 4.95€ and it’s fine. (It is from Toro region.) Still, the idea of paying 100€ and thinking that this is a “great” wine horrorises me…

In fact, some should make a similar study, for instance, in Turkey. I think for the prices they are paying for a bottle of wine, turkish wine drinkers should be just so happy and satisfied- as a bottle of red wine costs like 5-15 times more than it should cost in Spain or Italy. (Prices are this high on this land where since thousands of years people produce and drink wine because of stupid government tax policies on producers and merchants!)

• Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer’s Brain - Patrick Renvoise, Christophe Morin
• Neuromarketing - Leon Zurawicki, Gerhard Roth, Ursula Dicke
• The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands - Jean-Noel Kapferer, Vincent Bastien
• The Affluent Consumer: Marketing and Selling the Luxury Lifestyle - Ronald D. Michman, Edward M. Mazze
• Neuroeconomics - wikipedia (Neuroeconomics combines neuroscience, economics, and psychology to study how people make decisions. It looks at the role of the brain when we evaluate decisions, categorize risks and rewards, and interact with each other.)
• Wine in Turkey to 2010 - Datamonitor

Read the rest of this entry »

Today while I was giving a glance on Engadget, I have find an interesting article: “Bionic lens to debut in the next half-decade”

I have always thought since my childhood that having bionic eyes is pretty intriguing. Any one who have watched 6 million Dollar man would probably think alike.

Dante Cesa of Engadget, the author of the mentioned article that according to Professor James Wolffsohn from Aston University in the United Kingdom imagines that within the next decade, the cure to near- and farsightedness will not only exist, but will actually be within reach. Beyond the concept what makes that this is possible is because they are also working with some opthology companies to commercialize the whole concept.

Without any doubt this is a good news with people with eye problems and for blind people. The possibility of combining the bionic lenses/eyes with other type of computer technologies would also make a great contribution and would yield to new advances for people with eye-problems or for professionals like doctors, pilots who might receive additional information about what they see. The potential is endless and advances in nanotechnology and nanoscale fabrication techniques would make possible the creation of these kind of advanced bionic eyes.

Bionic eyed modern Cyclops would replace all concepts previously appeared on comics or movies like Terminator, Bionic Woman…

Some articles related with this issue that I can suggest are:

• A Six Million Dollar Man-style bionic eye, developed using space,
• Bionic Contact Lens – Everything Is Possible
• Bionic lens to restore vision “available in five years” - Telegraph

And some written/visual products related with the issue:

• Bionic eyes: both humans and robots could receive improved vision via a new computer chip. (World Trends and Forecasts): An article from: The Futurist - World Future Society
• The Six Million Dollar Man: The Complete Season One [Region 2 Import - Non USA Format] - Universal
• Bionic Woman - Volume One - Universal Studios
• The Body Electric: An Anatomy of the New Bionic Senses - James Geary
• Biomimetics: Biologically Inspired Technologies - Yoseph Bar-Cohen

On Google Blog you can read this article: The Future of Search

It is not only suggested to understand the future but also today of “search”. Marissa Mayer, the author of the article foretells that search is today a science that will develop and advance over hundreds of years, like biology and physics in the 1500s or 1600s and that biggest advances are yet to come.

Online dating tools and sites are among the most popular and competitive applications on the internet. Lots of people use them and some others try to make money out of it. Until now online dating was only possible between people.

Now, a system called Zoological Information Management Systems would help pairing up of animals.

You can read the whole article on Discovery News - Zoo Animals Try Online Dating .

While reading gas2.org I found out about a research held at Stanford University that made it possible increasing the capacity of lithium-ion batteries by 10 through usage of silicon nanowires.

Yi Cui, who was the head of the research team says: “Given the mature infrastructure behind silicon, this new technology can be pushed to real life quickly.”

This is good news. Lithium-ion batteries are used widely nowadays and such a boost in their capacity due to nanotechnological achievements would probably help arise of lots of applications in different fields like energy storage, mobile device batteries, electric-powered automobiles etc.

They managed to increase the capacity of batteries by storing lithium inside tiny silicon nanowires. As they soak up, lithium nanowires inflate four times their normal size but unlike other shapes, they don’t fracture.

You can have a more detailed read:

• Stanford News Service - Nanowire battery can hold 10 times the charge of existing lithium-ion battery
• gas2.org - Nanotechnology Increases Lithium Ion Battery Storage Capacity 10 Times Over by Dana Nuccitelli

and another one:

Yukarıda Steven Paul Jobs adında bir şahıs ve şürekasına ait, 5 Eylül 2007 tarihiyle kaydedilmiş dokunmatik “taşınabilir çok işlevli” bir cihazın arayüz ve kullanım teknolojisine dair patent başvurusundan alınmış bir imaj var. 29 Mayıs tarihinde ABD Patent ve Marka enstitüsü incelenebilmesi için halka açmış bu belgeyi. Cihazın iPhone olduğunu tahmin etmişsinizdir.

Apple, patent başvurusunu ise geçen sene yeni ürün tanıtımları yaptığı keynote toplantılarından 5 Eylül 2007 tarihli olanıyla aynı gün yapmış. Aynı tarihte iPhone zaten piyasaydaydı. Bu patentte ürüne eklenen detayların bir kısmı henüz cihazın güncel versiyonlarında bulunmayan GPS gibi özelliklerin kullanımına dair ipuçları veriyor.

Patentin kayıt tarih numarası: #20080122796

Başvurunun detaylarını ise şurada görebilirsiniz:
Touch Screen Device, Method, and Graphical User Interface for Determining Commands by Applying Heuristics

Dokümanın tamamı 371 sayfayı buluyor.

Bu haberi okuduğum Engadget’ta Steve Jobs’ın adının mucit olarak çıkmasından çok hoşnut olmamış görünüyorlar. Oradaki yazı ve yorumları da buradan okuyabilirsiniz:
The iPhone patent: Steven P. Jobs, inventor

Human Snake

Nokia‘nın n-gage ürününü desteklemek için meşhur “snake” oyununundan çıkışla yaptırdığı bu videoyu gördüm. Buraya ekliyorum…

Güzel bir pixilation örneği olmuş. Ölçek ve katılımcı sayısı artınca bu tür canlandırmalar insanı daha çok şaşırtıyor.

Videonun yüksek kalitede halini www.get-out-and-play.com/ sayfasında bulabilirsiniz.