Ladybag – never forget your essential items again

Bags
This is really really cool. No longer would I have to rifle through my bag to make sure my purse is there (my keys have bells on, so only shaking the bag vigourously is needed to find them). Attaching RFID tags to my important stuff would make sure I didn’t have to rummage making sure it was there, or go running about looking for stuff that is already in the bag. On the other hand, I’m still kind of squicked by attaching RFID tags to stuff – probably because I need to know more about what they can and can’t do.
This would be a great bag for a lot of my friends though – the number of times phones and keys have been forgotten are almost too numerous to count!
[found via Gadget Candy, more info here]

Email for Charity

“Then every time you send and receive email online you can help raise money for charity. The more you mail the more money goes to charity. What could be simpler? With every email you send and receive in your MagicTaxi account, 50% of the net revenue received from MagicTaxi advertising goes to charity.”

How cool is that? MagicTaxi launches their email service on Sunday, and while the revenue from ads probably isn’t that much for one person… if you have a lot of people using the service there could be a fair amount. Every little helps, as they say. 🙂

Music-loving mums rock CD sales

Music-loving mums rock CD sales

“The top 100 is strewn with records that can only be described as easy listening.

And it is all a reflection of a significant change in the music industry – the power of “mum rock”.

Forty-somethings now buy more than twice as many pop CDs as teenagers and the gap is growing every year.”

While it’s true that I’ve noticed a lot more Mum-friendly music on the shelves… I’m not sure that I really agree with most of this article. Although, heh, at the same time I have no actual evidence to back up my argument, just a vague half remembered memory of reading something somewhere.

According to the article:

“Downloading is one factor explaining why teenagers are buying fewer CDs, especially when it comes to compilation albums.”

Fair enough on the compilation albums, but I remember reading how the teenage age group was actually buying more cds even though they’re the biggest downloading group – probably something to do with actually being able to listen before you buy and getting exposed to a wider range of bands perhaps.

And perhaps the reason the “average teenage record buyer” is spending less money on CDs that certainly aren’t cheaper to buy in shops, is that they’re looking around online to buy CDs at half the price you’d find them at in Virgin or HMV. While CDs are indeed cheap in the supermarket (which is one of the places I like to buy my music and games), what teenager is going to loiter with their friends in a supermarket?