History of the ATM

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Ellen Florian wrote an interesting article on the history of ATM’s: The Money Machines:

The line was long and slow, and he became increasingly irritated as his lunch hour dribbled away. All at once, he had a flash of inspiration. ‘Golly, all the teller does is cash checks, take deposits, answer questions like “What’s my balance?” and transfer money between accounts,’ recalls Wetzel, now 75 and still living in Dallas with his wife. ‘Wow, I think we could build a machine that could do that!’ And with a $4 million go-ahead from Docutel’s parent company, that’s exactly what he and his engineers did. Read more about the story of the ATM.”

Via Slashdot.

A View of Wisconsin – ouch

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The Economist continues its series on swing states for this fall’s presidential elections. This week, they visit Wisconsin.

An interesting place that John Kerry is desperate to cling on to, but where independents tend to prefer George Bush
IT IS a quiet-looking state, a land of rolling hills, family farms and a few medium-sized cities in the middle of the northern stretch of the country. But, when it comes to politics, Wisconsin is more dramatic than it looks.

Then there’s this shot of reality (college grad retention and a generally ageing population):

Unfortunately for Mr Kerry, young liberals moving to Wisconsin are the exception rather than the rule in a fast ageing state. Without a smart urban centre of its own to attract young professionals, Wisconsin has seen an exodus of college graduates in the past two decades. It ranks 43rd among the 50 states in the share of college graduates in its workforce, says Terry Ludeman, a jobs expert. Meanwhile births are plummeting in its largely white population, down to about 65,000 a year from 93,000 at the height of the baby boom. As Wisconsin gets greyer, it is probably getting a little more conservative.

Fitting commentary, given my post yesterday on our state politicians poor priority choices…..

(more…)

More on Local Media Monopolies – from South Dakota

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Jon Lauck summarizes a number of recent posts on the implications of local media monopolies, particularily on our democracy.
Corporate earnings pressure is certainly one thing, but I believe there are other factors at play such as:

  • Insulated environment: The Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 sanctioned newspaper monopolies. Competition is a good thing, however in this case, the Act has simply created a general malaise.
  • Lowered expectations: Rather than informing readers with depth, many newspaper’s have adopted the USA Today “McPaper” approach. This flies against internet users demands: lots of information quickly and deep information (google and others) when I want it.
  • Hiring: The sports page often has more depth than others.
  • Failure to take advantage of new tools & media.

Money is not the only issue, in fact, I don’t believe it’s the issue. Leadership is.

Wisconsin State Priorities?

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The State Journal editorial page takes Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager to task for joining with six other states and New York City to sue five of the country’s largest power producers to force them to cut carbon dioxide emissions. This is the same organization that, under Democrat Jim Doyle signed us up for the Matrix personal data mining project – then later withdrew.
Keeping the environment clean is certainly important, but the WSJ raises some useful issues on this topic. I believe that our state leadership is ignorning (for political reasons) the most important economic issues of our time, such as the construction of true high speed networks.
High speed data networks are the rails and roads of the future. Yet, today, we are saddled with slow services supported by local telco monopoly SBC.
Verizon just announced that fiber to the premises (“fttp” or to the home) will be available in Keller, Texas, parts of Southern California and Florida. Prices will range start at $40/month for 2 to 5mbps service; with optional speeds up to 30mbps. (Currently, many state residents can choose from 384kbps to 1.5mbps DSL or cable service – 1/10th the speed, or less of the fibre based products).
These speeds make high quality personal video conferencing a reality (family & friends), new small businesses from the home possible and most importantly, will reduce the cost of true high speed access for all residents.
Nice to see our politicians are paying attention.
David Isenberg has some useful examples of “value-subtracted” telco business models. Isenberg also discusses a May, 2004 study that shows a dramatic reduction in telco operating expenses after they switch from a copper wire based network to a fibre system.

Weblogs & Journalism – Where’s the money going?

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Glenn Reynolds, Jay Rosen and Jon Lauck discuss monopoly newspapers, reduced reporter counts and journalism quality. The Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 and the general monopoly position of most papers has not done much, as far as I can see, other than insulated entrenched organizations from the market. Perhaps atrophy is starting to take its course.

I summarized my thoughts on Madison’s local newspaper monopoly here (along with some of the unintended consequences). There are some parallels to Microsoft’s tactics.

Checking Account Fraud

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Caroline Mayer and Griff Witte cover a growing problem with checking account fraud (helped, in part by the growth of automated payments):

When Shereen Greene recently scanned her bank statement, she found a $139 charge from a company she had never heard of — Pharmacycards.com.
The Atlanta paralegal dug out her canceled check and easily saw it was fake. The name on it was her maiden name, which she had not used in seven years. The address was five years old and her signature was missing. In its place, was a brief message: “Authorized by your customer. No signature required.”
Still, the numbers at the bottom of the check belonged to Greene’s bank account, and in the increasingly automated world of check processing, that was all that mattered.

25lbs of King Crab

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Travel can often be interesting. This evening, I sat next to a retired executive returning home from two weeks panning for gold in Nome, AK. He mentioned that he had 25lbs of king crab in the cargo hold ($4.99/lb) just off the boat….