Bitcoin Founder Identified?

Police raided the home of a man believed to be the founder of Bitcoin, the crypto-currency.

The linked article is a great summary of the issues surrounding this innovative form of money.

Online Resource Grants For Faculty

Online Resource Grants

The purpose of the online  resource grants is to enable the purchasing of larger one-time online resources no one department can easily afford with its library allocation. In academic year 2015-2016, $160,000 is budgeted for such online collections.
One-time purchases typically include but are not limited to primary source databases, journal backfile collections, e-book collections, audio or streaming media collections. Some possibilities are listed on our one-time resource page. Please contact Scott Pope (pope@txstate.edu) to get pricing for any products outside this list. Acquisitions will verify eligibility and pricing, and can set up trials as needed.

Guidelines

• The resource should be online, accessible by the entire campus, and come with persistent access rights. The review committee can make an exception for an extraordinary print/microform collection not available online.
• The resource must  be a one-time purchase. Grant funds cannot be used to support ongoing subscriptions or temporary access to a subscription resource. If the resource requires an annual access fee, the requestor’s department or other department will need to approve the ongoing cost from their library allocation.
• The resource should enhance the library collection and strengthen research initiatives.
• All things being equal, priority is given to higher ticket items over inexpensive ones. The library may be able to purchase less expensive items with end-of-year funds.

Review Criteria

• Value/Anticipated Use of the Resource: Priority is given to resources that benefit many departments or programs or greatly benefit one area. More than one source of personal/departmental support may be important. The resource does not necessarily need to be multi-disciplinary. The intent is that all subject areas be represented over the years.
• Uniqueness: Priority is given to resources that enhance the library’s collection rather than duplicate or overlap with existing collections.

Submit a proposal here

Submission deadline: Thursday, February 18, 2016, 5pm.

Applications received after the deadline will not be considered.
The review committee consists of two members of the Library Committee, two previous recipients, and two librarians.

Timeline

Dec 8 – Feb 19: Applications are accepted
Feb 19 – March 13: Application review
End of March: Grants are announced
April – May: Resources are ordered

Dun & Bradstreet Is Inside Mergent

The Dun & Bradstreet Private Company database is lurking inside the Mergent database. 

Once you get inside Mergent, you'll clearly see the correct tab. Most people use this to look up a private company's estimated annual sales.

Guide To Modern Bank Holding Companies

This is a really good overview of the modern financial structure of what are essentially old-school bank holding companies.

It's a walk-through of how to track who owns what and whom and subsidiary trees – which can be quite complex.

Book Review: And The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)

In the early 2000s, middle class Argentinians regularly awoke to find scavengers going through dumpsters looking for plastic bottles. In many cases, these scavengers had once lived in the same neighborhood or one like it. Looting, fires and civil disturbance were regular features on the evening news.

The culprit? Argentina's currency had collapsed and set loose a disastrous inflation rate that decimated the savings of normal people. Read the book for the gory details of a too large government, national debt, and an ill-thought basis for currency exchange.

The situation is not completely analogous to the issues the United States faces now. Argentina's problems were caused by pegging its weakening national currency to the dollar. Nevertheless, the episode does show what lurks under the delicate threads of currency valuation, debt and ultimately savings and societal trust.

And the Money Kept Rolling In is recommended as a lesson in national finance policy. For any student of Latin American economic history, it's a must read.

Vemma Temporary Halted Due to Pyramid Scheme Allegation

I wrote earlier about the Vemma energy drink business model controversy. A court has agreed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and temporary halted Vemma operations due to concerns about the company being a pyramid scheme.

Read more about this issue here.

Protecting Traditional Knowledge From Copyright

Corporations occasionally try to copyright traditional knowledge, culture, and/or technology.

India has taken the step of creating the traditional digital library which documents traditional knowledge.  This makes it more difficult for corporations to take traditional knowledge and claim that purely for themselves. 

Case in point: the recent case where Colgate Palmolive attempted to copyright a product that used traditional Indian spices - and apparently nothing else. Read about the case here, in which Colgate did not prevail.

Data Planet and dataZoa Make Big Data Easy

It's the age of big data.  And learning to make attractive graphs and charts for presentations as an important job skill.

But data planet and dataZoa make it easy for you.  These databases allow you to easily import data from several different sources and easily make charts and graphs.  True, there's a way to do this in Microsoft Excel but it is much easier in these two databases.

Data-Planet Statistical Datasets

dataZoa

MRI + Migration - Save Your Data

MRI/ University Reporter will change platforms on June 30 with no information carrying over from the old platform, and no redirects for the URL.  There’s a message on the database page to alert anyone who uses this regularly.   You need to export any saved data before June 30^th. 

MRI+ University Reporter from Mediamark Research Inc.  

Subjects:	Consumer demographics, psychographics/lifestyles, product & brand usage, and media preferences based on a national probability sample of 27,000 households. Although MRI provides marketing research for a wide variety of products, it does not analyze all consumer items. Please see the MRI Internet User Guide for help or watch our YouTube video.
Formats:	Full text.
Coverage:	2001 to last year.

Koch Support of Florida State University Economics Department

Presented for your information.  The Economics Department at Florida State University will apparently be largely funded by the Koch family.  This support will include strict oversight of publications and hires by the department by the Koch foundation. 

Please read the article for more information. 

John Nash and Game Theory

John Nash, a principal originator of game theory, and the subject of the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind was recently killed in an automobile accident.

John Nash titles here. Our copy of a Beautiful Mind here.

Among many contributions, Nash was famous for the Nash equilibrium in game theory. From the obituary in the Guardian:

“In his discipline, he gave his name to the Nash equilibrium – a position in a situation of competition or conflict in which both sides have selected a strategy, but where neither side can then independently change their strategy without ending up in a less desirable position.”

Search Patents In Lexis-Nexis

You can look up patents and trademarks in the LexisNexis database.

To look up all patents and trademarks held BY COMPANY in LexisNexis:

1) Click the SEARCH BY CONTENT TYPE then the COMPANIES tab, 2) look up your company in COMPANY DOSSIER and then 3) patents is on the left side of screen

You can also search patents in general in LexisNexis. Again, select By Content Type then Patents.


Or, you can use the US Patent Office website, but you can't search by company so well. They also have trademarks, BTW.

Here's what the advanced patent search in LexisNexis looks like.

Stan Freberg, Ad Pioneer

From the New York Times obituary:  

His subversive but oddly effective approach caused Advertising Age to call him the father of the funny commercial and one of the 20th century’s most influential admen. He won the Clio, a top industry award, 21 times, and had a diverse clientele, including General Motors, the United States Army and the Presbyterian Church.

Mr. Freberg’s tactics worked for the simple reason that he was funny, having honed his humor on some of history’s best-selling comedy records. Paul McCartney said in 1985 that the Beatles’ anarchic humor owed much to his influence.

Our Stan Freberg books.

Hidden SWOTs in ABI Inform

 
There are some hard to find SWOTs in our database ABI Inform.

Long story short: do a keyword search of your company's name and SWOT.

Under source types, limit document type to reports.

OR

go to Browse, then select Just Series Market then select SWOT then select view documents.

Do your search by company name.

Note: ABI Inform does not have some well known companies, but the overall selection is fine.

Critical View of TTIP: Democracy Vs. Corporations

Boring title, but the TIPP is one of the more significant laws of the last 25 years. Many people note it has the effect of raising corporations over national democracy.

Film Gross and Box Office

Variety is one of the preeminent movie industry trade journals. It publishes entertainment news, articles about trends in the industry and box office results.

Current box office results are here.

Try this link for current and historic (yes! older films) total Box Office takings

Always interesting to see what makes money (not what you think). Plus, shows you importance of international BO. PLUS, that you CAN make millions doing small movies.

More current and historical data.

This site also contains international results.
 
Here are some great stats from the National Theatre Owners' website: includes grosses and average ticket prices over time, among other things.

New Biz Database: IBIS World

So you have to do an industry analysis for your management class?  Now we have the IBIS database that puts everything in one location and has better categories of businesses too!

IBISWorld

Subjects NAICS collection analyzes industries at the 5-digit level offering the latest content on 700 industries. Each report consists of 30 to 40 pages of key statistics and analysis on market characteristics, operating conditions, current and forecast performance, major industry participants and more. Coverage Current Format U.S. Industry reports Type Other Database

We Now Have First Research Industry Analysis Database

First Research - A great one stop location for industry surveys and analysis. 

Contains over 900 Industry Segments, updated constantly with monthly statistics and indicators as well as quarterly trend updates, and State Profiles to monitor monthly employment, business and real estate trends in each of the 50 US states. 

The Sharing Economy

You have heard of these companies: Uber, airbnb, Lfyt and more. If ordinary people just have unused seats in their cars and empty beds in their houses, the thinking goes, why not just rent them out for less than you'd pay for an actual taxi or hotel room?

The services have caught on because we live in a time of shrinking salaries  - thus the need for both cheaper products and services, as well as the need to make money on the side. 

For many Americans, this economic and social innovation has been quite useful. It's an interesting sign of the times and how we are responding to a disguised economics problem.

Links:

The sharing economy is about desperation.
NPR list of links about the sharing economy.