The old ‘better than’ trick is a favorite of mine. Whenever I find myself using a product/restaurant/program/website/etc I pop over to Google and search for

‘better than [product]‘

Going through the results pages will often reveal that there is a better product out there.

For example I just bought a Garmin heart rate monitor/GPS. After using the default software (Training Center) that comes with the device for a while I was thoroughly unimpressed and figured there must be a better alternative.

So I searched for ‘better than training center’ . After going through a few results I found the superb SportTracks software which is MILES better than Training Center and is also free.

Obviously this trick works better for some kinds of products (e.g. software) than others - but it is normally worth a try.

The same kind of trick can be modified using things like:

• reminds me of ‘lord of the rings’
• sounds like nirvana
• similar to cape town

It’s a little old by now, but this is an interesting story about how automated news crawling wiped $300m off United Airlines’ market cap. Basically this is what happened:

• Back in 2002 United Airlines was on the brink of bankruptcy - that obviously made the news
• For some reason an old story became popular on the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper website - it got put back onto the front page but without a date
• Because there was no date the Google News crawler picked up the story and put it onto today’s news
• Several other news aggregators picked up the story and it “eventually headlined as a news flash on Bloomberg”
• That triggered automated trading programs to sell-sell-sell
• The selling spree wiped 1.14 billions dollars off of United’s market cap
• During the day stock recovered but ended $300 million down

Crazy stuff.

It’s a little old by now, but this is an interesting story about how automated news crawling wiped $300m off United Airlines’ market cap. Basically this is what happened:

• Back in 2002 United Airlines was on the brink of bunkruptcy - that obviously made the news
• For some reason an old story became popular on the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper website - it got put back onto the front page but without a date
• Because there was no date the Google News crawler picked up the story and put it onto today’s news
• Several other news aggregators picked up the story and it “eventually headlined as a news flash on Bloomberg”
• That triggered automated trading programs to sell-sell-sell
• The selling spree wiped 1.14 billions dollars off of United’s market cap
• During the day stock recovered but ended $300 million down

Crazy stuff.