The 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems had a convention last week (Nov. 16-20) at the Javits Center in New York City and they literally closed off a section of 11th Avenue to show off some of the technologies being developed to make the roads safer for everybody.
The cars shown in the video “talk” wirelessly with the road, traffic signals, and pedestrians around them and are smart enough to avoid a serious accident and even automatically stop the car if the driver fails to do so. The system makes use of dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) to find other objects around the vehicle, but I cannot help but think about how this sort of technology would affect a city like New York where vehicles purposely come within inches of hitting each other in order to keep moving. I do this sort of thing often and I would hate it if a computer in my car told me that I was going to hit a vehicle when I know I am able to squeeze by without even a scratch.
But of course, the life-saving capabilities of such technology overshadow the annoyance stated above, so for that, I’ll go with this and say that I think it’s pretty neat.
Beginning tomorrow, January 31st, Reed Space in NYC is having a store sale. Everything in the store will be marked down. The interesting part about this whole sale is the way it is being conducted by the store.
For every day that the sale goes on, the percentage of markdown at the store will also increase by 10%. So on the first day [Thursday], the sale will be 20% off store-wide. On Friday, everything will be 30% off; Saturday, 40% off; and on Sunday, the entire store will be 50% off.
This is probably one of the best sale idea I’ve ever seen. Since Reed Space stocks items that are usually high in demand but with limited stock available, this puts buyers in a tight spot. Does one sit around and wait for items to get cheaper as the days go on, or should they buy right away, assuming that items will be hot and be sold out quickly? The risk is there, and Reed Space puts it in front of the consumer to make the decision.
In the end, the great thing behind this sale scheme is that it forces individuals to go to the store every single day to check out what’s left and to find out how much it is on sale for. Anybody in retail knows that an increase in foot traffic is never a bad thing.
If I owned a store, this is exactly how I would run a sale. Brilliant!
