But being that we amuse ourselves so much, we decided to change it up. So now, if you have a question for Gus, send it his way. Have you been looking for a resource or a publication or a database and don’t know where to find it? Or do you need better search syntax ideas? We’ll publish the answers on our blog and, if they’re interesting enough, we’ll feature them in an upcoming issue of our bi-weekly newsletter. So give it your best shot.

We know exactly where to send you.

Google continues to hold us captive – but we’re not complaining. We suggest you pay a visit to Google’s specialized U.S. Government Search, which searches sites of organizations including the FDA, NIH and others. And to further focus your results, choose “advanced search” and limit the file type to .pdf documents. (Or if you’re brave, just add this to the end of your search: filetype:pdf and it will limit the search to pdf documents. Want to see if there are any PowerPoints? change pdf to ppt. It’s fun, try it!)

You won’t be disappointed. Good luck!

For a Big Mac, we’ll tell you. (If you us get some fries, too, we’ll tell you even more.)

A new study by Research International “Fast Food Nation 2008: A Consumer Perspective on the Fast Food Industry” provides an understanding of consumers’ views on fast food.

“With the average American spending $500 a year on fast food, the industry clearly plays a major part in the country’s economy and we felt that our clients would benefit from gaining an in-depth understanding of this segment which is a large part of consumers’ lives,” said Alexander Kleijngeld, Research International, vice president-client services.

Some of the major findings from the study include:

• Over half of the population eats fast food once a week with 20 percent eating fast food at least every other day.
• Fourteen percent of the population accounts for almost half of all fast food sales. These high frequency users tend to be male, below middle-age and employed with high incomes.
• High-frequency users have an average income of $67,575 which is 15 percent higher than the sample group’s average household income of $58,875.
• Despite their above-average incomes, high frequency users are more likely to increase fast food consumption because of economic pressure and are attracted to “value” dining options.
• Subway earned the highest Brand Energy score which measures how strong a brand is the minds of consumers. This score is a composite of four dimensions: Status and Momentum: strong brands not only perform well today (Status) but are also seen as continuously evolving and improving/innovating (Momentum); Affinity and Performance: strong brands not only offer a great experience functionally (Performance) but consumers also have an emotional bond with them (Affinity).
• Frequent users are attracted to restaurants that have new menu options or promotions and react positively to healthy food choices that are in tune with a restaurant’s efforts to improve the healthiness of their menu.
• More than half the country (57 percent) has been to McDonald’s in the past month followed by Subway (37 percent), Burger King (36 percent), Taco Bell (33 percent), Wendy’s (32 percent) and KFC (27 percent).
• Convenience is the main reason consumers choose a fast-food dining option.

Did that say $500 a year? Per person? Yikes.

AND

Over half of all Americans eat fast food at least once a week (20 percent eat it every other day) and nearly 60 percent of us went to a McDonald’s in the past month.

We also learned that (as is common in most businesses) a small percentage of customers account for most of the sales. Almost 50 percent of all fast food sales come from 14 percent of consumers. And these aren’t who you’d expect. They have an average income of $68,000 and, though young-ish, they aren’t teens and college kids.

What markets are consuming the most fast food? According to MRI’s Market-by-Market study:

1.Lafayette, Ind. (Hi Kathy B.!)
2.Rochester, Minn./Mason City, Iowa (think it’s because of Mayo Clinic?)
3.Cedar Rapids/Waterloo/Iowa City/Dubuque, Iowa
4.Detroit
5.St. Joseph, Mo.
6.Omaha, Neb. (Hello WG and Sara and Kevin and…)
7.Champaign/Springfield/Decatur, Ill. (Lori – you there?)
8.South Bend/Elkhart, Ind.
9.Columbus, Ohio
10.Cleveland/Akron (Canton), Ohio (Hey EK!)

Another interesting finding. People actually turn more frequently to fast food when the economy is less than optimal. So yay to all you in the biz!

Well, we found some expert opinions for you. (And we changed ours over some time ago!

Here goes:

Did you know that over half the energy consumed by an incandescent light bulb produces heat, not light? According to onebillionbulbs.com, compact fluorescent light bulbs are more efficient than incandescent bulbs because they typically use 65%-75% less energy than a standard incandescent bulb to provide the same amount of light AND they last up to 10 times longer than a regular light bulb.

Although CFL bulbs typically cost more than a standard incandescent bulb, the cost savings over the life of the bulb can be significant. If you replace multiple bulbs in your house, the savings can really add up.

And, don’t forget the heat. Given that standard incandescent bulbs throw off most of their energy as heat, your home cooling costs in the summer increase in order to offset the heat generated by your standard incandescent light bulbs.

There are environmental benefits as well.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, if every U.S. household replaced just one regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb, it would prevent 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, the equivalent of taking 7.5 million cars off the road.

All that great stuff said, there are some cons to using compact fluorescent light bulbs.

According to Energystar each bulb contains a small amount of mercury, which can be hazardous if broken in your home. The EPA recommends the following steps if you need to clean up a broken bulb:
(1) you immediately open windows to reduce mercury concentrations inside your home; (2) you do not touch the spilled mercury; (3) you clean up the broken CFL glass carefully and immediately (but not with your hands or a vacuum cleaner), and (4) you wipe the affected area with a paper towel to remove all glass fragments and mercury. EPA further recommends that you place the paper towel and glass fragments in a sealed plastic bag and bring the sealed bag to your local Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) Collection Site.

Also, you need to contact your solid municipal waste agency to determine how to dispose of your burned out bulbs. Some jurisdictions have specified sites and some allow you to put them in your regular trash.

Glad you asked.

We recently found a great way to handle that. We mentioned it in our last newsletter, but you might have missed it. And it’s worth repeating. (there are others, but we think this is the bomb!)

Feedity

Feedity is a great service that creates RSS feeds for web pages without a web syndication format. It will take virtually any web page, and convert it into a fully formed RSS document. (the picture below is theirs…)

Feedity makes it so incredibly easy for anyone to set up. You can instantly track and monitor web site changes at a page level. Just create an RSS feed for the web page, and subscribe it in any RSS newsreader (on the web, in a desktop software, or via e-mail).

Feedity also provides for a simple way to build a data “pipeline” using Yahoo Pipes. Check out their Webpage-to-RSS pipe. Without it, it’s not for the meek, for sure!

Good luck.

You’ve come to the right place. We love geo-questions!

Here’ s a great one. Check out ZCMap — the ‘ultimate’ U.S. Zip Code mapping utility. You’ll have hours of fun! We did…

Even researchers bring in experts sometimes. So without further ado, here is the answer submitted by generational theory expert, Jessie Newburn.

There certainly is a lot of hype, and with good reason. Every time a new generation moves into their late teen and early young adulthood years, they shift the culture as they do so. Millennials are doing this now. Unfortunately, most of the “facts” floating around – even from the most credible of national news sources — are mostly inaccurate.

There’s a field of study called generational theory. It speaks to the peer personalities and archetypal life experiences of groups of people moving through time. The core source for this information is two academics: William Strauss and Neil Howe. Together, they’ve written some well-received books on the subject including Generations, Millennials Rising and The Fourth Turning. In their work, they define generational birth years by life experiences and not by the dates typically offered by U.S. demographers. The years Strauss and Howe use will probably strike you as “not true.” But here they are: Boomers are born 1943–1960. GenX are born 1961–1981. Millennials are born 1982–2002ish. Anything else is really a discussion of demographics, which is quite different than discussing generations.

What will probably shock you even more is this simple data, vetted by 2005 U.S. Census information. GenX is currently the largest generation, weighing in at 82 million Americans. Millennials are next at 79.2 million; Boomers are third, at 64.6 million; the Silent (born 1925–1942) are 33.2 million in size. The end-year for Millennials isn’t determined yet, though it is known that the newest generation is already being born. This new batch is called the Homeland Generation, and they are most likely to be a small generation, just like the Silent Gen was.

So there you have it: Facts that fly in the face of most everything you’ll ever read or hear about American generations. Me? I’ll pick data over hype any day.

Submitted by
JessieX
Generational consultant, speaker and purist.
www.jessienewburn.com

Meet people? No, we’re not in that business. But we do have an idea for you.

Dopplr is an online service for intelligent business travelers.

It lets you share your future travel plans privately with friends and colleagues (or those people you hang with on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter!). The service then highlights coincidence, for example, telling you that three people you know will be in Paris when you will be there too. You can use Dopplr on your personal computer and mobile phone. It links with online calendars and social networks. Take the tour.

We’ve heard some great things already.

Bon Voyage!

We can absolutely help!

There are several easy ways to do this. First, if you remember, the Absolut ads all say ‘Absolut something’ so I’d search in Google for “Absolut Jenson” and you’ll see that the first several results clearly confirm that the gallery was correct. In fact, the first result shows a neat listing of all the ads.

But you know us. Even though Google is so easy and so great, we need to tell you another way. And you’ll be glad we did, because this is a really groovy resource. (Thanks to Garret for the pointer!) There’s this great database of advertising called Ads of the World. You can browse by brand, agency, keyword, category, country. It’s great. No, it’s not complete. Not even close. But there are some really terrific ads here. If you choose Absolut, you’ll be bummed to see that the Jenson is not there, however. But we bet that you’ll get lost in the exploration and have a really good time anyway.

And since we’re throwing out other ways of approaching this, we went to Ask.com and searched for absolut ads and found Absolutads.com which is where we easily found this ad.

We say buy the painting!

Gulp. We’re glad you asked.
The controversy seems to be two-fold.
The first concern surrounds a chemical call bisphenol A (BPA) that can leak out of can linings into your food. Cans that hold things like soup, beans and soft drinks . Nearly all can liners contain BPA, says Geoff Cullen, director of government relations at the Can Manufacturers Institute. BPA has also been found to migrate, under some conditions, from polycarbonate plastic water bottles. BPA is also found in clear plastic baby bottles, water bottles and dental sealants.
Here’s where it becomes controversial. The plastics industry says its harmless, but a growing number of scientists are concluding, based on animal testing, that BPA poses a risks if encountered in the womb including certain cancers, interference with reproductive health and increases in childhood behavioral problems, such as hyperactivity. Ninety-five percent of Americans were found to have the chemical in their urine in a 2004 biomonitoring study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The levels that leach into food are well below the safety thresholds set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the plastics industry website, Bisphenol-A.org, says the chemical is completely safe unless you ingest 1,300 pounds of canned and bottled food daily.
The second concern surrounds the re-use of plastic bottles. The assertion is that the plastic used to make plastic bottles, called PET polyethylene terephthalate, contains a potentially carcinogenic chemical called diethylhydroxylamine. According to the reports, this carcinogenic chemical is released upon repeated washings or heating of the bottles.
According to one of our favorite rumor websites, www.snopes.com , this claim is false and here’s why: The FDA regulates bottled water as a packaged food product, and asserts that PET is safe for food contact materials.
The basis for this concern was a graduate students master thesis that was not subject to peer review and did not reflect the serious rigor that would provide accurate and reliable information about the safety of these products. Additionally, DEHA is not regulated or considered a human carcinogen. Furthermore, DEHA is not inherent in PET plastics either is a raw material, byproduct or decomposition product. DEHA is a common plasticizer used in many plastic items including ones found in a lab. The students results were most likely a result of inadvertent lab contamination.