Word: cards
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There are a lot of reasons merchants love the current gift-card boom, but topping the list is this powerful statistic from auditors Deloitte & Touche: 10% of gift-card value--an estimated $4 billion this holiday season alone--is not redeemed. Why? Some people just don't get around to it. But Cameron Johnson, CEO of a new website called certificateswap.com is betting that in many cases the reason is that the shoe--or, rather, the shop--doesn't fit the wearer. Loosely modeled on eBay, a number of websites, including certificateswap.com and swapagift.com have sprung up to capitalize...
...more anytime soon. O2 flipped on its 3-G switch now because Irish regulators require it do so by the end of the year. After all the phone talk, an O2 spokesman said the first significant commercial use of 3-G will be as an add-in card that provides wireless Internet to laptops. That had a familiar ring: a week earlier, Vodafone said it is to offer 3-G for laptops in Germany and Italy . But wait - wasn't 3-G all about leaving the computer at home? Isn't that why companies spent €100 billion on licenses...
...male-bonding--snowboarding expedition to South America. "It's eight times the coordination of a regular trip," he says. "I'm the one who e-mails the invites, finds a flight with eight open seats and then gets everyone to pay me back for reservations made on my credit card. It's easier with the Internet, but it's still a pain." So many groups book their tickets online that travel websites have begun to catch on. Orbitz now allows groups to buy as many as nine tickets at a time, instead of the usual four...
...aware of any other country ever having a club like this," said Peter M. Kennedy, chairman of investment bank Domonick Company AG. While he doubted he'll ever visit enough golf clubs or spas to recoup his investment, he said he bought the card "to show my support for Thailand...
...much more support is out there for the scheme, dreamed up personally by Thaksin, remains to be seen. Thaksin has appointed a corps of private sales agents and told Thai embassy officials to hawk the cards to CEOs and celebrities around the world. But few travel-industry analysts believe he can achieve his goal of selling 1 million cards in the next 10 years. The program is also not without controversy. A key privilege for cardholders is the opportunity to "buy" residential land in Thailand (it will apparently be held in the name of the Thailand Privilege...