5/6/2003

Naked Bouncers Reduce Violence

Filed under: Weird News — Tim @ 2:11 am

Leave it to Ze Germans to innovate and create a successful new paradigm:

A German nightclub says it has doubled its turnover and reduced the level of violence after it started using naked women as bouncers

Management at Beatclub in Cologne came up with the idea as a way to combat troublemakers.

Club goer Stefan Wurz said: “It makes standing in the queue a lot more fun. When they come out on the streets they have to wear a coat, but it’s not fastened and there is plenty to see. It takes your mind off everything else.”

Wearing high-heeled boots over black suspenders with a fur coat open at the front Linda, 26, says the job is easy and more fun than being a dancer which was her previous job.

She said: “You get to meet people, and I haven’t had any trouble at all. If they are over 18 and well dressed, they have a good chance of getting past me.”

Beatclub boss Philipp Sommer, 26, said: “With our new bouncers we wanted to try and tone down the atmosphere of aggression that often exists.”

He added that the idea had also boosted visitor numbers and added: “It makes the entire visit to our club an enjoyable one.”

My amigo Jason doesn’t think they should stop there either, “They should just make the regular bouncers naked, that’d work too… some big hairy guy with no clothes on tells you to “get the hell out,” and you do it.”

Sadly, I don’t have the time to work as a part-time bouncer - though I’m sure you’d all love to see my nekkidness.

CEO Schmidt Hints at New Blog Search Capability

Filed under: Google — Tim @ 1:49 am

News.com has a story from Reuters discussing Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and his thoughts on going public (IPO). Like usual, they aren’t going to anytime soon (not till next year - a time frame executives at the company continue to reiterate).

Though Mr. Schmidt did mention something interesting:

Google allows people to search Web pages, as well as to search specific types of content such as news sources and shopping sites through its Froogle service, Usenet groups. Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as “blogs,” Schmidt said.

While many bloggers have speculated that Google would offer a service, it looks like we won’t have to wait much longer. So in addition to ‘Dano‘ (the new version of Blogger) and Applied Semantics (which can analyze sites, in this case blogs, and accurately generate ads geared towards that particular blog audience) Google is rounding up their blog strategy (they could make a killing advertising Blogger Pro and BlogSpot Plus on all the search results in addition to the ad revenue generated).

Anyone want to guess as to what features their new service will incorporate?

In other Google news, Always-On published the 4th and final segment of their interview with Mr. Schmidt in which he discusses Moore’s Law and the pace of technological innovation (and whether or not there could be a high-tech boom once again — here is my brief overview of the other 3 parts).