Although social media has made it easy to share your feelings with the press of a button, the market for old-fashioned analog greeting cards is still chugging along. The industry rakes in an estimated $5 billion annually, led by card giants Hallmark and American Greetings and bolstered by hundreds of smaller start-ups.

At big and small firms alike, card designers are tasked with spending their days finding fresh ways to communicate love, sympathy, or holiday cheer. We spoke to a few of them to find out what it takes to stand out on the retail card racks.

1. THEIR CARDS ARE SURPRISINGLY PERSONAL.

In the card business, writers are constantly angling to capture a “universal specific,” or a common theme that sounds personal despite having appeal across the board. Matt Gowen, a staff writer at Hallmark, says that one of the best ways to arrive at that sincerity is to imagine you’re writing a card for one specific person in your life. “Starting with a real person and a real relationship gives you lots of little details to use,” he says. “Writing an anniversary card, I can think about my own wife.” A colleague of Gowen’s writes her Mother’s Day cards with her own mother in mind. “Her mom just loses it. It’s a lot of fun.”

2. THERE ARE RULES FOR THE TOP THIRD OF THE CARD.

Most card displays are front-facing, with only the upper third of the card exposed to shoppers. That means card designers need to try and capture your scanning eye with something that makes at least a little bit of sense even when it’s cut off from the rest of the pack. “You need to create a symbol, image, or word that immediately makes a person want to pick up the card from about a three to six-foot distance, [which is] often how far someone is when they scan cards,” says Kate Harper, a freelance card designer. “For example, if it is a love card, adding a heart to the top third is helpful. It immediately communicates to the person passing by what the topic of the card is.”

3. THE REJECTION RATE IS HIGH.

Writers and designers at Hallmark are typically brought on group projects that are sorted according to holidays or themes, with a mandate to create anywhere from 100 to 150 cards for the occasion. Because standards are high, the vast majority of their ideas won’t make it into your hands. “If you write humor, which I do, a 10 percent acceptance rate is considered high,” Gowen says. “Most ideas end up in the trash. You learn to develop a thick skin.”

4. THEY DON’T LIKE TO USE HUMAN FACES.

Ever wonder why cards feature an abundance of adorable animals or decapitated bodies? It’s because photographed human faces may make cards less appealing. “When people buy cards for someone, they have an idea of the person they are sending it to,” Harper says. “Maybe they are older, younger, or a different ethnicity than the person on the card. The buyer is asking unconsciously, ‘Does this look like my friend?’ Unless the images are completely humorous or retro, you rarely see photos of faces on cards.”

5. THEY LIKE TO SPY ON YOU.

Harmlessly, of course. To develop an ear for relatable dialogue, card writers often comb social media or eavesdrop on conversations in public settings to get a feel for what strikes a chord. “Sometimes you’re out doing errands and something will stand out,” Gowen says. Inspiration has struck while waiting for his car to get washed. One colleague, he says, likes to loiter in card shops to see which types of cards shoppers pick up.

6. INDEPENDENT DESIGNERS NEED TO SQUEEZE INTO THE MARKET.

Those monolithic, aisle-wide card displays in your local pharmacy? They’re actually owned by the heavy hitters—Hallmark and American Greetings—and serviced by both. Owing to contracts with store chains, it’s not likely you’ll find any small-press, irreverent cards on shelves. “It’s impossible for an indie company like mine to get into a CVS or Walgreen’s,” says Emily McDowell, owner of Emily McDowell Studio. Instead, she markets online and to stores like Urban Outfitter that don’t have exclusive deals with the major brands.

7. RED ENVELOPES ARE IFFY.

Greeting card companies worry a lot about colors. “Bright, upbeat colors stand out,” Harper says. “Browns, grays, and black and white don’t do as well.” That thinking also applies to envelopes, although some designers stay away from red. “It’s best to not use red, since the post office has problems reading black ink on red envelopes.”

8. THEY DON’T JUST WORK ON CARDS.

For a company like Hallmark, whose specialty stores carry a steady supply of gifts and novelties in addition to greeting cards, staff writers are expected to have their hand in a little bit of everything. “I’ve written for t-shirts, mugs, posters, songs,” Gowen says. “Anything with words, you name it.”

9. THERE’S A REASON SOME CARDS ARE BLANK—AND NOT FOR THE REASON YOU THINK.

While major companies often insist on having words on both the inside and outside of cards, McDowell says that customers have taken a liking to cards that are completely blank on the inside. “I learned that early on,” she says. “It’s partially consumer-driven in that it’s more flexible for consumers to write their own personalized message. It’s also partially due to the fact that our cards, and all other boutique cards, are sold packed in individual plastic sleeves, together with their envelope, in order to protect the product in the store. Having blank insides eliminates the need for customers to open the packaging and see what’s written on the inside.”

10. THEY GET SURPRISED BY THEIR OWN CARDS.

Writers at Hallmark work on so many different card concepts that it can become difficult to keep track of which fall by the wayside and which make it to stores. “In the writing studio, you’re removed from that process and you can forget what you worked on,” Gowen says. “Then you walk into a card shop to buy a Mother’s Day card and go, ‘Oh, I worked on this.’ It’s kind of a nice surprise.”

11. PRICE IS IRRELEVANT.

When card-shopping, buyers typically get sucked in by an image and then sold on the writing. Whether a card is $1 or $10 doesn’t really matter, according to Harper. “The price is the last consideration in determining the purchase,” she says.

12. IT’S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS.

Thanks to Pinterest, Etsy, and a host of other creative commerce sites, there’s been a deluge of greeting card designs. What could be easier than a simple design and a little sentiment on paper? “It’s an easy point of entry because cards are cheap to produce,” McDowell says. “But they’re not often made by trained designers. I was in advertising for 10 years.”

Gowen has also seen some of the I-could-do-that spirit. “People come up to me all the time and tell me a funny story that should be on a card. It might be funny, but is it universal? That’s the trick.”

And, he says: “Anyone can write a card. But can you write them five days a week for a decade?”

Doing the dishes can be a pain, but the real agony comes at the end when you have to clean out the sink. Dishwashers and garbage disposals have solved these woes for some, but if you don’t have those luxuries, there are still some affordable gadgets out there to help. Tweak is a special rubber strainer that makes chores just a little bit less gross. It keeps bits of food out of the drain and then shoots them right into the trash with a clever design. 

The strainer comes in green, yellow, blue, pink, and purple. Thanks to its flap-like shape, it fits over most drains that are less than 4.3 inches in diameter. While you’re doing dishes, it filters out debris just like all strainers; when you’re ready to dump the food bits in the trash, simply squeeze the handle on the side, bring over to the garbage bin, and flip inside out to eject the soggy mess. The clever design makes it easy to clean the strainer all without getting a single piece of wet lettuce on your hands. If you’re still not satisfied with the hygiene of your Tweak, the silicone strainer is dishwasher safe. 

Say goodbye to touching mushy food and get your own on Amazon for $10. 

[h/t Oddity Mall]

“No Stairway! Denied!” The Inside Story of Wayne’s World’s Most Unintentionally Complicated Gag. The way you saw it was not the way your parents saw it.
*
The Story of the South’s First Black Millionaire. Robert Church was known as the known as the “Boss of Beale Street.”
*
This ‘Prison Beauty School’ Is Giving Inmates Hope For The Future. Learning a trade is the biggest weapon against recidivism.
*
Playboy is bringing nudes back after a year of expecting people to read it for the articles. But can it ever really join the 21st century?
*
How Multitasking Works. You might think you’re getting more done that way, but you’d be mistaken.
*
Can You Be Friends With a Bear? Long-distance friends, maybe.
*
Don’t look now, but American judges are attacking debtor’s prison. There’s no reason why the poorest people should pay for our justice system.
*
How One British Soldier Turned a Parlor Game into ‘Clue.’ It was Mr. Pratt on the front lines with a patent.

In 1784, a small Dutch ship called the Dolfijn discovered that you can accomplish a lot with a single shot—even if you are outgunned and outmanned.

Affairs aren’t always physical; sometimes, they involve a remote control. As Vocativ reports, a new, Netflix-commissioned survey found that nearly half of respondents who stream with significant others “Netfix cheat,” meaning they sneakily watch episodes of TV shows ahead of their partner.

SurveyMonkey conducted the study, which looked at data from 30,267 respondents. They crunched the numbers, and found that 46 percent of couples were guilty of Netflix infidelity. These individuals expressed little remorse: 45 percent didn’t confess the act to their partners, while 61 percent said they “would cheat more if they could get away with it.” Meanwhile, 81 percent of cheaters were repeat offenders, and had committed the 21st century crime more than once.

That being said, these betrayals weren’t always intentional. Eighty percent of the time, the “cheating” wasn’t planned, respondents said. As for the impetus behind their actions, 66 percent said a lack of self-control was to blame. (The “top cheating temptations” were addictive shows like The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, American Horror Story, House of Cards, Orange is The New Black, Narcos, and Stranger Things.)

“In a binge-watching world where it’s easy to say ‘just one more,’ Netflix cheating has quickly become the new normal,” Netflix concluded in a statement.

Netflix conducted a similar survey in 2013; back then, only 12 percent admitted to having an affair with a TV show. In only four years, that number increased more than threefold. But even though this dishonest habit is on the rise, it’s still somewhat socially acceptable: 46 percent of respondents concluded that Netflix cheating is “not bad at all” (yes, that happens to be the exact same percent as those who said they’d cheated), in contrast to 18 percent of couples who said they’d gotten into a verbal fight about it.

Guilty of nefarious Netflix behavior yourself? Master the art of sneaky streaming by watching the video below.

[h/t Vocativ]

by James Hunt

In 1899, the inventor Nikola Tesla began performing the first successful experiments on wireless power transfer. His initial success led him to believe that one day power would be transmitted around the planet without the need for cables. It took over 100 years, but his dream of wire-free power transmission was eventually realized—though perhaps not by the methods he envisioned.

When creating phones and tablets, manufacturers are faced with the challenge of giving the device a long battery life, keeping it lightweight, and making charging as painless as possible. Wireless power, which makes recharging your phone as easy as putting it down, could be the solution to that last part. But how does it actually work? And, perhaps more importantly, how safe is it?

Modern wireless power draws on the same principle that Tesla investigated over a century ago: induction. Electromagnetic induction—using an electromagnetic field to transfer power between two objects—forms the basis of all modern wireless charging, as well as things like contactless payment, cooktops, and wireless speakers.

In a practical sense, the way induction works is simple: First, you feed power to a base unit or charging station that contains a “transmitter” coil. An electromagnetic field forms around the transmitter and when a second “receiver” coil comes near enough, the receiver coil interacts with the magnetic field to create an electric current. By putting the second coil inside another device, you can wirelessly transfer power from the base to the device.

Most induction chargers only operate over a short distance, however, and while physical contact between a device and its base unit isn’t necessary for induction to work, the fields generated lose so much power as the devices get farther away that it’s usually the only way to get the two coils close enough.

As for safety, there’s really nothing to worry about. The average induction charger creates a field no more dangerous than radio waves, and it isn’t strong enough to have any effect on the human body. If anything, plugging in and unplugging a cable is more dangerous because there’s a minute chance it could fray and shock you. By contrast, induction hardware can be safely encased in thick plastic and still work. This is why electric toothbrushes have long used induction to charge: The units can remain sealed and waterproof.

Sounds great, right? So why don’t we use wireless charging all the time?  For starters, it’s slow going. While wireless charging has improved dramatically over the past few years, wired charging is still generally faster. Also, the process creates a lot of waste heat, so much so that some Samsung charging pads have fans to keep everything cool.

The big issue is practicality, though. You can easily use your phone while it’s plugged into a charger, but it’s tricky to hold your phone up to your ear while it’s resting on a wireless base station.

But things are changing.

Returning to Tesla’s original experiments, an effect called Resonant Inductive Coupling allowed the inventor to safely transmit power over several meters. Perhaps the most popular wireless charging standard, Qi, has recently been updated to allow a version of this to be implemented in compatible devices. The result is that the charging range has increased to four centimeters.

It might not sound like much, but it’s a start. In the future, wall-sized charge stations might be able to transmit power to multiple devices in multiple rooms as you move about your house. It may have taken over a century to get to this point, but we’re closer than ever to wireless power transfer becoming commonplace. It’s what Tesla would’ve wanted.

Soon, customers at select Starbucks locations will be able to order scoops of ice cream to cool down their coffees. As Business Insider reports, the chain will be featuring new affogato offerings at more than 100 stores across the country, beginning this week.

The word affogato means “drowned” in Italian. To make one of these concoctions, baristas pour a shot of espresso into a cup of vanilla ice cream. The dessert is a popular treat in Italy, and soon Starbucks customers in Los Angeles, Orange County, Boston, and Washington, D.C. will get to try the delicacy for themselves.

The Roastery Affogato menu will be unveiled at 10 of Starbucks’s fancier Reserve bar locations. Their classic affogatos will sell for $6, and Cold Brew Malts, made with vanilla ice cream, cold brew, and chocolate bitters, will cost $8.50 each.

A less expensive version of the menu will also be made available at 100 classic Starbucks stores in Orange County, California. There, the Cold Brew Malt will feature Starbucks’ Narino 70 cold brew instead of the pricier small-lot brew, and will cost $6.40.

Starbuck first experimented with ice cream-inspired offerings last summer. Their Affogato-style Frappuccino, with hot espresso poured over the iced drink, channeled the hot-cold temperature contrast of the original dessert. The newest offerings mark the first time actual ice cream has been sold at Starbucks across the country.

[h/t Business Insider]