Hoping to offer those in a currency panic a way to offload their rapidly devaluating cash, TG-Gold-Super-Markt is installing vending machines that dispense 1 gram, 5 gram and 10 gram gold bars and coins. A prototype released in the Frankfurt Airport charged $42 for a tiny single gram of gold. The vending machine’s prices are updated every two minutes, but do not reflect global commodity fluctuations—instead offering a 30% premium above the true market price of gold. Recession-addled investors would be well-advised to invest elsewhere.
[via Gizmodo]

NonCents is the work of a group of design students from the University of Washington. They have created an exhibition that uses interactive parking meters and an indoor display to explore reasons why the penny should be removed from circulation.

The Wall Street Journal recently delved into this issue when it published an article about the newly redesigned penny. The article is clearly in favor of abolishing the one cent piece, citing production costs as the main reason.
They explain:
In a 2006 editorial in the Journal, Harvard economist Greg Mankiw made a simple case for getting rid of the penny. “The purpose [...]

Following their ‘Kindness as Currency’ TV ad which debuted last week, Absolut is engaging with people in a range of surprising ways this week in London. All around the city, the brand is handing out freebies to people who perform an act of kindness, which could be as simple as smiling at someone. At cinemas in Islington and Clapham, customers exchanged high-fives and compliments for free snacks and drinks, and in Shoreditch and Soho, a simple smile earned people a free coffee. Details of upcoming ‘kindness’ events for the rest of the week are being posted on the Absolut Kindness [...]

When we speak of virtual economies, the first thing that may come to mind is the immersive 3D worlds like Second Life, etc. But the entire internet can be considered an near-infinite virtual world, where anything that happens is part of the complex “life” of that space. The web of activities that we participate in leave an indelible trace and builds up a significant virtual persona (for better or worse.) The Yale Law Journal has published an interesting article that discusses how to legally deal with this space where reputation becomes a kind of currency, the substance of value rather [...]