╠ Is making no money really the better option? ╣

I'm sure a lot of you have started to hear about the SarcMark. A punctuation mark that can be added to any text to infer sarcasm. In theory its a good idea, and there is demand for it. However the issue that seems to be stirring people to rebel against it is that it costs $1.99 to download.

Now the reason this is so bad is that people don't like to pay for software over the internet normally. Those who aren't scared of internet transactions are usually savvy enough to find ways around paying for things, even if illegally.

So now you're left with a problem. You've got this little mark that noone understands because only fractions of people have downloaded it. This means that instead of having peer pressure to downlad it because everyone else has it, instead there is ridicule for being silly enough to pay.

But the question stands as to what was the alternative? Not charging? Where would the profit be in such an activity?

Well my recommendation would be first off that if you're going to get a lot of people getting this advertising on your website can do wonders. Further more once everyone is stating to get one you can release premium ones for sale so that people can use sarcasm in style. At the moment there is just the basic one...but imagine how cool you'd be if you had a hollow one...or during christmas time one wit a santa hat. Now these aren't million dollar ideas...but overall they would probably make the business more than just initially charging.

╠ Experimenting outside your field ╣

This picture is of the soon to be opened Ludia's bar in Japan. What relevance is this?

Well this bar actually originally featured in a video game series called Dragon Quest. The bar itself will also serve themed meals and beverages.

Now this brings up an interesting point of whether such endeavours will be successful. Now it's hard to know just what the Japanese market is like, however thinking of it in a more local context I cannot see it succeeding unfortunately.

Gamers are those who usually spend their time inside...valued bar patrons spend the majority of their time outside. Thus wherein lies an issue.

However I hope that this type of thing does succeed as I would love to have the potential to build some video game locales :P