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 Payment is just a flick of the wrist away with SmartTransaction Watch 
Experimental drug CX717 puts sleep on the Lots of luck finding a hot dog at the newest kind of mall. The retail standby of the past 30 years is morphing into what developers call "lifestyle centers." These open-air hangouts mimic a town square, with fancy landscaping, fine dining (hold the Burger King), edgier, more upscale shops (think Urban Outfitters over Old Navy), and draws like theaters and live music. This fine-tuning of the shopping mall concept promises to target niche cultures with more of what they want. And they're popping up everywhere, from the Vegas Strip to Cincinnati, where a mall is getting demolished to accommodate this latest trend. CBS MarketWatch (5.25.04) reports there are 55 lifestyle centers under construction, compared to just six traditional regional malls. Will the next big thing get overbuilt like its strip mall cousins? "I don't think it's a fad," says David Marks, owner of Orlando, Florida real estate consulting firm Marketplace Advisors (ICSC.org 6.04). "But you really have to start off with what a community needs."
Today's dining public is pretty darn sophisticated. It's not only the full-blown foodies who know what a summer roll is supposed to taste like. Premium, upscale and ethnic flavors are mainstreaming, particularly Asian, Indian and South American fare. How exotic are consumers willing to take their tastebuds? A quick survey of current menus from chain restaurants provides some insight. The Cheesecake Factory CEO decided against mint in the Vietnamese summer rolls and anchovies in the pasta puttanesca, but Thai lettuce wraps (filled with chicken satay and coconut noodles) are one of the top three appetizers. The Dulce de Leche Cheesecake is No. 5 out of 40 varieties (Time.com 6.4.06). Cosí now serves a Shrimp Salad Chinoise with spicy Mandarin dressing and is testing a tikka masala "hearth-baked dinner" (Nation's Restaurant News 4.5.06). The lobster roll has trickled down from Maine seafood shacks to high-end restaurants to Panera Bread, which recently featured a lobster-salad sammie. Brie has moved from dinner-party cheese trays to Chevys Fresh Mex, where it shows up in the Napa Valley 'Dilla (a gooey quesadilla).
With the introduction of peel-off tabs on wine bottles, oenophiles can keep track of new favorites and they could become the equivalent of a stamp collection for wine lovers. The tear-off tags let restaurant-goers take the name of the wine with them. The easy-peel tabs made by Australia-based Collotype Labels-listing the vineyard, vintage, varietal and place-are starting to appear on the back of wine bottles from all over the world. Restaurant-goers often experiment with unfamiliar wines, but until now have had to rely on memory, notepads or PDAs to keep track of new favorites. Not only do these kinds of labels come in handy for future trips to the liquor store, but they also represent badges of experience when collected in a special diary.
Credit Ben Franklin for "Time is money." But kudos to Austrian watchmaker LAKS for creatively merging the two in its SmartTransaction Watch. Besides keeping time, wearers can tap and pay for purchases courtesy of an embedded MasterCard PayPass feature. LAKS is rolling out the unique payment device in conjunction with the 2006 FIFA World Cup and Taiwan's Chinatrust Commercial Bank. A limited-edition Chinatrust/FIFA watch, available in green, blue and orange, comes with a soccer ball-adorned face. Just don't scratch the crystal. Simply tapping to pay is handy. But not even having to pull out the card or carry it is the ultimate in convenience for time-sensitive consumers. A perfect example of how to streamline consumer lifestyles by rolling multiple solutions into one easy-to-use package.
Forget pills that help you fall asleep. The new thing is drugs that liberate you from the sleep need altogether. Cortex Pharmaceuticals has developed a drug called CX717 that supposedly can help users stay awake for 36 hours without the "jitters, euphoria and eventual crash that come after megadoses of caffeine or amphetamines" (The Economist 5.06). Tests last year on rhesus monkeys were positive, as were more recent studies on human adults suffering from ADHD. But as of April 2006, the FDA has put a clinical hold on CX717. Also in the works: pills that can make people feel like they've gotten a full night's sleep in just two hours. Harried consumers are finding normal shuteye patterns elusive. "Conquering sleep" is big business today (The Economist 5.06). Taking away the eight-hour time sink might sound especially lulling to those consumers obsessed with constant productivity. | | 
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