Robert Smith

Can This Man Bring Silicon Valley To Yangon?

Robert Smith — Fri, 24 May 2013 07:15:00 +0000

Like a proud father, Nay Aung opens up his MacBook Air to show me the Myanmar travel website he has built. But we wait 30 seconds for the site to load, and nothing happens.

"Today is a particularly bad day for Internet," he says. This is life in Myanmar today: Even an Internet entrepreneur can't always get online.

Why (Almost) No One In Myanmar Wanted My Money

Robert Smith — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:12:00 +0000

When you arrive in Myanmar, you can see how eager the people are to do business. At the airport in Yangon, new signs in English welcome tourists. A guy in a booth offers to rent me a local cellphone — and he's glad to take U.S. dollars. But when I pull out my money, he shakes his head.

"I'm sorry," he says.

He points to the crease mark in the middle of the $20 bill.

The Trick To Selling Fancy Wine From New Jersey: Don't Say It's From New Jersey

Robert Smith — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 07:07:00 +0000

Halfway between the New Jersey Turnpike and the Atlantic City casinos is a little slice of France: Amalthea Cellars. There's an old farmhouse, and a field full of grapevines.

Lou Caracciolo, who founded Amalthea, is walking through the field. "Here's something I put in the ground in 1976," he says. "You have to have a feel for it, and after 30 years I have a pretty good feel for it."

Caracciolo calls himself a hopeless romantic.

A Computer Fit For The Amish

Robert Smith — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:39:00 +0000

Last week, I had a story on an Amish trade show. It was mostly about power tools, but there was another other thing that we didn't mention in the online version: The booth selling computers to the Amish.

The key selling point, perhaps not surprisingly, is all the things the computer doesn't do. Like the sign says: No Internet, no video, no music.

It's '80s-era technology that lets you do basic word-processing, spreadsheets and accounting.

Inside An Amish Trade Show

Robert Smith — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 08:46:00 +0000

The Buckeye Tool Expo in Dalton, Ohio, is held in a massive hall filled with bearded men in black hats and women in white bonnets. A few horses and buggies are tied up outside.

The Amish have chosen to forgo many of the delights of the modern world, but they still need to drill, sand and cut wood. This trade expo shows off all the loopholes that let the Amish get their hands on power tools.