Open up your mind and say, ahh...

The Microsoft Surface Pro, the new flagship Windows 8 device that launched on Saturday, is reportedly sold out in many retail locations across the country.

Great success, right? Not so fast. Apparently, as reported by ZDnet, that fact might be misleading. In general, of course, selling out on the day of a product launch is good thing. But not if it only sold out because there weren’t enough Surface Pros available.

And that seems to be the problem here. Apparently, stores around the country only received a handful of Surface Pros, so they quickly sold out, leaving lots of angry customers with empty hands.

Microsoft seems to call it a win, though. “Customer response to the launch of Surface Pro has been amazing. We’re working with our retail partners who are currently out of stock of the 128GB Surface Pro to replenish supplies as quickly as possible,” Microsoft wrote on its official Surface Pro blog.

Critics have been quick to point out that this “amazing” response is not backed up by actual numbers, but just reports of stores selling out of Surface Pro models. But the real question is, how many did they actually have available in the first place?

To learn more about the controversy, watch the video above.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

“I would like to thank the swap meet for his hat,” Jay-Z jokingly said to singer The-Dream at the end of their acceptance speech for Best Rap Collaboration at the 55th Grammy Awards.

Jay-Z’s remark about The-Dream’s hat was the highest tweets-per-minute moment of Sunday night’s ceremony for east coast viewers from 8 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. ET — with the show attracting 13.2 million total tweets during that time span, Twitter told Mashable.

A swap meet is like a flea market — a place where people sell merchandise at low prices.

Top Tweets-Per-Minute Moments

• Jay-Z, Kanye West, Frank Ocean and The-Dream win Best Rap Collaboration: 116,400
• Prince announce’s Gotye winning Record of the Year: 109,400
• Fun. wins best new artist: 100,600

Most-Mentioned Artists

• 1. Rihanna, who performed “Stay” with Mikky Ekko and then was part of a Bob Marley tribute with Bruno Mars and Sting
• 2. Frank Ocean, who performed and won Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Rap Collaboration
• 3. Taylor Swift, who opened the show with “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”
• 4. Beyonce, who along with Ellen Degeneres introduced Justin Timberlake’s performance
• 5. Justin Timberlake, who performed at the Grammys for the first time in four years
• 6. Ed Sheeran, who teamed up with Elton John for a performance

Notable Tweets from Celebrities

Miguel responded via Twitter after Kelly Clarkson mentioned his performance during her acceptance speech for Best Pop Vocal Album: “Miguel, I don’t know who the hell you are, but we need to sing together. I mean, good God. That was the sexiest dancing I’ve ever seen.”

Zac Brown Band thanked fans by tweeting a photo of the inside of the winner’s envelope after the band won Best Country Album:

First lady Michelle Obama gave a shout-out to Janis Ian:

And the winners are …

For a full list of winners, click here.

Image via Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Topics: 55th Grammy Awards, Celebrities, Entertainment, grammys, Hot Story, Music, Television, Twitter

Earlier this year, Ryan Seacrest partnered with Ford for its “Random Acts of Fusion Campaign,” a transmedia effort to promote the 2013 Ford Fusion. Now with the recent acquisition of New York-based marketing services agency Civic Entertainment Group (CEG) through his company Seacrest Global Group (SGG), the multi-hyphenate magnate aims to connect brands with Hollywood and perhaps create original branded content.

Dick Clark & Ryan Seacrest

Like the late Dick Clark, whose career he makes no secret of emulating, Seacrest is an entertainer who wears many hats–American Idol host; NBC News’ Today show correspondent; and, of course, host of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, which he also executive produces. Through Ryan Seacrest Productions, Seacrest produces Keeping Up with the Kardashians as well as its various spin-offs, and other reality series, such as Bravo’s Shahs of Sunset and E!’s Married to Jonas.

Seacrest also has several projects at various stages of development, including Food Fight with Paramount Pictures, a TV version of the book Nanny Diaries, and a game show based on the popular Zynga game Draw Something.

When the television and radio personality initially approached CEG, the company’s co-founders/CEOs Stuart Ruderfer and David Cohn were “immediately intrigued,” according to Ruderfer. “Ryan has this unique vision for building the new model, the next generation media and entertainment brand business,” says Ruderfer. “What it means for us is we can have a combination of Hollywood access with first-class marketing services.”

For his part, Seacrest says he was attracted to CEG because of its “consistent track record of business success.” Specifically, CEG was responsible for overseeing the marketing campaign for the launch of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, including a series of 1920s-era events, as well as other creative marketing services for brands such as A&E, CNN, ESPN, History, NFL, and Southwest Airlines. The 12-year-old company specializes in experiential marketing campaigns that blur the line between marketing and entertainment.

“For History, the cable channel, we had the world’s largest smoker and grill cooking 2,000 hot dogs around the country,” Ruderfer says, as an example of one of their experiential marketing campaigns. “The idea was to help History reach out to its audience and provide a live experience with the brand that hopefully adds to their viewing experience.”

The company has also created restaurant spaces for CNN, the CNN Grill, and a bar and lounge, the Southwest Porch, for Southwest Airlines.

Although Ruderfer and Cohn will continue to head up the day-to-day operations at CEG, Ruderfer said they would rely on Seacrest’s “advice and counsel and access to resources.”

Since both SGG and CEG have expertise in live events, there will likely be an increased focus on them going forward.

“Live events are exciting television, and they repeatedly draw big audiences year-after-year,” says Seacrest. “My production company is interested in stepping up its capabilities in this aspect of the business, which I think is also an area that Civic could potentially be involved with given their expertise with marketing large-scale events.”

Entertainment and marketing will continue to converge, according to Seacrest, and creating entertaining content is key. “There is so much noise in the marketplace for both content creators and marketers that it increasingly makes sense for these two disciplines to dovetail in interesting ways,” says Seacrest.

Crowd Image: Flickr user Haags Uitburo

If you belong to a CSA (community supported agriculture), there’s a good chance you’ve used Farmigo, an online platform that helps hundreds of farms across the U.S. to manage their member subscriptions.

But despite the popularity of CSAs in certain parts of the country, they’re still limited to less than 1% of the population–it’s nice getting a box of fresh produce delivered to a drop-off spot every week, but the mystery of not knowing what you’re getting can be a struggle in the kitchen. In an attempt to make local food more relevant to a larger portion of the population, Farmigo announced this week that it has a new goal: becoming the largest online farmer’s market in the country.

Here’s how it works: A food community–i.e. a workplace, school, or community center–works with Farmigo to set up their own virtual farmer’s market, connecting to local producers that they think their members would like. On average, a community connects to five different producers, selling everything from fish and meat to baked goods and produce. Every week, individual members of the community select what they want to order. All the orders are delivered on a designated day–the one aspect of all this that’s like a CSA.

Farmigo founder Benzi Ronen says that it’s a great deal for the farmers, who get paid 80 cents on the dollar for every purchase, compared to 20 cents on the dollar for wholesale. They get paid 24 hours after produce is distributed. “On the farm side, it’s becoming a great channel for them. People order 48 hours before delivering, and the farm is only harvesting what’s pre-ordered, unlike at the farmer’s market,” he says.

The platform already has some competition. In San Francisco, a startup called Good Eggs lets individuals get deliveries (either to their homes or a designated drop-off) from a variety of local food producers. But Farmigo has a wider geographical reach out of the gate.

Farmigo has been piloting the food communities program for two months with five communities each in New York City and Northern California, including Etsy in Brooklyn, Kiva in San Francisco, and Brooklyn-based new media marketing agency Carrot Creative, which pitches in $10 each week for employee orders.

On December 11, Farmigo opened up to the larger San Francisco and New York populations. In the near future, food communities will become available in Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Via Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com

Remember the old nuclear bomb projections? The Soviet Union nuked the US. The US nuked the Soviet Union. Of course, the Soviet Union saw the US nukes coming their way, so they, for some odd reason, just nuked the whole world. Then the US nuked the world back.

Those were always unsettling, but at least they were theoretical. This Mapping Arms Data visualization, created by Google using information from the UN Statistics Division’s Commodity Trade Statistics Database (CoMtraDe), is entirely real. It depicts the personal arms (from pistols to machine guns) that every country in the world has imported and exported over nearly the last 20 years. And the US looks to lead the pack, with nearly $1 billion in imports and $600 million in exports snaking their glowing, pulsating tendrils into every spot on the globe.

The effect is only exacerbated by the fully explorable, 3-D interface. China is a global export hub–sending $50 million in weaponry around the globe, but they don’t hold a candle to Italy, which exported more than six times that amount in 2010. Indeed, however small a country may be on the globe, their large, laser-like arcs of light expelled by weaponry balance out any possible misconceptions. The glowing visual may be eye-burning overkill, but it’s also darned effective at calling out small land masses that would sneak by if all we did was paint them in a different color.

Of course, there are huge shortcomings with the reporting. The project admits that some military trades will circumvent gun checkpoints, some countries don’t account for all weapons coming over their borders and, in the cases of China, Iran and North Korea, especially, the reporting is far short of reliable (PFD). You could buy a midrange car for more than North Korea said they imported in weapons last year. Then again, the country is known for throwing bad military photoshops and parades full of fake missile launchers–and also doing plenty of covert trade in weapons and luxury items for the ruling regime.

But before the mass amounts we spend on personal weaponry get you too upset, do try to put it all into perspective. The US imported a billion dollars in guns in 2010, sure, but that’s less than the price of half a dozen F-22 jets.

Wait a second…actually have no idea if that makes me feel better or worse.

Hyatt is hardly a boutique brand, but the international hotel chain is taking an increasingly bespoke approach to its properties. After a handful of successful, locally minded collaborations, New York-based architecture and interior design firm Stonehill & Taylor recently completed work on the chain’s Minneapolis location that boasts a “made in America” ethos throughout the whole site.

The large scale renovation encompassed all major public areas, including the lobby, bar, and addition of a new marketplace, as well as 533 guest rooms on a somewhat tight timeframe of 12 months, as opposed to the standard 18. Stonehill & Taylor was asked to spend as much of the budget as possible in the US. “It’s a commendable directive, and one that was almost absolutely required by the accelerated schedule,” principal Mike Suomi tells Co.Design. “There wasn’t time to have things made by the cheapest bidder–who may not be in our country–because it might not have made it on deadline.”

Research into the city’s history revealed three main, milling-centric industries–timber, grain and flour, and wool–that revolved around a waterfall at the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. “These became the source of a lot of our design ideas. Then we looked for manufacturers who were still working in these fields,” Suomi says. Everything from blankets to pottery, raw logs to corridor art, came from this deep dive into the area’s heritage. Stroud, a purchasing agency, did extensive legwork to gather quotes from vendors who would handle some of the bigger orders, such as large quantities of casegoods or seating. “They ended up identifying a lot of manufacturers we’d never heard before.”

The approach represents a potential sea change in strategy when it comes to domestic building. “Up until very recently, projects that were moving forward were set on spending as little money as possible–by taking a long time, they could aggressively bid and rebid to get costs down,” Suomi explains. “When the time saved is of less value than the actual dollars, people scour the earth to find things with no regard to the carbon footprint.” And as for the Minneapolis Hyatt, the shift away from outsourcing has been a success–there’s already plans to renovate an adjacent complex for Hyatt in the same spirit.

Cities like Omaha, Des Moines, and Kansas City have long been great places for American business and agricultural and commodities fortunes to be built, but today’s entrepreneurs are working with software and digital tech, not cattle and corn.

Traveling across America, running sales and marketing for Truist, a social responsibility-powering tech company, Jeff Slobotski regularly visited the country’s startup hubs. Slobotski, intrigued by his experiences, began chronicling his travels on a personal blog. But in 2008, he took another look his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, and the surrounding Midwestern region. He was impressed by the burgeoning startup scene in his own backyard. “It is this incredible hidden gem,” Slobotski says with joy. Inspired, he created a new site to exclusively cover startups in Omaha and the Midwest–Silicon Prairie News was born.

Slobotski wanted people to pay more attention to the region and come to see it as a credible crescent for startups.

“If individuals know who or what is happening in a region there is tremendous power,” he says. “Businesses can launch, funding can be found, and networks can be built.”

Initially the site published just a few stories each week, usually short profiles of Omaha-based companies. Four years later, Slobotski, now 34, has built the site into a robust platform with constantly updated content, has developed a webcast, hired a team of 8 full-time employees, and opened additional offices in Des Moines and soon to be in Kansas City.

While the real Silicon Valley, of course, continues to dominate startup culture nationally, numerous other centers have begun to increase the size of their dot on the map. The early success of Groupon in Chicago and Living Social in Washington stirred mini-entrepreneurial booms in those cities. Then came a wave of media stories about those cities as “new Silicon Valleys.” Such stories, in turn, helped attract even more companies to those cities. Slobotski is betting that that can happen in Omaha, too.  

Cities like Omaha, Des Moines, and Kansas City have long been great places for American business and agricultural and commodities fortunes to be built, but today’s entrepreneurs are working with software and digital tech, not cattle and corn.

Fast Company profiles the personalities behind the ideas that shake up business as usual. Discover more about these pioneers here.

But you can’t create a technology center by wishing or hoping for it–you need at least a great company or two to get started. One of the biggest successes to come out of the Midwest is the Des-Moines based Dwolla, a low-cost online and mobile payment and money transfer system. Late last year Dwolla received major funding from New York-based Union Square Ventures and Ashton Kutcher among others. When Dwolla announced Kutcher’s investment, Silicon Prairie News hosted an exclusive webcast with the celebrity entrepreneur and Dwolla’s CEO Ben Milne. The brand-name investments in Dwolla, winning national recognition for a service produced almost entirely in the Midwest, advanced the Silicon Prairie narrative and created real benefit for a Midwest-based company. The Prairie has also produced companies including: Mindmixer, a local civic problem-solving platform based in Omaha, and Hudl, a software company that provides digital tools for college athletes and coaches, which is based in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Following his online success, in 2009, Slobotski launched the Big Omaha conference with a bold premise: “Let’s bring in entrepreneurs from across the country to share their knowledge, push us to think bigger, and get rid of the excuse that you need to be located in a certain city to push your ideas forward.”

“Let’s get rid of the excuse that you need to be located in a certain city to push your ideas forward.”

Like many of the “big idea” conferences around the country, the event gathers thinkers, entrepreneurs, and changemakers for conversation, mingling, and inspiration. Over the past few years Big Omaha has attracted an impressive roster of entrepreneurs including: Ben Lerer, Scott Harrison, Gary Vaynerchuk, Dennis Crowley, and Tony Hsieh. The event has become a real force in the entrepreneurial push across the prairie. It is consistently sold out, and this year the conference boasted 650 attendees from 27 states.

The Midwest is no stranger to entrepreneurship and business success stories. Omaha is famously home to Warren Buffett, and Berkshire Hathaway. Buffet is noted for his involvement in the local community and Slobotski says it is fairly easy for entrepreneurs in the region to get their pitches in front of top Berkshire executives, if they have a good idea or solid start. Omaha is also home to several Fortune 1000 companies, including ConAgra, First National Bank, Mutual of Omaha, Union Pacific, and Kiewit, one of the largest construction companies in the world.

New skills in the area need to be honed and new networks need to be built. That story is being written right now. And while Slobotski doesn’t view himself as a journalist, he is a storyteller who believes that a big story can change how the world views the cities on the prairie: “People around the country and even in the region don’t realize everything that exists here in Omaha. A lot of people think of beef, steak or Corn Husker football. That’s starting to change.”

Via Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com

WHY YOU SHOULD START A COMPANY IN…

New Ideas, New Markets, New Insights

It used to be, if you were serious about starting a tech company, you went to Silicon Valley. But emerging entrepreneurial hubs around the country are giving startups new options. In this series, we talk to leading figures in those communities about what makes them tick.

CLICK HERE for hotbeds of innovation in other U.S. cities.

To most people, Nashville is a one-note town: Music City, home of the American country scene. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Liza Massey, president and CEO of the Nashville Technology Council. “It’s great because it shows we have a creative, vibrant community.” But now another type of creative professional is stepping into the spotlight: the tech entrepreneur. Not only have the big technology leaders like Microsoft, Dell, and HP come to town, but frisky social media startups such as Emma, Moontoast, and Populr, are sprouting up here, too. Plus, there’s a burgeoning healthcare industry with high-tech needs. Which poses one of the best problems a city can have: Nashville now has 1,200 vacant tech jobs and not enough qualified workers to fill them.

So the city’s Technology Council has launched Nashville Is Hiring, a massive recruiting campaign that uses strategies both conventional (partnering with community colleges) and decidedly unconventional (going after middle school kids) in hopes of filling those jobs and starting a larger conversation around how to make Nashville a great place for tech workers. It is one of the Council’s several initiatives, which move beyond the “great quality of life” pitch and work toward making real grass-roots change with job candidates, educational institutions, and employers.

You might be wondering: Why so many jobs to fill? Well, for one, business is good. “The city has become so good at attracting and starting businesses that we’ve actually weathered the recession quite well,” Massey says. “I get pulled into meetings all the time with companies who are looking to expand and all they want to work on is tech workforce.”

The real problem is that while it’s easy to sell families on Nashville–the city has great schools, affordable housing, and no state income tax–it’s a lot harder to lure recent graduates. Employers aren’t always offering the hip, culture-driven workplace that young creatives seek.

The Technology Council wants to help employers understand that the young, recently graduated tech workforce is looking for a very different kind of work environment. “We have to tell students that you’re not going to be Dilbert in a cubicle, you’ll have flexible hours, and you’ll be able to work from home,” Massey says. Massey and her team encourage that structure by pointing companies to the postive aspects of ROWE, or results-only working environment, the kind of ethos pioneered by companies like Best Buy and Zappos, where employers focus less on face time, and more on work achieved.

Nicholas Holland, an entrepreneur and founder of Populr, a publishing platform that allows users to make good-looking single-page websites, and the digital agency Centresource, serves as a local expert on ROWE, advising companies large and small on its benefits. Holland challenges Nashville executives to think differently when it comes to structuring their office life, from initiating flexible hours to placing a focus on corporate culture. His argument is that companies can use ROWE to add a lot of value for potential employees without spending more on recruiting or facilities. “Right now, there’s a lack of resources so everyone is trying to entice and incentivize the same tech pool,” he says. “Larger firms, especially in Nashville, like healthcare firms have the ability to throw a lot of money at the problem, but many workers are looking for other things like a fuller career path, or an ecosystem that supports their personal lives.” (Holland sent me his answers using his company’s product, which includes many more ROWE resources.)

The Nashville Technology Council also works closely with local government leaders, many of whom are on a coordinating committee that meets once a month. One of those members is Matt Largen, director of the office of economic development in Williamson County, south of Nashville. He’s partnering with local community colleges to find funding sources for specific IT certification programs that meet the immediate needs of companies in the area. Across the region, says Massey, the Council works with the 14 universities, as well as community colleges, to tailor programs to employers’ needs, namely in healthcare, where technology changes rapidly.

But Nashville isn’t just focused on college outreach, they’re also targeting junior high school students. Largen says his team is laser-focused on increasing the number of eighth graders who enroll in a track they call Foundations of Information Technology. “We know there is a high retention rate of students who start in the foundation class and continue throughout the IT track so we decided to focus our energy and resources there,” he says. This includes sending a letter from the Nashville Technology Council to every eighth-grade parent and bringing in volunteers to answer questions about IT careers. “The bottom line is that we have to reach out to kids who show an interest and aptitude in technology and make them aware of the wide variety of career options.”

It seems like it might not be the best investment of energy–there’s no guarantee that those students will stay in Nashville when they enter the workforce–plus, could so much emphasis on tech that early be pushing kids away from other potential careers? Largen says that since technology is so pervasive in all jobs, a focus on IT in schools means building a stronger regional economy, period. “In today’s economy, talent drives economic development,” he says. “Plus, growing our own sector is going to be the direct result of efforts to push IT into early grades.”

Katherine McElroy, a partner at C3 Consulting, also works closely with Nashville’s public schools, where she says teachers, too, need to be aware of the widening tech field. She encourages local tech companies to host three-day “externships” during the summer for teachers. “It really helps for teachers to see how technology is used throughout companies in all types of industries,” she says. She also points to local efforts to engage young women, like an Art2Stem camp for girls in the summer, and the local Women in Technology-Tennessee chapter, that sponsors mentorships and scholarships for girls.

Although the Nashville Is Hiring campaign has only been recently announced, Massey says the effort will include an ad campaign as well as visits to tech conferences like SXSW. Earlier this year, the Technology Council sent a street team of young Nashville residents to the Tennessee music festivals CMA MusicFest and Bonaroo wearing bright yellow shirts that exclaimed “I’m a hotspot!” with QR codes that could be scanned for more information about the tech jobs available.

Massey hopes that the campaign will allow them to entice workers from nearby Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Raleigh, but their bigger range of initiatives will also allow them to lure tech workers away from larger cities like L.A., New York, and Chicago. She thinks their efforts show candidates that Nashville is dedicated to creating the best tech working environment in the country. “I challenge them to find another city on their short list that has such a coordinated effort and is taking such a holistic approach.”

Follow the conversation on Twitter using the tag #WhyHere.

Image: Cheryl Casey via Shutterstock

As the world gears up for the London Olympics in July, media chatter about the unprecedented expense and trouble of hosting the Games–which are no longer a surefire investment for cities–is increasing.

Perhaps no city better illustrates the fraught host city selection process than Madrid. The city has made three unsuccessful bids to host the summer games, two within the last decade. They lost out just barely to London and Rio respectively, after a long bidding process that included the construction of several large-scale sporting venues; big, expensive “proofs of concept” for Madrid’s Olympic preparedness. In 2008, the 2016 Olympic Committee eliminated the city in the final round of bidding, citing “geographic issues.”

Barring any discussion of the value of hosting the Olympics, Madrid did end up building a fairly remarkable building in the process: the “Magic Box,” a beautiful, austere Olympic Tennis Center designed by French architect Dominique Perrault.

The Center sits on the site of a recently razed housing slum (an unfortunate hallmark of “Olympic urbanism”). It houses three tennis venues within its walls: a 12,500-seat main court and two smaller 3,500- and 2,500-seat courts. The three volumes rest on a steel frame podium, their edges cantilevering over flying buttresses of poured concrete. The frame is clad in a delicate metal mesh, custom-fabricated according to Perrault’s specifications. The one splash of color in the building’s otherwise muted palette of concrete and steel is from the translucent oxblood red seats, which finish the Center with a retro-nostalgic vibe that references the stadiums built by Pier Luigi Nervi in the ’50s or the Italian futurists in the ’20s.

But what’s really magical about the building is its roof: Each court has a separate ceiling of a different shape, attached to a hydraulic jack. When lowered, the three slabs form a single continuous covering. When raised, they can be adjusted to create an infinite number of unique topographies. Retractable roofs were invented by engineers decades ago, but turning the transformation into an elegant spectacle is a stroke of genius. The exaggerated depth of each slab–they look to be about 20 feet deep–is purely aesthetic: They’re made of lightweight plastic panels. Lit from within, the roofs radiate with an unearthly glow at night–hence the building’s nickname, Magic Box.

The Olympic Tennis Center is one of the few projects that slipped just under the wire of the 2008 economic crisis. Since then, Spain’s construction industry has suffered from a slow-motion economic tailspin and allegations of political corruption, especially surrounding “starchitect” buildings such as this one. Dozens of other big-name projects lay canceled or unfinished across the country–reminders of a time when building giant cultural complexes was considered an investment, rather than a risk.

Images courtesy of Dominique Perrault Architects and George Fessy

The United States Postal Service has banned all international shipments of electronics with lithium batteries effective May 16–including iPads, Kindles, smartphones, and laptops. Here’s the scoop.

Starting on May 16, new United States Postal Service (USPS) regulations will prohibit iPads, Kindles, smartphones, and other electronics with lithium batteries from being mailed to overseas troops or foreign customers. American firms with customers outside the country’s borders or people with loved ones serving overseas will have to use private parcel services at higher prices. The news is a headache for USPS employees, military families and electronic manufacturers and resellers… but a boon for private delivery firms like UPS, DHL, and FedEx.

Lithium batteries, which power many personal electronic devices, can explode or catch fire in certain conditions. In order to get around this, consumer electronic manufacturers such as Apple or Amazon ship their products with a minimal charge–which mitigates the safety risk. Fully charged, improperly stored, or improperly packed lithium batteries do pose a risk of explosion, however. Lithium batteries have been implicated in at least two fatal cargo plane crashes since 2006, including a UPS jet in Dubai.

For cargo shippers and postal services, this poses a quandry. Improperly shipped lithium batteries are a serious safety risk. However, shipping of personal electronics is a multibillion dollar business annually. According to the USPS, they will prohibit shipping of lithium batteries and any device containing them effective May 16. In a publicly issued document, the USPS says that the ban was made because of deliberations between the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU), two international bodies which issue semi-binding guidelines for global trade. The IATA’s 2012 regulations for lithium metal and lithium ion batteries allow for the shipment of consumer electronics with proper safety precautions, while the UPU’s lithium battery regulations are ambiguously worded–worthy of an entire phalanx of lawyers.

Lithium batteries have been implicated in at least two fatal cargo plane crashes since 200.

The USPS tells customers they anticipate “on January 1, 2013, customers will be able to mail specific quantities of lithium batteries internationally (including to and from an APO, FPO, or DPO location) when the batteries are properly installed in the personal electronic devices they are intended to operate.” In the meantime, Americans hoping to send iPads, Kindles, laptop batteries, and smartphones overseas will be forced to either break the law by lying about their package contents or to shell out dearly for higher-priced private shipping services.

Fast Company spoke to Darlene Casey of the Postal Service, who explained the new regulations. According to Casey, the revision was required by ICAO and UPU standards, both of which prohibit lithium batteries in mail shipments on international commercial air transportation (while allowing them in non-mail shipments such as private courier services). The May 16 start date was chosen “to provide mailers with time to make shipping adjustments;” the Postal Service also acknowledges that the change will be an inconvenience to cus­tomers and that the “USPS is working with expert organizations to determine if any new exceptions can be developed prior to January 2013. Further announcements will be made should USPS be able to accept lithium batteries in certain types of mail shipments as soon as any new options become available.” As a courtesy, Fast Company was provided with a graphic of consumer electronic items which will be forbidden on outbound U.S. international mail after May 16 (below).

Of course, the group hardest hit by the USPS decision are American troops. Servicemembers residing overseas with APO and FPO addresses are served only by the USPS and FedEx. Neither DHL not UPS deliver to APO or FPO boxes; however, both do ship to countries and cities where troops are based. After May 16, friends or family members hoping to send low-cost tablets and ereaders to servicemembers abroad will no longer be able to send parcels by US Mail. It’s important to note that the restrictions do not reply to shipping lithium batteries domestically or to American residents receiving lithium batteries; the ban only applies to outbound lithium battery products shipped international.

Winnie Pritchett of non-profit organization iPads for Soldiers, which ships iPads without any financial assistance from Apple to troops overseas, notes that they currently send the bulk of their iPads overseas via USPS.

Pritchett calls the new regulations a case of the Postal Service “shooting themselves in the foot.” iPads for Soldiers sent over 600 iPads to Afghanistan in 2011; each iPad took approximately two weeks to make it from the United States to Afghanistan. According to Pritchett, the iPads were a particular hit with wounded warriors with missing hands–they were able to use the touch-based iPad much more easily than a conventional computer.

As private parcel services, FedEx, DHL and UPS all permit shipping of lithium battery-powered electronic devices. UPS’ Mike Mangeot told Fast Company that the shipping giant handles lithium battery-containing electronic devices in compliance with U.S. and international shipping regulations, conducts extensive employee training for handling lithium battery shipments, and audits customers for proper packaging, handling, and documentation of lithium batteries.

Although the Postal Service claims to be adhering to international regulations, their strict ban on any international lithium battery shipment is semi-exceptional–among major worldwide postal services, only the Australia Post has a similar regulation. Other major postal services have less stringent rules; the Royal Post (UK), for instance, allows smartphone, iPad, and Kindles while forbidding laptop computer batteries, and Japan Post restricts lithium batteries to slower sea mail. Yet other services, such as the German Bundespost, still allow international air mail of lithium batteries within stringent safety requirements.

Another group hard hit by the USPS lithium battery ban are commercial resellers. Aaron Hall of bay.ru, an American firm specializing in consumer electronics exports to the Russian market, told Fast Company that “few outside of our industry realize that world’s best express shippers like FedEx, DHL, and UPS still have major challenges in Russia. That said, there is often one preferred shipping solution for any given good.” Hall’s firm will use alternate shippers for the Russian market; the issue is a large one for giants like Apple and Amazon, along with smaller resalers.

Other services, such as the German Bundespost, still allow international air mail of lithium batteries within stringent safety requirements.

In the end, the USPS’ rush to ban lithium batteries is surprising. Although the Postal Service claims they are just getting in line with international regulations, the Bundespost and Royal Mail either successfully straggled getting in line with overly cautious (and ambiguous) safety regulations, or find loopholes to get around them. The USPS has legendary financial difficulties and a track record of institutional paralysis and poor decision-making. Despite implied promises of a January 2013 policy change, shutting off Kindle exports to Amazon and iPad shipments to American troops is simply puzzling. The root of the matter is that lithium batteries, with proper safety precautions, are safe for air shipping. While it is the job of the ICAO and UPU to enact overly-stringent bureaucratic restrictions, a blanket ban offers minimal safety benefits and massive economic damage to the USPS.

Top Image: Fickr user Wheat_In_your_Hair/ Bottom Image: USPS

Via Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com