Thought Press.

Here’s a trend: Niche marketing. I’ve spoken about it before; about how marketers are more and more targeting women who make up more than 80% of consumer purchasers in the US.

Now BuzzFeed has captured this as “sexist products”. Home Depot is piloting a new store called “Her Depot,” a store for women with “cleaner” aesthetics. Now women can buy tools comfortably! Feministing.com calls is the “most condescending sister store of all time.” Garmin is releasing the Pink Nüvi GPS for the ladies.

These products are nothing new. It’s smart marketing indeed. Products are targeted to all sorts of people: children, men, women, elderly, boomers… It’s not sexist.

I apologize there have been no posts in a while. Here’s the reason:

Leena’s a Bichon Poo and boy has she been keeping me busy! Updates soon…

This is absolutely amazing! I can’t tell you how long I’ve been looking for the ultimate way to track your spending. It’s here.

I have been creating spreadsheets to tracking spending, following a detailed budget, and entering every single transaction I have into a banking program. That’s all fine and good at the micro-level, but here comes Mint.com, an easy to use website for managing your finances — on autopilot.

The best part is this: Mint connects to your banks and downloads all your transaction data, aggregates it, and analyzes it. You have a live snapshot of your finances — your savings and debts. It will alert you when your balances go below a certain level or if you’re close to a credit card due date. It will even tell you your spending habits and if you’re spending more on shopping this month than you do on average.

Mint takes security seriously and has a strong privacy and security policy. How do they make money? By giving you offers to save money, like transferring to an E*Trade account or getting a credit card with a lower interest rate.

The economy is a tough and complex thing sometimes. In times of turbulence or high inflation, the US central bank typically adjusts interest rates. This controls spending since it determines how expensive it is to loan money.

Just recently they reduced interest rates by one-half percent. This means it’s cheaper to borrow money — more spend and that in turn drives the economy. Hooray for debt and spending! The Fed hopes this will prevent a recession. And, since the US is the world’s largest economy, it affects other economies, too. Will it work? It may or may not. The US housing market is fragile and may not recover its slowdown.

>> Read an explanation of the US interest rates at BBC News

Avast! It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day! So yah scurvy dog, what it to yah? Make yah learnin’s below!

The dream of passenger travel to space is here. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceline is well on its way to flight in 2009 or 2010. Already, SpaceShipTwo (predecessor to SpaceShipOne) is being constructed in Mojave, California. The flight experience takes passengers into sub-orbit where they will experience four minutes of weightlessness before returning to Earth. The spaceliner will be launched in the air from a mega “mothership” aircraft. Tickets are $200,000 for the maiden passenger flight.

The first spaceport has been designed and will be located in New Mexico. Construction begins in 2008 and the new Spaceport America terminal and hangar facility will house two White Knight Two motherships and five SpaceShipTwo spacecraft. The terminal will have plenty of space for lounges, offices, and operation and flight facilities. The cost of the spaceport is estimated to be $31 million.

Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic says that 2008 will be “The Year of the Spaceship”.

One thing that has always bothered me is how the United States insists on being different than the rest of the world. We call it soccer. We don’t have universal health care. We don’t even use the metric system!

The US is one of three countries in the world that do not use the metric system. GOOD Magazine has prepared a powerful graphic that shows how isolated we are.

See the full version here, including an explanation about the origin of the meter.

Today was Free Hug Day, as organized through a Facebook event. Location? Everywhere. Number confirmed participants? 879,258.

After posting about this a few days ago, I decided to hang a “FREE HUGS” sign on my cube at work today. I think some people thought I was just silly. I got a few chuckles as people walked past, many questions, and ended up giving five hugs by day-end. There was this one woman who kept asking about it throughout the day, so I finally said, “Do you want one or not? You’ve been avoiding it all day!” She shyly ran off.

Others I think seemed to feel uncomfortable with the thought. The guy that sits behind me made his own sign that read, “Hugs $.50″. No one had heard of this international campaign! (They thought it was my ’strange’ creation) From all over the world, you can find hundreds of these free hugs pictures on Flickr. I used today to show people that acts of kindness are not so hard — yet it seems you will always have those who are made awkward by affection.

Look at these pictures. Who wouldn’t smile?

This is generating a bit of buzz. Channel Federator, the net’s place for cartoons and animation has presented, internet pop culture in three minutes.

This is a tribute to the internet celebrities of the past couple years, the Numa Numa Guy, the nervous sportscaster, lonelygirl15, Shoes, Dick in a Box, and so much more. Love it.

When you live in a country where the national savings rate is frighteningly low and consumer credit is what drives the economy, you really need to focus on saving.

I’ve been keeping a budget (PearBudget) fairly well, however there are times where I tend to spend over budget and I don’t really see that until I enter my receipts and see the totals. So how do I stay on budget? It’s something, for some reason, I had never thought of before: Write it down.

My budget is divided into five “irregular” spending categories (food, needs, auto, entertainment, misc). What I do now is see the remaining amount in each budget category and write it down! I keep it in my pocket or iPhone and can reference it to determine whether I can buy whatever it is I want to buy. This way I’ll have more of a real-time view of my budget wherever I am–and update it periodically.

>> Read more about American debt, saving money, and open the Thought Press money drawer