That’s the question The Economist tackled recently. It evaluated 127 cities around the world on a number of factors, which, according to the Times Online, include:

the quality of public transport, the availability of high-quality hotels, the extent of social and religious restrictions and the quality of healthcare in the city. One of the more unusual factors used to assess business cities is the cost of buying Time magazine or an equivalent.

The methodology reflects the Economist’s belief that the cost of being in a city is no longer the only factor. Many business travel indices rank cities on the basis of average per diem rates paid to business travellers visiting the city, given that it is the traveller’s company who is footing the bill.

Three Canadian cities top the list: Vancouver, Calgary, and Toronto. The top U.S. cities were a little surprising: Honolulu (#5, OK, that’s not a big surprise), Cleveland (6), Pittsburgh (11), Atlanta (13), and Boston (15). New York barely squeaked into the top 50 (tied with Madrid in the 47th spot). Anyway, it’s pretty interesting. You can download the list from a link in the Times Online article.

I hadn’t heard of Sinkie day before, (Sinkie=Standing In Nutritious Kitchens Ingesting Everything), but the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. might as well be celebrated in style. So check out sinkie.com for letters from guilt-free Sinkies, how to spot other Sinkies, and useful information to free us from the guilt, shame, and embarrassment of being discovered eating with our fingers over the kitchen sink.
 
Thanks to my Capsules co-blogger Anne Taylor-Vaisey for this one!

If your attendees hate to swat while swinging during your golf tournament, or your incentive winners like to complain about mosquitoes around the pool, check out American Biophysics new wi-fi bug zapper. From C/Net News.com:

Simply described, the magnet emits a humanlike scent that includes carbon dioxide and moisture to attract bloodsucking insects. When the bugs flutter past, they’re sucked into and suffocated by a vacuumlike device.

Now AmBio, as the company is commonly called, is upping the ante with a “smart” mosquito net, or computerized defense system, to serve the corporate and public health sectors. By the first quarter of 2006, AmBio executives hope to have finalized sophisticated software to control a network of magnets–forming a kind of wide-scale fence–which will be able to communicate with a central network through wireless 802.11b technology.

That way, the system will be able to efficiently ward off bugs from golf courses and resorts, or even help mitigate cases of malaria in third world countries, according to Hosea.

Might be something worth checking into.

Tradeshow entrepreneur Tim Bourquin writes eloquently about why he’ll never reduce his budget line for security. Yow, are problems like the ones he’s had really that common? I’ve never seen attendees get scary, but maybe I’m just lucky.