Also in this Light Friday: Wacky Warning Labels, Guidelines for Buzzword Usage, a Seriously Awesome Saturn Shot and MORE.

Joules Pedals for Both
It’s now fall, which is a great season for bicycling. If you have a tandem bike but no one to ride it with you, perhaps Joules could be your partner.

Source: Bicycle Design via Engadget

Odd Economic Indicators
There are many types of economic indicators, leading, lagging or coincident, but you’ll also find all sorts of clues in everyday life that can help determine where the economy really stands.

BBC News has compiled a brief list of odd economic indicators. In addition to cinema popcorn sales and the junk-mail index, there’s:

The baked bean index — my colleague Anthony Reuben noted in the spring how the value of sales of baked beans — a classic recession food — had risen 21.6% in April compared with the same month last year. Could a reverse signal the start of a recovery?

The Consumerist reports on the Men’s Underwear Index:

The Men’s Underwear Index is the brainchild of research firm Mintel, and it’s based on a fairly simple concept: When times are good, men buy new underwear on a regular basis. But when the bottom drops out of the economy, sales slow as more guys begin to allow the tighty whities to slowly turn gray… .

The Economist has the Big Mac Index and Kiplinger’s has the First Dates Index, but let’s not forget romance-novel sales and dry-cleaning pickups as unlikely economic indicators.

Guidelines for Buzzword Usage
By now, we’re all familiar with overused buzzwords in the workplace. Yet they persist, sacrificing clarity in favor of showcasing often meaningless business terms.

Maybe users don’t know how to stop. If that’s the case, Yahoo! HotJobs has provided the following three guidelines for usage:

Use buzzwords properly and judiciously. “If the terms don’t add clarity or fail to capture the complexity of a situation, don’t use them,” says [executive coach Liz] Bywater [president of Bywater Consulting Group]. “Your goal should be to make communication crisp, clear and meaningful.”

Consider your audience. Jacqueline Whitmore, a business etiquette expert, says: “Just ask yourself, ‘If I were speaking to an audience of non-native English speakers, would they understand these words?’ This will help you eliminate such phrases from your vocabulary.”

Check your own understanding. Ask for clarification or research words you don’t understand, counsels Pat Mayfield, an executive coach and president of Pat Mayfield Consulting. “Some words or phrases have different meanings and implications, so make sure everyone has the same understanding.” She adds: “Avoid ‘tasting shoe leather’ — only use buzzwords that you understand.”

Please, heed these guidelines and let the madness stop.

Microsoft’s Prototype Tablet Introduced
On Tuesday, Microsoft introduced the Courier, a dual-screen device that is still under development, at Gizmodo Gallery in New York. “Until recently, it was a skunkworks project deep inside Microsoft, only known to the few engineers and executives working on it,” Gizmodo explains.

“Courier is a real device, and we’ve heard that it’s in the ‘late prototype’ stage of development. It’s not a tablet, it’s a booklet. The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multi-touch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers,” according to Gizmodo, which has the full scoop, including video and images.

“Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies,” Gizmodo says.

Earlier this year, SolidWorks co-founder Jon Hirschtick made clear that touchscreen interfaces would be a key component of CAD’s future. Market research firm Display Search predicts the touchscreen market will triple in the next few years, from $3.6 billion to $9 billion. Singapore start-up Fusion Garage and TechCrunch, Archos, Apple, Dell and Intel are among the latest manufacturers reportedly getting a jump on the emerging tablet trend.

Wacky Warning Labels
Earlier this year, The Foundation for Fair Civil Justice (FFCJ) announced the winners of the 12th Annual Wacky Warning Labels Contest.

This year’s grand prize winner of the FFCJ-sponsored contest is a label for a portable toilet seat designed to attach to a vehicle’s trailer hitch. The warning label, apparently addressing outdoorsmen, reads: “Not for use on moving vehicles.”

“Once a year, millions of people around the world get a collective laugh from our winners,” Bob Dorigo Jones, contest creator and author of Remove Child Before Folding, said in an announcement. “The truth is, this is no laughing matter. Wacky Warning Labels demonstrate the tax we all pay for lawsuit abuse.”

Other winners this year include a cereal bowl label explaining, “Always use this product with adult supervision,” and a bag of livestock castration rings that warns, “For animal use only.”

Seriously Awesome
Below is an amazing photo of Saturn, shot by the Cassini robotic explorer a little over a day after Saturnian equinox, when the sun shines straight along the rings.

“Cassini’s wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun’s disk was exactly overhead at the planet’s equator,” according to the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (via Discover’s Bad Astronomy blog).

Click image for larger view.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Cheers.