WSJ reports that the slumping economy has resulted in a boom for voice actors needed to record “your payment is late” messages used by collection agencies. Best facts from the article:

• From pleasant to aggressive: the collection agencies use friendly voices for your first few calls to deliver helpful reminders. But ignore a few of these and they bring out the more gruff and aggressive voices on autodial.
• Unlike call centers, collection societies often look for voice actors with light accents, especially British. Why? “People tend to listen to anything that is different even if I am just saying ‘Hey, you owe us money.'” Oh, and male customers respond particularly well to female British voices. In the words of one executive: “They think Elizabeth Hurley is on the other end.”
• People listen longer to messages delivered by female voices but the male voice outperforms female in terms of spurring action.

The Freakonomics authors have taken their blog to the NYTimes – it will be interesting to see if the Times is launching a broader Huffington-like strategy of rolling up on-brand blogs.

Personally exciting (besides the fact they are now making videos as well) is that I’m included in their “Smaller Blogs/People We Like” section (i think i qualify for both). Way below the fold but I ain’t complaining 😉

My only beef is it seems their feeds have gone to summary mode as opposed to full text. I understand the economics of this since feeds are difficult to monetize but as a heavy Google Reader user would prefer everything delivered to me.