Shiny Shiny: Think back to all those times when your MP3 player / Phone / PDA has run out of battery with no plug sockets nearby to charge it back up. This $200 solar-powered bag solves the problem. The solar panel on the front charges up in sunlight (or indoors if you've got a couple more hours to spare) and then you have portable power for all your gadgetry needs. What it lacks in style it makes up for in ingenuity, and you easily make back the initial cost after you've used it for about 6 months. Get it from Solar Style.

Solar Powered Bag [Shiny Shiny]

Popgadget: Developed by Dutch designer Twan Verdonck, the Boezels toys are specially conceived for mentally challenged children and adults.

Each animal has unique characteristics and appeals to at least one sense (touching, smelling, hearing, seeing). Some can be cuddled, and others wrap around the body to cuddle you.

Take a deep breath of the Reura snake’s relaxing scent and fall asleep. Hug Tummy the monkey and it'll make your belly warm. Squeeze Ruftus the skunk and it’ll fart. Wobble on Zoosh the frog and its cheeks will blow up!

The Boezels toys [Popgadget]

The Green Head: Check out the new Topsy Turvy Upside Down Tomato Planter. Instead of planting your tomato plants in pots or in the ground, simply hang them up in the air, upside down, and eliminate the hassles of weeding, pests, hole digging, flimsy stakes and cages, and bending over to water, tend and harvest.

The Topsy Turvy allows you to stand upright and plant two tomato plants upside down from a grow bag hanging from your deck, patio, porch, balcony or even a tree. It's unique because you water and fertilize through the built in funnel on top of the bag and the tomato plants will begin to grow and curl upwards into unique patterns as they search out the sun. The only work you really need to do is hang a strong hook, add your plants and soil and water and fertilize as needed. It's the easiest way ever to grow tomatoes and in the end, you'll harvest big, ripe tomatoes nearly a month earlier than anyone else. It's also quite a conversation piece.

Topsy Turvy Upside Down Tomato, Flower and Vegetable Planter [The Green Head]

Netimperative: Mobile marketing company Hypertag has launched a wearable version of the infra-red and bluetooth tags previously used in interactive poster advertising.

The wearable Hypertags will be aimed at field marketers, enabling them to send content direct to consumer's mobile phones from a fully portable interactive tag.

Hypertags are short-range wireless devices, which send information to mobile phones via infra-red or Bluetooth. A user can activate the infra-red or Bluetooth on their phone, hold it up to the Hypertag and receives content such as vouchers, business cards, ringtones or games.

Because Hypertags use short-range wireless technologies, rather than SMS, interactions are free to both brand and consumer.

The firm claims the product “open a new communication route between brands and their customers”. For example, brands could send promotional vouchers direct to phones or could distribute the details of a web-based competition.

Field marketers armed with electronic tags [Netimperative]

BusinessWeek: They aren't the only ones coming to that conclusion. Increasing numbers of Web surfers are going to alternative search engines, which specialize in finding certain kinds of information or offering additional capabilities to well-known search sites.

Though exact data is hard to come by, entrepreneurs say venture capitalists are sinking new money into search startups. Tech pundits believe that if one area has lots of room to grow, it's search, given that advertising sales in the field alone are expected to increase more than 40% this year. "I do believe there's every opportunity for another company to become another Google," says Ken Cassar, an analyst with researcher Nielsen/Net Ratings in New York.

Hoping to become just that, a trickle of new search sites is turning into a flood. On Mar. 21, AOL launched a test version of its new travel search site, PinpointTravel.com. Nextaris.com, which allows customers to search for and share online files, opened its virtual doors on Mar. 7. Yang and Yun plan to introduce their new shopping search site, Become.com, in April. Indeed, even Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban invested in search engine IceRocket.com last year.

Search, the Next Generation [BusinessWeek]

Businessweek: As video and PC gaming's popularity skyrocketed in the past few years, our favorite TV shows ("The Simpsons"), movies ("Catwoman") and comic books ("Batman") were turned into games. Now, we are on the brink of a new era, it seems: Games publisher Atari just released a game based on a book THAT HASN'T EVEN HIT THE BOOKSTORES YET. That's right.

The novel, called "Act of War," was written by Dale Brown, a former U.S. Air Force captain who'd previously penned action-packed best-sellers like "Fight of the Old Dog" and "Air Battle Force." The book, coming out in June, is full of video-gaming's mainstays like futuristic weapons, terrorists and battle scenes.

So is Atari's "Act of War: Direct Action" game, which launched on March 15. In the game, military veterans and young techies are recruited into a special high-tech task force, tracking terrorists and uncovering international conspiracies.

This industry could, eventually, become as powerful as Hollywood, which has long ordered original stories for movies. Just imagine playing a character and then reading all about his or her adventures!

Video Games to Sell... Books? [Businessweek]

infolink.com.au: The latest product to be rolled out in the Rifco product line is the Metro line of cabinets, using the unique design of a side opening in which the shelves slide from behind the attached, fixed mirror. The advantage of this is that the mirror reflection is retained while the user accesses anything from within the cabinet.

All parts are high moisture resistant, while the two fully adjustable wire basked shelves ensure maximum efficiency of space is achieved. The sides of the cabinet are available in gloss, while bevelled mirrors are a stylish option.

Rifco slides out new bathroom cabinet [infolink.com.au]

Gannett News Service: Emulating A-listers such as Gwyneth Paltrow or Halle Berry is a snap: The latest celebrity-channeling accessory is a set of prosthetic choppers modeled after Hollywood's most Chiclet smiles.

Think of the snap-on smile as the white-enameled cousin to the press-on nail. Think of it as yet more evidence of a public firmly sinking its incisors into celebrity culture. Only with this device, attaining Julia Roberts' million-dollar grin doesn't set someone back nearly that much. The resin appliance, which fits snugly over existing teeth, goes for $1,000 to $3,000.

The teeth also are more proof of dentistry's changing focus. "It's not just for health," says Jeff Golub-Evans, a Manhattan cosmetic dentist. "More and more patients go to dentists to look better rather than to feel better."

Copying celebrity smiles is the latest dental trend [Shreveport Times]

Forbes: It's time for a revolution in business travel. The commercial airline business is going through another round of bankruptcies, route shakeouts and confrontations with unions. Having fewer airlines will exacerbate the already lousy service that makes so many people hate to fly these days--the long waits, the delays, the cancelations, the lost bags. Short flights aren't worth the hassle anymore. Since 2000, reports the Air Transport Association of America, there's been a 21% drop in passenger volume for flights of 500 miles or less.

Crandall and Burr are calling their air taxi service Pogo--after the stick that bounces, not Walt Kelly's cartoon possum. At this point it's little more than a grand plan, $8 million in capital and a small fleet of new-generation lightweight jets on order. The idea is to introduce air travel on demand, using Web-based software to route small aircraft as needed. "The planes will go wherever the customers go," says Burr, 63. "If you're in Syracuse and want to go to Portland, Me., we will probably be over in Rochester and have to fly over and get you. You might say I want to go at 4 p.m., and we'll say, ‘Yeah, we can't go at 4, but we can pick up at 4:30.'"

Pogo will begin service next year with a new class of six-seat minijets flying from North Carolina to Maine. The jets will fly point-to-point among the nation's largely underused 5,400 smaller airports, situated within a half hour's drive of 93% of Americans. These airports are free of the aggravating congestion of the 50 largest domestic hubs, through which 90% of travelers pass. "There're no ticket counters, no terminals and no baggage handlers," says Crandall, 68, who still chain-smokes his cigarettes down to the filter. "You drive up to the airport minutes before your flight, the pilot loads your bag and away you go."

Sky King [Forbes]

Wired News: Hybrid cars, trucks and buses have already hit the road. Now, make way for the Green Goat, the world's biggest hybrid. It's a 2,000-horsepower locomotive that radically reduces fuel consumption and emissions of pollutants.

The Green Goat is a diesel-electric hybrid in which the normal massive diesel locomotive engine is replaced by a 290-horsepower inline 6-cylinder diesel truck engine and a 600-volt battery bank. The batteries supply the power needed to drive the electric traction motors on the wheels of this 280,000-pound "goat."

Goat is railroad lingo for the smaller locomotives used for moving rail cars around over short distances.

RailPower Technologies, developer of the Green Goat, believes the hybrid locomotive is an ideal way to reduce fuel costs and air pollution in switching yards, said Simon Clarke, executive vice president of the Canadian company. RailPower says the Green Goat uses 40 percent to 60 percent less fuel and emits 80 percent to 90 percent fewer pollutants than conventional train engines.

To build the hybrids, the company strips older locomotives of their engine and cab but keeps the same frame, fuel tank, brakes and electric traction motors. Then it slaps in the long-life lead-acid battery bank. RailPower Technologies says the added weight of the batteries actually helps improve the Green Goat's pulling power, which is rated at 2,000 horsepower -- enough to pull 88 rail cars.

Hybrid Locomotive Gains Traction

CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter Issue 12: 07/03/05 - 26/03/05

New Business Ideas/Opportunities Featured In This Issue:

ROBOTS
Hitachi's Talking Robot
Hitachi has delivered a talkative new robot Emiew, and will be displayed from June 9 at the 2005 World Exposition, Aichi, Japan.

TECHNOLOGY
Ants Collective Intelligence Inspires Technology
Ants can work out the quickest way from A to B more efficiently than a computer. Now, human communications networks are based on their behaviour.

A Virtual World
Augmented reality (AR) is the technology behind new interactive versions of childrens’ stories.

AUTOMOBILES
BMW's Move
BMW is preparing to enter the market for car-style people carriers, the firm's chief has told BBC News.

MOBILE
Tenants' Mobile Solution
A text message service telling council tenants about housing repairs could be introduced.

A Firefly Phone For Your Child
The Firefly phone is a pioneer voice-only phone explicitly designed for the smaller hands of kids aged eight to twelve years old.

O2 Plus Kodak
O2 has sealed a deal with Kodak to offer online photo services to the mobile operator’s customers through a jointly branded service.

SERVICES
Laugh All the Way to the Bank
Humor can be used to move sales along at almost every stage of the process!

The Perfect Date
Why spend weeks brainstorming the perfect outing when you can pay a professional to do it for you?

ENTERTAINMENT
Skateboarding: The 25 Year Old Passing Trend
Skateboarding was just a fad back in the early 80's but 25 years on and it is a multi-million dollar industry that continues to grow.

HEALTH
FRĒ FLŌ DŌ Fitness
FRĒ FLŌ DŌ has been dubbed the next generation for fitness freaks. Inventor and fitness guru Kappel LeRoyClarke plans to take the tread trend beyond his classes.

Sugar Free Biscuits
This sugar free biscuit is being launched under the Healthline trademark.

Open Wide and Smile!
The oral care industry is a $4.8 billion gold mine in 2003, according to market research firm Euromonitor International of Chicago.

Rex For Patients
Rex the Talking Bottle fights prescription dosage mix-ups by recording and repeating patient instructions.

E-COMMERCE
Growing Online Sales
Consumer spending on online content such as music, dating sites and business and investment information grew 14 percent last year to $1.8 billion.

TRENDS & INSIGHTS
Apparel Market
Last year, the apparel industry’s revenue finally rose and growth is expected to continue this year.

How To Take Advantage of the Latest Trend
The secret of success is to find out exactly what is going on in the marketplace. You can’t do it from behind a desk: you need to get out there and listen to people.

Student Job Sites Hit or Miss
Some websites purport to help students find jobs and refine their employment-seeking skills.

TRANSPORT
Pogo Airline-Taxi Service
Introducing air taxi service Pogo: a whole new way to travel. The idea is to introduce air travel on demand, using Web-based software to route small aircraft as needed.

CULTURE
Japanese Influence
There has been an increasing internet-influenced trend that has American teens coveting Japanese culture.

BRANDING
Church Branding
A branded church understands who they are and their target audience, and they communicate that effectively through marketing.

CONSUMER GOODS
Mini Me
It's definitely a personalized world out there, so how about a miniature version of... yourself?

FOOD & BEVERAGE
A Great Dinner Together
No time to make family dinner? Tired of getting them takeout or fast food? Go to www.sayrelyns.com and sign up for a session!

Indian Food to Tickle Taste Buds
The Indian food sector is looking westward to acquire the latest trend that tickles the taste buds.

RETAIL
Pay by Fingerprint
Customers of a German supermarket chain will soon be able to pay for their shopping using fingerprint, saving 40 seconds spent scrabbling for change or card!

GADGETS
Bodybugg Calorie Management System
Ever wondered exactly how many calories you burn while sitting perfectly still but having a massive panic attack? Bodybugg, an armband calorie monitor can!

DESIGN
Icon Sets
TemplateMonster.com, one of the largest website templates providers on the Web, enters the market of icon design.

A House Powered By Spinach
This house takes energy from the sun and uses spinach protein to generate electricity for neighbouring homes and street lighting infrastructure!

ONLINE
Yahoo! Likely To Expand Into Blogs
Yahoo! is likely to build and buy tools that help its users create, publish and search blogs. Yahoo! recently integrated RSS feeds into its MyYahoo home page.

Dating idea: Don't Speak
A new dating phenomenon called Quiet Parties: singles aren't allowed to speak to each other, just pass notes!

MARKETING
The Relation Between Gaming And Advertising
Viral and buzz marketing are pushing the envelope and starting to gain more mainstream acceptance.

Marketers: Use Blogs!
By creating a blog, you can boost buzz for your brand in ways advertising can't, and do it for as little as $15 a month.

ADVERTISING
Tasteless Beer Advertising
There is an ad war between Miller and Anheuser-Busch about whether Lite or Bud Light tastes better, or has “more taste”.

Voicevertising
The newest wave in creative branding is loud and difficult to miss. HALLS Fruit Breezers has purchased Hayes' voice on eBay, in a unique advertising deal.

ENVIRONMENTAL
The Green Goat
Make way for the Green Goat: the world's biggest hybrid. It's a 2,000-horsepower locomotive that radically reduces fuel consumption and emissions of pollutants!

View this issue of the CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter by clicking here. Subscribe for free (bonus gifts included with subscription) by clicking here.

Netimperative: O2 has sealed a deal with Kodak to offer online photo services to the mobile operator’s customers through a jointly branded service.

The O2 and Kodak Mobile Service will allow consumers to store, share, print and personalise pictures and videos directly from their mobile phone.

The service, which goes live in March, allows consumers with MMS or WAP enabled devices to upload, download, share, view and order Kodak prints and have them delivered to any postal address within days.

O2 teams with Kodak for online photos [Netimperative]

PRNewswire: Just when you think you've seen it all in the world of marketing, listen up - HALLS Fruit Breezers lets you hear it all too! Tattooing advertisements on body parts is old news, but the newest wave in creative branding is loud and difficult to miss…at least if you live in New York City with Floyd Hayes. HALLS Fruit Breezers purchased Hayes' voice on eBay, in a unique advertising deal that may leave you…well, hoarse.

Floyd Hayes, a Brooklyn, NY resident, put his "voicevertising" services up for sale on eBay, offering to shout out a brand name every fifteen minutes for an entire week -- no matter what location or situation, i.e. subways, elevators, bars, clubs, weddings or even business meetings. (Don't worry…he will be allowed to sleep.) It's a contemporary spin on the traditional town crier, and what brand could be more fitting to purchase the services than HALLS Fruit Breezers, a throat drop that cools and soothes dry, scratchy throats, which Hayes is likely to experience on this mission.

Press Release

We Make Money Not Art: Seattle architecture/design firm Mithun won first place in the C2C Home Competition with their design for a house powered by spinach. The house will be built this summer in Roanoke, Virginia, along with other contest winners.

The competition asked designers to work on work on cradle-to-cradle design principles and create objects and processes that replenish communities, using materials that can be recycled indefinitely.

Mithun's house takes energy from the sun and uses spinach protein to generate electricity for neighbouring homes and street lighting infrastructure.

The house's skylight brings in the sun's rays, and the heat sink stabilizes temperatures, while a highly conductive material produces photosynthetic energy generated from the protein in spinach. The spinach proteins are sandwiched between the core's glass walls; their chlorophyll converts the sun's rays to fuel the home. Besides, a vegetated roof system collects and filters stormwater into the building core

A House Powered By Spinach [We Make Money Not Art]

ECommerce-Guide: By now you've heard of blogs, or Web logs, and you think: blah, blah, blah. Digeratti diaries, mommy memoirs and political punditry abound. Who cares?

You should, because small business owners can use the same inexpensive, low-maintenance technology to market their e-commerce site — with no HTML coding required. By creating a blog, you can boost buzz for your brand in ways advertising can't, and do it for as little as $15 a month.

"Blogs are a new marketing tool we can add to our box of traditional marketing strategies," says Susannah Gardner, author of Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies due out March 21st. "You have the ability to communicate one-on-one with customers in a casual way, and you can respond to timely events and maintain that community interaction on a weekly, or even daily basis. You can't do that with an established ad campaign."

Tell Me About It: How Blogs Can Work for You [ECommerce-Guide]

Springwise: It's definitely a personalized world out there, so how about a miniature version of... yourself? My Twinn lets consumers personalize a 23" doll to resemble any child aged 3-12, down to every detail. The site offers a choice of 15 face shapes, 4 skin tones, 8 eye colors, 8 hair colors and 11 hair lengths and textures. Prices start at USD 119, plus additional fees if customers choose to have a professional stylist do the doll's hair or hand paint details like specific freckles or birthmarks. The entire process takes about 3 to 4 weeks, and Denver-based eToys Direct is behind the company.

For adults, AndGor Toy Company is the place to go to for a miniature-me: the company employs a team of in-house sculptors, who've been at this game for quite a while. From their site: "AndGor Toy Company can make YOU into the Action Figure of your choice, wearing whatever you want from casual clothes to formal wear, authentic military gear, football uniform, and more!"

My twinn (gasp!) [Springwise]

Iconoculture: Never fear, Rex the Talking Bottle is here. His mission: Fight prescription dosage mixups by recording and repeating patient instructions. This bit of technical wizardry from MedivoxRx Technologies lets patients, caregivers, or pharmacists record directions into the bottle’s recording / playback device using an accompanying recording station. When it’s time for their meds, patients press a button and get the 411 on what’s in the bottle and how much and when to take it. With audible directions, there’s less chance of accidentally taking the wrong meds or fatal pill concoctions. Rex is a clever device for the visually impaired, illiterate, or foreign language speakers. But it’s also handy for those on complicated drug regimens, like people living with AIDS, and Matures with aging eyes.

Talking Scripts [Iconoculture]

PSFK: The online magazine for dating service Match.com reports on a new dating phenom called Quiet Parties, at which singles aren't allowed to speak to each other, just pass notes. It's not surprising that the digital communication era is leading to such elaborately constructed excuses for exchanging hand-written notes, which seem in danger of extinction. While I can see how there could be something somewhat sexy about a silent party, I can't imagine too many time-pressured people having the patience for it . .

Dating idea: Don't Speak [PSFK]

Businessweek Online: No, this is not about buxom bikini-clad women riding Clydesdales or SpongeBob holding a longneck. It's about this ad war between Miller and Anheuser-Busch about whether Lite or Bud Light tastes better, or has "more taste."

The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus says it is now referring Anheuser-Busch's challenge of Miller Brewing's "More flavor, more taste" claims to the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which already is reviewing the Milwaukee brewer's campaign for fairness and truthfulness.

Miller points to blind taste "perception" tests of 400,000 consumers conducted by the Institute for Perception, Richmond, Va., pitting A-B versus Miller products. A-B charged that the tests were improperly conducted and the ads may leave consumers to think Miller beers were preferred over the AB's brands.

Tasteless Beer Advertising [Businessweek Online]

Yenra: The Firefly phone is the first and only mobile phone explicitly designed for tweens that satisfies parents' concerns about unrestricted mobile phone use and monthly costs. The Firefly phone is a pioneering voice-only phone designed for the smaller hands of kids aged eight to twelve years old. With just five keys instead of a regular dial pad, parents use a PIN to program up to twenty-two outgoing numbers into the phone, including speed-dial keys for Mom and Dad. The patented phone lights up like a firefly when in use and intermittently when in standby mode. It is about the size of a small pocket calculator and weighs two ounces.

Firefly Mobile conducted extensive market research with parents and children across the nation, and validated their belief that families need a mobile phone for eight to twelve year olds that performs basic functions, helps parents maintain financial control and connects kids with the most important people in their lives.

Firefly Phone [Yenra]

Clickz: I've covered games and advertising a lot lately. And for good reason. Though much of the ad industry is still trying to figure out how to deal with the online world, a few trailblazers have been working diligently (and somewhat covertly) to develop new forms of online marketing that bear no relationship to the models we're all used to.

Advergaming is one of those formats, but a lot of other stuff is going on, too. Viral and buzz marketing are pushing the envelope and starting to gain more mainstream acceptance. During the past year or so, groups such as the Viral+Buzz Marketing Association and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association have arisen to try to bring some order to the rapidly exploding new industry. It may have taken a Subservient Chicken to focus attention on these new forms of advertising, but there's no doubt they're here.

Alternate Reality Gaming and You [Clickz]

Reuters via Yahoo! News: Internet media company Yahoo Inc. is likely to build and buy tools that help its users create, publish and search blogs, Susquehanna Financial Group Marianne Wolk said in a note on Friday.

Wolk also said she also expects the company to expand into social networking software, which lets users share and organize content.

Yahoo recently integrated RSS feeds into its MyYahoo home page. RSS, or really simple syndication, allows users to receive content from sources such as news organizations and Web blogs. It also is a way for Web publishers to syndicate their content.

Yahoo! to Invest in Blogs, Analyst Says [Reuters via Yahoo! News]

The Hindu Business Line: Taste the food of the future. Yogurt flavoured with fruit pulp; lassi laced with chocolate or strawberry; curds textured so fine that it can be cut with a spoon; cheese variants like feta, pasta filata becoming as common as marguerita.

The Indian food sector is looking westward to acquire the latest trend that tickles the taste buds. Trying to help it get there are the likes of Chr. Hansen and Danisco, global majors in food ingredients. Low cholesterol, low fat, high nutrition food items still have a while to go in India, but the leading domestic players want to be in a vantage position when the floodgates open.

"India, being world's largest milk and milk product consumer, is ready to move beyond ethnic products. That means natural food with dietary ingredients. Given the growing concern about children and youngsters turning to junk food and aerated and carbonated drinks, natural food may soon catch on. Amul, as the market leader, is getting ready for action in this sector in the coming years," said Mr Pawan Singh, Amul's Manager - Marketing, who led the 12-member team to Chr. Hansen's Copenhagen plant in January.

"Amul is our largest client. Other two are Nestle and Britannia. Now we are looking at state-level milk co-operative federations. The need is more to reach tier-two customers such as hotels, flight kitchens and big caterers - those who process a minimum 1,000 litres of milk a day," says Mr Tansukh Jain, Managing Director, Chr. Hansen, India.

Indian food sector looks West to tickle taste buds [The Hindu Business Line]

Xtvworld.Com: TemplateMonster.com, one of the largest website templates providers on the Web, enters the market of icon design. Their new product line is called Icon Sets. Each set includes ten icons of high quality, which is why they can be used not only for the Web but for the off-line needs of Template Monster’s clients as well.

The icons within each set are grouped under particular themes, so with one Icon Set, you can actually fulfill all the icon needs of your project - no matter what the project is - whether it’s a web site or an offline presentation. The price for this new product will vary from $45 to $50, depending on the set purchased.

“We are glad to represent Icon Sets - a new product line of ours,” says David Braun, CEO of Template Monster. “We are currently reconsidering our production policy in order to satisfy all the needs of web designers, since we want to be associated with, not opposed to, designers. Icon Sets is a milestone of this reconsideration process. The aim of this process is to widen our product range and deepen our depth so our customers can find anything for their design needs at Template Monster only. With that in mind, we will add two new Icon Sets to this product line daily.”

New Product Line from Template Monster, Icon Sets [Xtvworld.Com]

TechnologyReview.com: Giant Jimmy Jones is a friendly, helpful giant. In fact, this book character is so helpful, he can make the sun shine on an otherwise gray village. The giant simply walks across the page, reaches up to the cloud cover and pushes it out of the sun's way so the villagers can catch some rays.

Those light rays may be virtual, but the book this scene pops out of is not.

Using augmented reality (AR), the technology behind the interactive version of Giant Jimmy Jones, New Zealand author Gavin Bishop recently collaborated with Mark Billinghurst and his colleagues at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory New Zealand (HIT Lab NZ) to turn the book into not only a storytelling device, but also a storytelling experience.

A child can flip through its pages and read it like a conventional book. But with a handheld display and computer vision tracking technology, the child can watch the story literally come to life.

The Giant Who Walks Amongst Us [TechnologyReview.com]

Popgadget: Ever wondered exactly how many calories you burn while sitting perfectly still but having a massive panic attack? You can't find out those kinds of things in fitness magazines. Bodybugg, an armband calorie monitor can tell you exactly (well with 92% accuracy) how many calories you expend not only while exercising but while doing everyday activities like typing and um, vigorous typing while playing games. The bodybugg measures your resting and active metabolic rates by using several sensors: body temperature (core temperature), heat flux (how much heat your body puts out), sweat rate, forward motion, and up and down activity.

Bodybugg works with a web-based food journal which will calculate how many calories you've consumed vs. how many burned and will recommend foods and exercises which will accelerate weight loss. The bodybugg syncs to your PC via USB.

Bodybugg Calorie Management System [Popgadget]

Wired News: Sure, it's still March, but summer's fast approaching. For a high school or college student, that means job-hunting season will soon be under way. Plenty of places on the internet are geared toward helping would-be employees find a job. But what if you're looking for seasonal or part-time employment -- is there a more appropriate place to hit up than traditional job sites?

Some websites cater to just those needs. GrooveJob.com, Teens4Hire.org and student-run newcomer JobSherpa.com purport to help students find jobs and refine their employment-seeking skills. Even the federal government has jumped into the act with its site, Studentjobs.gov.

The sites generally operate by charging employers a fee to advertise open positions. Students can search open postings for free, with or without registering, depending on the site. Some also offer extras like résumé-building help or tips for getting through an interview.

Those running the sites say they're more useful to students and those in their teens to early 20s than general job sites are because they list high-turnover, entry-level positions. They might also lead students to jobs with nontraditional hours for those with college schedules to accommodate.

"If you come to our site you'll see not only do we have the right type of jobs that will fit around your schedule ... but we have all the tools, all the resources," said David Hunegnaw, a partner and one of three founders of GrooveJob.com.

Student Job Sites Hit or Miss [Wired News]

Shiny Shiny: Remember those Tiny Tots talking dolls your big sister had as a child? Well Hitachi has taken a leaf out of their design book and delivered a talkative new robot Emiew, which will be displayed starting June 9 at the 2005 World Exposition, Aichi, Japan.

Apparently the robot can chat to anyone within a distance of about 1 metre after determining their location by seeing their face with a visual sensor and hearing their voice through an audio sensor. The 130cm-tall, 70kg robot is equipped with wheels allowing it to walk at a speed of 6km an hour, about the same pace as a person walking fast.

Hitachi isn’t saying anything about its vocabulary yet but we reckon it might just be a little more comprehensive than Tiny Tots repertoire of’ feed me’, ‘change my nappy’, ‘piss off down Baby Gap and buy me loads of designer tops you cheapskate.’

Hitachi's Talking Robot [Shiny Shiny]

ABC news: Customers of a German supermarket chain will soon be able to pay for their shopping by placing their finger on a scanner at the check-out, saving up to 40 seconds spent scrabbling for coins or cards, bosses say.

An Edeka store in the south-west German town of Ruelzheim has piloted the technology since November and now the company plans to equip its stores across the region.

"All customers need do is register once with their identity card and bank details, then they can shop straight away," store manager Roland Fitterer said.

The scanner compares the shopper's fingerprint with those stored in its database along with account details.

Edeka bosses said they were confident the system can not be abused.

The chance of two people having the same fingerprint is about one-in-220-million.

Germans to pay by fingerprint at supermarkets [ABC News]

Iconoculture: Dinner and a movie? Yawn. Prosaic daters find a creative crutch at Xperience Days, an innovative planning service that sends couples on customized superdates in New York, California, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Xperience Days’ “concierges of love” guarantee that clients and their prospective mates live the experience of a lifetime, from salsa dancing and Ferrari racing to copter rides and intimate cruises (New York Post 2.13.05). The adventures are sorted by price and category, and out-of-this-world dates range from überaffordable ($60 trapeze lessons) to super-spendy ($100,000 zero-gravity flights).

Why spend weeks brainstorming the perfect outing when you can pay a professional to do it for you? Services that let amorous affluents outsource date ideas remove the pressure of planning, letting uncreative Casanovas make dream dates come true without burning time or brain cells. An Xperience Days experience? From $60 to $100,000. A surefire way to knock a date’s socks off? Priceless.

Greater Dates [Iconoculture]

Washington Post: Manufacturers are out to invent a better mouth trap, and shelves are overflowing with the results. The flood of new pastes, gels, sprays, strips, brushes, flosses, washes, pills and picks, each guaranteed to whiten, brighten, sweeten or protect, has become a deluge.

To walk down the toothpaste aisle at the drugstore today is to behold a marketing executive's dreams.

Take toothpaste. In a simpler time, Americans made do with a handful of products, choosing from among Colgate's invisible shield, wonder-where-the-yellow-went Pepsodent and a few competitors - when they weren't using tooth powder or plain baking soda and water. Then came fluoride and flavors and exotic gels and the occasional speckled paste. In 1999 alone, companies added 49 new toothpastes.

So far this year, the number of new toothpastes - meaning new brands, flavors, functions or packaging - is a jaw-dropping 96. And that's just a microcosm of what's happening in the entire oral care category, a $4.8 billion gold mine in 2003, according to market research firm Euromonitor International of Chicago.

"They realized people are willing to fork over $40 on a regular basis for products like these," said Tom Vierhile, executive editor of the new-products database Productscan Online. "I don't think anyone knew this was possible before - they were used to selling tubes of stuff for $2, $3, $4. It was right under their noses."

Open wider: Explosion in oral-care gadgetry [Buffalo News]

Sayrelyns.com: Just like you, Sharon found herself frequently frustrated by the difficulties she faced in simply sitting down for a good dinner with her family. Even though Sharon is a trained chef who loves to cook, she found it difficult to pull everything together and serve delicious, wholesome dinners to her family. Meanwhile, her friends and family, looking for new and better ways to serve dinner, constantly asked her for advice.

Together Sharon and her father Harold came up with a solution. In 2003 they decided to start a business that would simplify making great dinners, and once again make dinner time "family time." They're pleased to introduce Sayrelyn's Culinary Classics, a food preparation company for the consumer.

If somebody doesn't have time to make dinner for their family and are tired of getting them takeout or fast food they can call Sayrelyn's or go online to www.sayrelyns.com and sign up for a session (about 1 1/2-2 hours) where they can select 12 different entrees from their monthly mneu.

They come into a location and prepare their chef-designed entrees and take them home and freeze them until their are ready to cook and enjoy them.