Entrepreneur.com: When Victoria Malmer went online to research different diets, she noticed a common thread among the many different discussion groups: the desire for water that didn't taste so plain. After discussing her findings with friend Paul Staunton, both felt a definite market existed for water flavorings. And by making them calorie- and sugar-free, they would appeal not only to diet-conscious individuals, but also to diabetics and anyone else mindful of their sugar intake. "We realized that whether it's low-carb, low-fat or no-bread, diets come and go," says Staunton. "We wanted to have something that would cross all borders. Everyone wants to drink more water."
Malmer, 42, and Staunton, 46, contacted different flavor manufacturers and conducted a double-blind taste test on their friends with fruit-flavored samples. Based on those results, the partners started with 16 fruit flavors, including peach, pineapple, raspberry and strawberry. Rather than sell flavored bottled water, they opted instead to package the concentrated flavors (available sweetened or unsweetened, but all calorie-free) in small, 1-ounce dropper bottles for $9.95 each. Their rationale: You don't have to lug around a bottled drink to a destination, the flavor can be added to any beverage or food, and you can adjust the intensity of the flavor to your liking.
Staunton, a database programmer, and Malmer, a newspaper editor, operate PAES in their off hours but have already won the 2004 Carb-Aware Consumer Choice Awards Product of the Year and received a good amount of media buzz. Sold through Flavors2Go.com and Castus Superstores, they currently have a distributor in Canada and the United Arab Emirates. With 2005 sales projections breaking $250,000, the co-founders have also introduced an imitation honey that is enticing even more customers to indulge their sweet tooths.
For Sweet Tooths [Entrepreneur.com]
Trendwatching: Remix Culture is about clever programmers modifying Sony's Portable PlayStation days after it hit the shelves Only days in the US this March; remix fanatics have added chat and TV to the device's functionalities, cleverly capitalizing on the PSP's WiFi connection and other built-in, semi-locked online capabilities.
Is Remix Culture a techie-only affair?
Nope. It works just fine for sneakers, too: all over the web, sneaker freaks are uploading pics of their 'remixed' shoes; check out French Shoes-Up, a gallery where Adidas customers display their own version of Adidas' Superstar line, celebrating its 35th anniversary (see picture above). And who by now hasn't heard of the Adidas Zissou sneakers featured in the movie 'The Life Aquatic'. White/yellow sneakers with light blue striping (see below), these fictional shoes had thousands of sneaker freaks lusting after them, until remixers not only designed and produced their own - the DIY guide is still online - but also put them up for sale on eBay earlier this year.
Customer-Made [Trendwatching]
FortWayne.com: Now that every corner beauty shop calls itself a day spa, along comes something new: the day resort.
That’s what Cornelia Zicu calls the haven she opened recently on top of the Ferragamo building in Manhattan.
The main level houses 11 facial and massage rooms, luxurious locker rooms, a hair salon, a separate barbershop and a tranquil relaxation area where staff members brew tea or pour Champagne for guests awaiting treatments.
For a true urban treat, though, there’s the roof garden (scheduled to open in June) where guests can catch some sun or have a lazy lunch from Cafe Cornelia.
The roof level also features three soaking tubs, four body treatment rooms and a pool for Watsu massage.
A signature massage is $150, a facial is $175 – and each comes with an array of tempting enhancers such as hot stones or aromatherapy that sends the prices higher.
Day resort new trend in pampering [FortWayne.com]
Iconoculture: Live for the rush ... and proud of it? Muscovie Design jewelry is stylish, even subtle, molecular-based jewelry that lets adrenaline, serotonin, and caffeine junkies wear their passion. The sterling-silver earrings, rings, and necklaces sprout circles embedded with brightly colored acrylic. The arrangements represent the molecular structures of six different “substances that affect mood” – and they’re chemically accurate, too (MotherDigital.info 1.8.05). Proof that, for women, “science becomes you” (MightyGoods.com 1.7.05).
The jewelry’s mod design makes it a sophisticated way to flaunt a fetish. Jewelry junkies can even customize the molecular mounting and choose a round or square ring band (TheCarrotBox.com 1.9.05). Distinctive wearables, like Biojewelry and LifeGems, provide personality clues and make for decorative conversation starters. And they’re so much cooler than an “I heart coffee” T-shirt.
Wearable Wit [Iconoculture]
Wired News: Sony Online Entertainment, the developer of massively multiplayer online games like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies, is the first major U.S. publisher to facilitate the buying and selling of virtual goods.
Late Tuesday, the company unveiled Station Exchange, an auction site that allows players to spend real money on virtual weapons, armor, coins and new, high-level characters.
The service isn't set to go live until the end of June, and will initially be restricted to the wildly popular EverQuest II game, which in five months has built a player base of more than 350,000.
If the service is a success, similar auction services will be established for Sony's other online games, the company said.
The move is surprising because SOE has been one of the fiercest and most vocal opponents of MMO players who spend real money on virtual assets.
Like SOE, most MMO publishers ban the practice, making the traffic of virtual goods almost entirely illicit. Players are often cheated by shady traders who don't deliver as promised or who rescind payment after getting an item. As a result, SOE claims its customer service staff is constantly bogged down with angry players who have been defrauded.
But virtual goods may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and there's a lot of money to be made brokering the deals.
Sony Gets Real on Virtual Goods [Wired News]
Yenra: Vista del Campo, a student housing development on the University of California, Irvine campus, was named Best Student Housing Apartment Community by the National Association of Home Builders. The award went to the complex's architectural firm, KTGY Group, for the 1,488-bed community developed and managed by American Campus Communities.
"The University appreciates the spirit of cooperation between the developer, owner and architects on this project," said Richard Orr of UCI. "This award signifies how a synergistic approach to a privatized development results in a thriving student community."
Vista del Campo's 16,800 square-foot community center features a state-of-the-art theater, a computer center, game room, conference room, social lounge with fireplace, dining room with kitchen private study rooms, modern fitness center, laundry facilities and management offices. Outside amenities feature a resort-style swimming pool with spa, courtyards with barbeque grills and picnic areas, sand volleyball court and a basketball court. The community combines numerous small courtyards that provide easy points of social interaction along a 28-foot wide Great Street, a pedestrian and bicycle traffic area functioning as the artery of the community
"The design concept came when we observed students flocking to densely populated areas like Balboa Island," said Clint Braun of ACC. "We attempted to replicate that social atmosphere by breaking a large development into smaller neighborhoods."
The community has been successful in attracting students UCI to Vista del Campo. Ten months before opening, Vista del Campo was leased to capacity. The community currently has 1,000 students on the Fall 2005 waiting list. Following the success of the $104.5 million Vista del Campo, a second phase with 1,564 beds is under construction and scheduled for completion in Fall 2006.
Student Housing [Yenra]
CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter Issue 14: 10/04/05 - 23/04/05
New Business Ideas/Opportunities Featured In This Issue:
CONSUMER GOODS
Kleenex Moist Cloth
Kleenex Moist Cloths are thick, soft, disposable hand and face cloths created for use around the home.
Ha! Ha! Bar & Canteens
Oral-B is pushing its new Brush Aways product with a sampling campaign at Ha! Ha! Bar & Canteens.
TRENDS & INSIGHTS
Local Shopping on the Internet
70 percent of American households now find local businesses using the Internet!
TV Advertising Trends
One of the great contradictions of modern American life is that almost everyone watches television while almost no one agrees anymore about what it really means to watch television.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Hooah! Energy Bar
Hooah!, an energy bar that has been officially fueling American soldiers in Iraq, is now available to civilians too!
Whims!
Pepperidge Farm has announced the launch of Whims(TM) cookies, a unique line of bite-sized cookies.
TECHNOLOGY
High-Tech Threads
Textiles are no longer just the stuff of clothing, carpets and furniture covering, but can also be found in lifesaving medical devices.
Technologies for 2025
What will be the revolutionary technologies of the next 20 years? As any futurist will admit, there's simply no clear answer. Read to find out more…
Learning Ecosystem Through Tech
Erez Kikin-Gil 's Eco Pod is a TUI-controlled system that mimics the growth of a plant and allows children to keep track of their class garden and learn.
LIFESTYLE
Mood-Lites
Mood-Lites, the ultimate lighting to enhance the spa lifestyle, dubbed a "must have" by The New York Daily News, has arrived!
SERVICES
Why I Bank With Umpqua
Umpqua's advance guard: trucks filled with free ice-cream sandwiches.
Biographies Online For Future Historians?
In an age when e-mail and text messaging are making letter writing obsolete one program is fighting to create an online permanent record for future historians and biographers.
MARKETING
Targeting Blogs
Carat Interactive in the US has launched a new practice dedicated to using blogs as an advertising medium.
Marketing With Aroma
Help consumers overcome boredom and throw in some empathy as well! Last year, Senseo Coffee Machines installed coffee machines at a number of Dutch bus and tram stops, offering waiting passengers a cup of fresh brewed coffee.
GADGETS
The Ring That Wakes You Up Gently
This alarm clock provides a fresh awakening by synchronizing with the user's sleep cycles.
GAMES
Game of Life
Victoria Gatling has developed software without high-octane explosions, vulgarity or murder.
ADVERTISING
Dynamic In-Game Advertising
New York start-up Massive is set to launch its in-game advertising network.
FASHION
More Than Just a Silver Spoon
In the last year, two categories in retailing seem to be doing well: infants and luxury.
MOBILE
Mobile TV
Mobile TV is going to be a gold mine, according to a new report by ABI Research.
This Phone Recognises My Speech
The Samsung SPH-P207 is the first to incorporate speech-recognition technology for dictation of text messages.
RETAIL
Wearing the Game
Sports fans love sporting team pride. With dress shirts, two-team jerseys, retro sportswear, and plenty of booty for female fans, today’s merchandise goes beyond the traditional jersey!
ENTERTAINMENT
Party On The Go
Airstream’s convertible RV, the SkyDeck, features a rooftop lounge with an entertainment center, wet bar, and beach umbrellas -- an ultimate party pad on wheels!
TOURISM
Space Tourism Franchise
Space pioneer Burt Rutan foresees space tourism companies running like a fast-food franchises, with his company licensing spacecraft to tour operators.
View this issue of the CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter by clicking here. Subscribe for free (bonus gifts included with subscription) by clicking here.
ITWorld: Efforts to introduce electronic-ticketing systems in Germany's huge mass transit sector have moved forward with the successful testing of a smart card system that combines RFID (radio frequency identification).
T-Systems International GmbH, the IT services and infrastructure arm of German telco Deutsche Telekom AG, has developed an e-ticketing system in collaboration with the German Mass Transit Authority (VDV), which represents hundreds of regional bus and train companies in the country, said Frankfurt-based T-Systems in a statement on Thursday.
The system consists of several components: the so-called "VDV core application," a semiconductor-based smart card equipped with a miniature antenna, RFID technology for retrieving data from the cards over the airwaves and sensor-based card readers.
The technology allows passengers to pass by a card reader without having to swipe or insert their cards into the device.
RFID hooks ride on German mass transit [ITWorld]
PicturePhoning.com: MobuzzTV is mobile video entertainment tailor made for cellphones, a channel which broadcasts "daily visual snacks to the content curious generation".
Its available through (European) operators or by downloading online. See how to page.
It's fast, it's fun, it's cheeky, it's irreverant. It's fabulous. It's exactly what mobile entertainment should be. It's about art, it's about tech, it's about entertainment, it's about the lighter side of world news and it's my new favorite place for finding new stories and just having a good time.
In their own words:
Do you generally go online to check on the latest trends and information? Are you a fan of blogs? Do you appreciate a lighthearted, even irreverent take on current events? But do you hate being tied to your computer? Then MobuzzTV may be just what’re looking for.
Daily news, celebrity interviews, cyber news, and a variety of other features, mobuzztv strives to keep you informed and entertained no matter where you are.
mobuzzTV - Cool and Sticky Content [PicturePhoning.com]
USATODAY: The force is already out in force as the May 19 debut of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith nears. Consumers are being flooded with Star Wars-themed TV commercials, print ads, soft-drink promotions, video games and "collectible" action figures and toys.
But "buyer beware," warns Jeremy Beckett, author of The Official Price Guide to Star Wars Memorabilia. Most of the collectibles that fans and treasure-hunters will squirrel away will be virtually worthless in the future beyond sentimental value because of the quantities being churned out.
Star Wars is one of the all-time moneymaking franchises, generating nearly $3.4 billion in global box office and $9 billion in retail sales since 1977. As the buzz builds for the finale of George Lucas' space series, consumers won't be able to swing a light saber without seeing, hearing or reading references to Darth Vader, Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi over the next month.
Promotional partners Pepsi, Burger King, Cingular Wireless, America Online, M&M/Mars and Kellogg are launching a multimillion-dollar cross-promotion to push their own brands while basking in the reflected glory of Hollywood. As partners, they get the rights to use Star Wars characters in their advertising.
Star Wars In Action [USATODAY]
BusinessWeek: A wireless phone's main function is converting human speech into digital signals and back again. So why not harness handsets' speech-processing ability to solve a problem nearly everyone encounters when using cell phones for e-mail or other data applications? I'm referring to the difficulty of entering text on a dial pad, which speech recognition can remedy.
Manufacturers are finally getting serious about this solution. Use of spoken commands to dial calls and control other functions has been around for a while on some high-end handsets. But the Samsung SPH-P207 ($200 with a two-year contract from Cingular Wireless) is the first to incorporate speech-recognition technology for dictation of text messages. I found that, once I got the hang of the technique, speaking messages was much faster than tapping them out.
At Last, a Phone That Takes Dictation [BusinessWeek]
New Scientist: Space pioneer Burt Rutan foresees space tourism companies running like a fast-food franchises, with his company licensing spacecraft to tour operators. But he says he may have trouble cutting through federal regulations to get there.
His company, Scaled Composites, built SpaceShipOne, the rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize for private space flight in 2004. Scaled Composites has already signed a deal to build five spaceships for Virgin Galactic - a division of the Virgin Group.
Rutan declined to give detailed information about his future business plans before the US House Committee on Science’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics on Wednesday. But he did say he sees it running like a Wendy’s fast-food franchise, with his company implementing strict rules for tour operators about safety and operations. “We won’t sell spaceships to space lines that aren’t safe to fly,” he says.
Unlike SpaceShipOne, the next generation of Scaled Composite spaceships will have large cabins and big windows. Passengers will be able to float around the cabin during the four to five minutes of weightlessness. The trips will be a reasonably straightforward up and down voyage: Rutan says his company has not made the technological breakthroughs necessary for safe and affordable orbital trips as yet.
In the first year of operation, Rutan estimates that 500 people could fly to the fringe of space, about 100 kilometres. By the twelfth year, that number could reach 100,000, he says.
Space tourism industry to run 'like fast-food franchises' [New Scientist]
We Make Money Not Art: Erez Kikin-Gil 's Eco Pod is a TUI-controlled system that mimics the growth of a plant and allows children to keep track of their class garden and learn how the different natural elements influence it, and each other, over time.
One pod represents the wind, another the sun's heat, a third one the light and the last one represents the rain. Each pod can be manipulated with a movement or action characteristic of the natural element it represents. If you blow on the "wind" pod, you'll see on the computer screen the effect wind can have on a flower, if you pour water onto the "rain" pod, the flower will be watered as well, etc.
The Eco Pod keeps track of daily changes in the plant environment, by employing environmental sensors, they monitor the water level in the soil, the amount of light, the temperature, and the wind. The system also captures daily images of the plant.
Every now and then, the child can take the Eco-Pods to the information retrieval system and transfer the data to the "plant diary" software. This way, the kid can see the changes of the different elements over time, draw conclusions about their impact on the growth of the plant, but also internalize Systems Thinking concepts, such as feedback loops, stocks and flows, and changes over time.
Learning Ecosystem Through Tech [We Make Money Not Art]
Iconoculture: Airstream’s convertible RV, the SkyDeck, features a rooftop lounge with an entertainment center, wet bar, and beach umbrellas.
It’s an ultimate party pad on wheels. For ultraluxe road warriors, every day has the potential to be a day in the sun. So why not live it up?
The latest status symbol in the RV park? Cocktail parties up top, my dear. Airstream flips its lid for luxury with its convertible SkyDeck, a fully furnished rooftop lounge complete with barbecue, entertainment center, wet bar, and jaunty beach umbrellas. An elegant hardwood staircase inside the coach leads up to the deck, which pops open with the flick of two switches in just 30 seconds. The open-air patio seats at least 15 people on comfy cushions, yet adds only 10 inches of height to a standard coach when it’s collapsed.
The panoramic view from the rooftop alone might lure some affluents to take this, the ultimate party pad on wheels, for a test drive. For outdoor partiers, upscale tailgaters, and the superluxury RV crowd, every day feels like a day in the sun. So why not bask?
Party On The Go [Iconoculture]
Brand Republic: Oral-B is pushing its new Brush Aways product with a sampling campaign at Ha! Ha! Bar & Canteens that is an unusual twist on the post-meal mint. From April 18, at the end of every meal customers will be offered a complimentary Brush Away in place of the normal mint that accompanies the bill.
The idea behind the Brush Away is that people no longer need a traditional toothbrush, a swig of water and a blob of toothpaste to clean their teeth. The product is a textured teeth wipe that is individually wrapped and slide overs the user's fingertip
Rufus Hall, managing director of Ha! Ha! Bar & Canteens, said: "Our customers really respond to quirky new inventions -- it's all part of the Ha! Ha! experience."
The latest launch in the oral care and beauty market is Oral-B's biggest initiative for three years and is being supported by a £1.7m advertising campaign.
Oral-B backs Brush Aways launch with Ha! Ha! Bar sampling dirve [Brand Republic]
Iconoculture: Baseball caps are de rigueur for Sunday afternoon games. Now the entrepreneurs behind GameWear have stitched together a baseball necklace they hope becomes standard attire. A fan can send GameWear a commemorative baseball for fashioning into a "wearable trophy" necklace made from the ball’s leather and 108 stitches. While diehards aren't likely to part with an autographed Cal Ripken, foul balls are fair game. And those leery of parting with memorabilia can purchase premade necklaces and bracelets sporting favorite team logos.
Sports fans love sporting team pride. With dress shirts, two-team jerseys, retro sportswear, and plenty of booty for female fans, today’s merchandise goes beyond the traditional jersey. Add GameWear’s unique ball baubles to the list, giving fans a chance to cheer collectively while flaunting individual style.
Ball Bling [Iconoculture]
Trendwatching.com: Who likes to wait? Help consumers overcome boredom and throw in some empathy as well! Last year, Senseo Coffee Machines installed coffee machines at a number of Dutch bus and tram stops, offering waiting passengers a cup of fresh brewed coffee. Perhaps not the most spectacular TRYVERTISING stunt ever, but ten times more relevant to consumers than a billboard trying to show the aromas.
TRYVERTISING [Trendwatching.com]
Global:Ideas:Bank: In an age when e-mail and text messaging are making letter writing obsolete one program is fighting to create an online permanent record for future historians and biographers. The website www.libraryoflife.org is the brainchild of Stephen Forsyth who wanted a way to preserve the memory of his late brother, James. The project aims to record the names and biographies of as many people as possible. The site offers options to those who wish to keep their details private but other can post full biographies and photos.
Anyone can registrar there name and picture for free. For a fee of £16.25 they will be able to post unlimited text, up to 200 pictures, five minutes of film, and 20 minutes of sound. "The website will ensure that all future generations can learn from our experiences," said Henry Chamberlain, the managing director of the Library of Life Trust. "We believe it will become a duty for the young to help the older generations to take part."
The sites goal is to record generations of experiences and advice they are afraid is being lost in emails, text messages, and phone calls.
Biographies Online For Future Historians? [Global:Ideas:Bank]
The Mobile Technology Weblog: Mobile TV is going to be a gold mine and errr...bigger than a big thing on Planet Big, if we're to believe a new report by ABI Research. This will surely have mobile operators celebrating in the streets and and writing out Purchase Orders to buy copies of the report telling them how clever and successful they're going to be.
Even more promisingly, this new genre of mobile programming will be based on the old "one to many" broadcast concept. And operators will be able to cross sell a range of related content like sports stats, ring tones, logos etc. "The list of revenue opportunities is huge" is case you hadn't figured out what they're saying.
Mobile TV is a Goldmine according to ABI Research [The Mobile Technology Weblog]
The New York Times: One of the great contradictions of modern American life is that almost everyone watches television while almost no one agrees anymore about what it really means to watch television. True, we know that as spring gets under way, new episodes of ''Desperate Housewives'' and ''C.S.I.'' and ''American Idol'' will battle for prime-time supremacy in the overnight Nielsen ratings. We also know that local broadcast stations around the country will begin scheming -- just as they do every April -- to win the May sweeps, the tense weeks when rival stations pursue a fierce one-upmanship of flamboyance and hype and the Nielsen-measured audience sizes determine future advertising rates. But when it comes to figuring out how many of us are watching these shows, and whether we're paying attention while we're watching and even whether we're actually noticing the advertisements among the shows we may or may not be watching -- well, this is where things get tricky.
For the past decade or so, watching television in America has been defined by the families recruited by Nielsen Media Research who have agreed to have an electronic meter attached to their televisions or to record in a diary what shows they watch. This setup may not last much longer. Just as programmers and advertisers are clamoring for a better understanding of the television audience, a wave of new consumer products has made it increasingly difficult to satisfy them. One day this January I sat in a Greenwich Village workroom with Bob Luff, the chief technology officer at Nielsen, as he pulled out gadget after gadget to show me what he's up against. Luff seemed to view the modern American home as a digital zoo where the lion is about to lie down with the lamb: radio is going on the Web, TV is going on cellphones, the Web is going on TV and everything, it seems, is moving to video-on-demand (V.O.D.) and (quite possibly) the iPod and the PlayStation Portable. ''Television and media,'' Luff said over the noise of five sets tuned to five different channels, ''will change more in the next 3 or 5 years than it's changed in the past 50.''
Our Ratings, Ourselves [The New York Times]
The New York Times: Babies wearing emeralds?
Well, why not? In the last year, two categories in retailing seem to be doing well: infants and luxury. Witness the success of Babies "R" Us, even as Toys "R" Us struggles. On the luxury end, see how Neiman Marcus's sales and stock price keep going up and up.
So it figures that some entrepreneur - maybe more than one - would try to put the two categories together. Although products like cashmere baby quilts and sterling silver rattles have been around for a long time, several companies are introducing items to bedazzle the youngest prince or princess.
One brand, BabyGund, offers "birth diamond" necklaces, starting at $620; "baby blossom" earrings with emeralds, at $280; and tiny necklaces and bracelets with pink sapphire hearts for hundreds and thousands of dollars.
Born With a Silver Spoon? No, That's So Ordinary [The New York Times]
PRNewswire: Pepperidge Farm, Incorporated, the leading premium baker in the U.S., today announced the launch of Whims(TM) cookies, a unique line of bite-sized cookies that continue the company's heritage of innovation. Whims, which come in two varieties, clusters and waves, provide consumers with a new munching experience, a sweet poppable treat that can be eaten at home, at work or on the go.
"Whims cookies have been a labor of love getting the product exactly right," said Jay Gould, Pepperidge Farm President. "At a time when the industry's overall sales have been flat, we've continued to maintain our growth by providing the very best in product quality combined with unique product innovations."
Everything about Whims cookies is designed to meet the consumers' desire for delicious snacks that are as convenient as they are scrumptious. The cookies, packaged in a unique canister that sits equally well in the kitchen cabinet or a car's cupholder, come in six flavors; three Crispy Waves: Chocolate Chip, Mint Chocolate Chip and Toffee Chip; and three Crunchy Clusters: Chocolate Chocolate, Chocolate Cashew and White Chocolate Pecan. The product's playfulness can even be seen at the retail shelf where package graphics are reversed on each side and canisters can be stacked either right side up or upside down.
New Pepperidge Farm Whims(TM) Reinvigorate the Cookie Category [PRNewswire]
CFO.com: When CFO began publishing, back in the primordial ooze of 1985, each issue contained a sizable amount of technology coverage. The editorial slant made sense. The arrival of IBM's original personal computer just a few years earlier, and the subsequent release of Lotus 1-2-3, had turned the finance function on its head. Suddenly liberated from the drudgery of manually tabulating figures, controllers and finance chiefs found they could close the books in days, not lunar cycles. Moreover, groundbreaking new programs like Quicken and Hardisk Accounting made rolling up columns into the general ledger a snap.
Not surprisingly, many, if not most, of the products we covered two decades ago seem quaint today. For instance, a mobile telephone that barely fits in the trunk of a car hardly qualifies as mobile now; likewise, a 28-pound Compaq Portable computer isn't all that portable. Nevertheless, a number of the first-generation products we've reported on over the years — accounting software, laptop computers, and, later, E-mail and enterprise resource planning software — have become standard operating equipment in the office of the 21st century.
What will be the revolutionary technologies of the next 20 years? As any futurist will admit, there's simply no clear answer. Experts say exponentially faster processors, coupled with a vastly improved communications network, could usher in the era of pervasive computing. It could just as easily usher in an era of pervasive irritability, as information overload becomes commonplace. Wild cards such as nanotechnology and phenotropics (software) may take things in completely unexpected directions.
That said, we decided to read the tea leaves and predict which innovations will radically transform commerce over the next two decades. Of course, we also consulted with analysts, scientists, and CIOs. While all had differing opinions on what the next big things will be, a few technologies kept coming up in our conversations, and we settled on those. Not content merely to identify the technologies, we also forecast the years when they will be widely adopted. (If we're wrong, talk to us in 2025.)
In the Year 2025 [CFO.com]
CNet: Be prepared for such moments to become a regular occurrence, thanks to a new service that inserts dynamic ads into video games. After several months of beta testing, New York start-up Massive is set to launch its in-game advertising network on Monday, with support from several major game publishers and mainstream advertisers such as Coca-Cola and Intel.
In-game advertising has become a growing source of revenue for publishers over the past few years, with developers of sports games in particular financing much of their work through product placement fees. Shag a deep fly ball in the latest baseball game, for example, and the outfield fence will probably be emblazoned with paid ads from real companies.
Massive will take advertising to another level by serving up dynamic ads, said Nicholas Longano, chief marketing officer for the Los Angeles-based company. Pass a virtual billboard in the latest "Splinter Cell" counterterrorism game, for example, and it could be hawking soft drinks one day and the latest Vin Diesel movie the next.
Play to pay: Service inserts ads in games [CNet]
Entrepreneur.com: Victoria Gatling, 36, started to notice a disturbing trend in her family's funeral-home business: "They were burying more and more young people, [victims] of so many violent, senseless crimes." Believing there was a connection between those violent crimes and today's video games, this mother of game-loving children decided to take matters into her own hands.
Starting with $50,000 from friends, family and personal savings, Gatling, a former marketing representative, developed software without high-octane explosions, vulgarity or murder. Her pioneer game, Obstacles of Life, features David, a character facing moral stumbling blocks. The deceptive characters wear street clothes "because I want the kids to know that the devil is not a man in a red suit with horns," says Gatling, who's since authored more than 35 games.
Gatling persuaded pastors to let her present the games to their congregations. Many parents, unaware of the violent content of games prior to her presentations, jumped to try the $14.99 alternatives, which are currently sold nationwide via phone and online orders, as well as regionally at church conventions. Year-end 2005 sales are expected to range between $500,000 and $600,000--Gatling is in talks with Wal-Mart stores and plans to pitch electronics boutiques and game shops later this year.
Game of Life [Entrepreneur.com]
We Make Money Not Art: One of my first stop yesterday at the Salone del Mobile in Milan was at Promise Design, New Design from Israel, at the Triennale.
Tomer Sapir's "Concept for a bedroom unit" integrates a table, a reading lamp and an alarm clock. The alarm clock provides a fresh awakening by synchronizing with the user's sleep cycles. We've heard of that before: there's a watch and a headband that do the same. I just find them rather clumsy.
Sapir's alarm works by measuring your sleep cycle and waits for you to be in your lightest phase of sleep before going off. Only this time the alarm teams up wirelessly with a simple, light ring you slip on your finger when going to bed. You set up the alarm at the latest time you want it to go off. The ring monitors your body activity and sends the signal to the alarm to wake you up when it senses that you're in the "light" phase of your sleep circle.
The alarm clock itself displays no number at all, two dots of light represent the minute hand and the hour hand, like a traditional analogue clock.
To make the lamp, the designer have your eye scanned. The image of the iris is then printed on the plastic shade of the lamp and a graphic designer samples the colours of the iris and uses them to paint some of the unit's parts.
The Ring That Wakes You Up Gently [We Make Money Not Art]
NetImperative: Carat Interactive in the US has launched a new practice dedicated to using blogs as an advertising medium.
The practice will focus on three key areas including: planning and buying ads on blogs and blog networks; "blog initiation", which is thought to be a contract blog operation; and blog monitoring, which will track comments on key brands throughout the blog community.
Carat is thought to be the first media buying agency to create such a practice, and has already worked with both Kodak and PalmOne on blog projects. The practice will be offered as part of Carat Interactive's integrated media planning and buying service, and will work in tandem with the creative and content group.
Said Carat Interactive president Toby Gabriner: "Some of the most loved and most trafficked sites on the web are blogs. Leading brands have a unique opportunity to extend their online advertising programme with blogs and, with this new focus within the media group, we can help clients understand how best to integrate blogging into their marketing programmes."
Carat Targets Blogs [NetImperative]
FastCompany: The residents of northern California got their first taste of Umpqua Bank last July when the ice-cream trucks rolled in. Only days earlier, the little-known Oregon community bank with the weird name had made headlines when it announced the acquisition of a local 27-branch bank. Now, here came Umpqua's advance guard: trucks filled with free ice-cream sandwiches.
Corny? Maybe. But as Ray Davis, Umpqua's CEO says, "It's the corny things that make the difference" when it comes to providing great customer service. Great service is something every bank claims to offer, of course -- and almost never does. Employees helplessly sit on their hands when customers have a simple request, shunting them off to a manager, or worse, the company's 800-number.
The problem, as Davis sees it, is culture. At most banks, a cultural focus on efficiency, process, and controls often stands in the way of doing right by customers. At Umpqua, every element of the culture is focused on serving customers. It's what keeps Umpqua growing in the highly competitive retail banking sector. When Davis, a onetime CPA who spent years as a banking consultant, took the lead job at Umpqua 11 years ago, the Oregon-based bank had just six branches and $140 million in assets. Now it has 92 branches, stretching from Napa to Seattle, and $5 billion in assets.
Cultural Phenomenon [Fast Company]
Yahoo! Finance: Move aside, dull, ordinary light bulbs -- Mood-lites, http://www.mood-lites.com, the ultimate lighting to enhance the spa lifestyle, dubbed a "must have" by The New York Daily News, has arrived to brighten your world!
Kathryn Goetzke White, the creator of Mood-lites, believes that Mood-lites is a holistic compliment to the spa lifestyle. "Mood-lites offer a variety of light-bulbs that will soothe your mind, body, and spirit," says Goetzke White. "Try putting 'Tranquility' in your massage treatment room to make it a more spiritual place, 'Renewal' in your tea and water relaxation area for revitalization, 'Happy' in your doorway or foyer to create an atmosphere of hospitality, 'Creativity' in your meditation room to encourage imagination, or infuse the room with vitality by adding 'Energy' in your recreational spaces," recommends White. "The opportunities are as infinite as your ingenuity."
The launch of Mood-lites includes a broad range of moods and colors, including Renewal(TM) (jade), Tranquility(TM) (sapphire), Serenity(TM) (turquoise), Passion(TM) (crimson), Creativity(TM) (purple), Happy(TM) (yellow) and Energy(TM) (orange). Mood-lites is the only colored bulb currently on the market with a coating that creates a special 'glow.' At a suggested retail price of $5.95, consumers don't have to purchase expensive colored shades or decorative lamps when they want to conjure up a new mood with lighting. Now all they need to do is buy a Mood-lites bulb and put it in a lamp -- and change the bulb whenever they are in the mood for something new and different!
Mood-Lites(TM), the Newest Innovation in Specialty Lighting, Showcases Light Bulbs That Enhance the Spa Lifestyle at the American Spa Expo [Yahoo! Finance]
New York Times: A knitted bag holds a weakened heart, helping it pump blood.
Electricity flows through the threads of a battery-powered fleece jacket, keeping the wearer warm. Carbon fibers are braided into structures that look like mushrooms, but are actually prototypes of automotive engine valves.
Other fibers are shaped into bicycle frames and sculling oars.
Textiles are no longer just the stuff of clothing, carpets and furniture covering.
Made of high-tech threads, they can also be found in lifesaving medical devices and the bodies of racing cars. One architect is proposing building a skyscraper out of carbon fibers.
A multitude of uses for 'extreme' textiles [NYT via IHT]
Iconoculture: "Heard. Understood. Acknowledged." That’s "Hooah!" – a military term, sure, but also an energy bar that has been officially fueling American soldiers in Iraq. Now available to civilians, too, the bar was developed by the Department of Defense and meets the performance-based combat requirements of MREs (meals ready to eat). The bar also has a minimum shelf life of three years at 80 degrees and six months at 100 degrees (Wall Street Journal 3.7.05). A portion of the proceeds from Hooah! Bar sales goes to fund research that improves soldiers’ quality of life.
Consumer interest in products developed for military use, like Hummers and rugged-ready laptops, is high. For many people, good enough for the troops means good enough for me. Products that support our soldiers – and maybe even amp civilian performance – make patriotic consumers stand and salute.
Fuel Force [Iconoculture]
CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter Issue 13: 27/03/05 - 09/04/05
New Business Ideas/Opportunities Featured In This Issue:
TRENDS & INSIGHTS
Celebrity Smiles
The latest celebrity-channeling accessory is a set of prosthetic choppers modeled after Hollywood's most Chiclet smiles!
FURNITURE
New Bathroom Cabinet
The Metro line of cabinets has a unique design of a side opening in which the shelves slide from behind the attached, fixed mirror.
ENTERTAINMENT
Video Games to Sell... Books?
Games publisher Atari just released a game based on a book that hasn’t even hit the bookstores yet!
ONLINE
Alternative Searching
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.
MARKETING
Wearable Hypertags
Mobile marketing company Hypertag has launched a wearable version of the infra-red and bluetooth tags.
"Tryvertising"
Tryvertising, a more effective form of advertising, is all about consumers getting familiar with new products by actually trying them out!
Starburst's Aggressive Marketing
Starburst launched an aggressive U.S.-based mobile marketing promo on Friday as part of a new integrated campaign.
CONSUMER GOODS
Boezels Toys
Developed by Dutch designer Twan Verdonck, the Boezels toys are specially conceived for mentally challenged children and adults.
Toothbrush + Music = Tooth Tunes
Hasbro plans on launching a musical toothbrush called "Tooth Tunes" that renders a recorded riff from a pop star that lasts 2 minutes.
TECHNOLOGY
Solar Powered Bag
Solar Style’s solar-powered bag solves the problem of having your mobile devices run out of battery with no plug sockets nearby to charge it back up.
Sensitive Vehicles To Help Drivers
Toyota is working with Stanford University and Affective Media for a few years to create a car that can read your feelings.
ADVERTISING
It's Online Ads For Small Businesses
Online ads are taking the place of advertising in an annual industrial directory and dozens of monthly trade magazines for small businesses.
SERVICES
Seeking Honey Bees
Honey Bees Network works to connect innovators to other people and companies that might license their inventions to provide them an income from their creativity.
Read more
Now They're Cooking
Le Petit Cookery teaches children everything from how to use cutlery to healthy eating and proper etiquette.
GADGETS
Hello Kitty Invades The Xbox
The Hello Kitty Crystal Xbox Console takes that definitively non-pink Xbox and converts it to its long-latent color scheme!
Read more
Puppy/Polar Bear Children's Fridge
Fujitronic makes a series of animal-styled mini-fridges.
WIRELESS
Scientists' Use of 3G
Orange tells us that its 3G Mobile Office card is being put to unusual use by scientists in the UK!
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Kabbalah and Energy Drinks
A can of sweetened, carbonated, caffeinated, vitamin-charged water to which some Canadian mountain spring water blessed by a rabbi is added.
LIFESTYLE
Turning Your Wall Into a Work of Art
New decorating techniques and products are giving three-dimensional grandeur to walls that is nothing but artistic.
MUSIC
Tempting Downloads
In the search for online customers, entertainment companies are aggressively pursuing college students.
MOBILE
Free Handphone Charging, Anybody?
All you need to charge your mobile is air! Electricity generated by the turbine (developed by IIT) when moved by wind energy could charge a cell phone in an emergency!
GAMES
A Game Investigating The Rhetoric Of Fear Culture
Blowhard is a game where players must increase their anxiety gradually, moving up one stage at a time.
BRANDING
Fake Designer Bags For Real
The world is flooded with fakes and we know that it's all but impossible to tell a real item from the fake. But now, Dutch design boutique Mind What You Wear is calling a fake a fake with a new series of Fake bags.
View this issue of the CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter by clicking here. Subscribe for free (bonus gifts included with subscription) by clicking here.
NewsTarget.com: According to a study conducted by market researchers Constat Inc. and The Kelsey Group, 70 percent of American households now find local businesses using the Internet. A poll conducted in October 2003 found the figure to be 60 percent, with 73 percent using the local newspaper. If current trends continue, the Internet will become more popular for local business searches than newspapers in the next year.
Consumers using internet to find local shopping, says study [NewsTarget]
Kimberly-Clark: Kimberly-Clark Corporation has announced the North American launch of Kleenex Moist Cloths, the latest innovation from the company's global Kleenex brand.
Kleenex Moist Cloths are thick, soft, disposable hand and face cloths created for use around the home. The product provides an innovative solution to an unmet consumer need for a disposable alternative to a washcloth or wet paper towel--one that is more substantial and easier to use than traditional hand and face wipes. Kleenex Moist Cloths are large and hand-sized (8.5 inches x 8.25 inches) and feature a mild, alcohol-free formulation that is gentle on the skin.
"Consumers have told us they need a quick, convenient way to clean hands and faces following the sticky messes that happen everywhere in the home," said Rob van der Merwe, group president, North Atlantic Family Care. "Dry paper towels or napkins can't get you clean enough, and traditional wipes are often not readily at hand and can be difficult to unfold, too wet or too thin.
Kimberly-Clark Introduces Kleenex Moist Cloths [Kimberly-Clark]
![story.pod[1]](http://www.coolbusinessideas.com/image/story.pod[1])
we make money not art: Toyota is working with Stanford University and Affective Media for a few years to create a car that can read your feelings.
The Pod concept car has headlights that fade from bright to dull and change color to indicate happy, sad or angry moods, depending on the driver's mood.
Affective Media CEO, Christian Jones, says the car would be able to detect, for example, if the driver is stressed about running late and tell them the best possible route.
"It would give certain information that would help. If they were in a hurry, the car would work out the safer, faster route instead of, perhaps, a scenic route," he explained. "The in-car voice would talk to you in an attempt to improve the state of your mood." Other mood improvers could include playing soothing music.
It would also be able to detect whether the driver was drowsy by identifying signs such as quiet, flat speech, and could then trigger an alarm to rouse the driver.
Jones believed the car could be on roads within three or four years.
Sensitive Vehicles To Help Drivers [we make money not art]
PSFK: You see some pretty girls pulling their designer-label bags down the plane's aisle these days and you just assume that they must be a fake. The bags, not the girls. Probably.
The world is flooded with fakes and we know that it's all but impossible to tell a real item from the fake. But now, Dutch design boutique Mind What You Wear is calling a fake a fake with this new series of Fake bags.
Founder Bea Correa's perspective extends beyond the simple hand bag:
Despite all efforts to eradicate counterfeits goods, we receive thousands of e-mails every day advertising anything from luxury labelreplicas to phony life-saving medicines. Every city has a crowded black market. And ‘Fake’ is not merely limited to b-grade products: how many times have you seen a beautiful woman and wondered which parts were authentic? 'Fake’ has become one of the defining keywords of the current age, and Mind What You Wear is embracing the trend.
Fake Designer Bags For Real [PSFK]
Clickz: Starburst launched an aggressive U.S.-based mobile marketing promo on Friday as part of a new integrated campaign.
Grey Interactive and mobile marketing partner ipsh! are behind the cross-carrier effort, which follows a relaunch of the MasterFoods candy brand. The new identity promises "More Juice. More Burst."
Last week, MasterFoods began distributing the first of 100 million Starburst packs with unique wrapper codes that will eventually reach store shelves. Consumers can enter to win prizes by texting their unique numbers to the short code "JUICY." One pack design shows a teen holding out his phone and offers the copy, "Text. You Could Win Juicy Prizes." Smaller type below it says, "Look under wrapper. Text game code to JUICY (58429) or log on to starburst.com."
"Starburst is the most progressive brand for mobile marketing," said Nihal Mehta, ipsh! founder and president. "This is the largest cross-carrier mobile campaign for a consumer packaged goods [brand] in the U.S. to date."
Sweepstake giveaways include a 42-inch flat-screen TV, portable audio centers, and music downloads. The promotion continues through September.
Grey Interactive has handled Web and interactive advertising for Starburst since the late '90s. Last year, the MasterFoods brand gave its offline business to TBWA\Chiat\Day, but Grey Interactive retained some digital assignments.
Starburst Intros On-Pack Mobile Promo [Clickz]
Retail Merchandiser.com: With constant innovation in products, ingredients and formulations, mass market hair care vendors continue to raise the bar, effectively blurring the line between mass and prestige products. These products target an ever-widening range of hairstyle and hair texture needs.
This fragmentation and diversification is being fed by retailers' growing desire to target-market shoppers in almost every retail category. This bodes particularly well in hair care, since there is no one hot style this year. Straightened hair is in, natural curly hair is in, 'short and sassy' is still popular and so is long and lustrous. Each demands a different formulation. If there is any hairstyle trend, it is the trend of individuality and personal style.
"As a mass market player, you've got to think like a salon brand," says Mike Indursky, vp marketing for Garnier. "Consumers are very discerning. They expect more. We have to work harder to deliver products that are unique, fresh and deliver on their promises. You've got to break through the clutter. From a technology standpoint, the difference between prestige and mass products is minimal."
Unilever recently introduced three new ThermaSilk smoothing products designed especially for women with curly and wavy hair. The line will help heat style natural and curly textures, while keeping hair smooth, sleek and frizz-free. Dove recently debuted a line of products that provide styling benefits, but allow natural movement. The products are designed to provide long-lasting volume and control without leaving hair feeling stiff or sticky. P&G's new Pantene Pro-V Relaxed & Natural Color Radiance line for color-treated hair helps keep naturally dry African-American hair moisturized and strong. Garnier's offerings include Fructis Style Surf Hair, a matte texturing paste that gives a tousled, straight-from-the-beach look but has strong molding abilities. P&G recently launched an Aloe Smoothing Cream under the Clairol Herbal Essences brand that helps to condition and style, and a Humidity Defying Gel that is good for both smoothing and taming.
Catering to Each Strand [Retail Merchandiser.com]
Trendwatching: Mass advertising is dying. Experienced consumers couldn't care less about commercials, ads, banners and other fancy wording and imagery that is forced upon them, so let's move on to more interesting ways of igniting conversations between corporations and consumers. We recently spoke about CUSTOMER MADE and NOUVEAU NICHE as powerful alternatives to archaic marketing thinking, but those concepts don't necessarily introduce consumers to your brand or your new product. Sure, much has already been said about search-based advertising and initiating word of mouth as new (and certainly more relevant) ways to replace mass advertising, but TRENDWATCHING.COM wants to add a third alternative: TRYVERTISING, which is all about consumers getting familiar with new products by actually trying them out.
Think of TRYVERTISING as a new breed of product placement* in the real world, integrating your goods and services into daily life in a relevant way, so that consumers can make up their minds based on their experience, not your messages.
TRYVERTISING [Trendwatching]
Entrepreneur.com: After Helane Cohen lost her mother in 2000, the time she spent alone helped her identify the two things she loved most: children and cooking. It was then that this tech executive decided to leave behind a six-figure salary and launch Le Petit Cookery, a cooking school for children. Three months later, Cohen, 40, brought in good friend Steven Soto, 42, as her chief advisor--having worked with him in the past, she knew he could offer invaluable small-business skills.
Le Petit Cookery teaches children everything from how to use cutlery to healthy eating and proper etiquette. Today, the business consists of three branches: after-school programs for elementary-school children; private cooking parties, special events and classes at requested locations; and a website that sells cooking products for children. While the programs teach children how to cook, they also encourage safety, fun, teamwork and healthy nutrition. Le Petit Cookery's "Around the Globe We Go" after-school program, for example, highlights international foods and ingredients, such as Polish pirogis, dumplings filled with cheese or meat that the kids make by themselves--with some help from assistants, of course.
Now They're Cooking [Entrepreneur.com]
![diagram[1].jpg](http://www.coolbusinessideas.com/image/diagram[1].jpg)
we make money not art: Blowhard is a game, created by Ryan Schoelerman and Sky Frostenson, in which two players compete by breathing into a CPR mask, where a breath sensor translates cumulative respiration into the player's current level of anxiety, shown on a screen in the same color-coded system used by the Department of Homeland Security's Threat Advisory System.
Players must increase their anxiety gradually, moving up one stage at a time. Upon completion of a level the display provides feedback via audio-video USA fear culture propaganda from the 1950s to the present. The first player to reach the top, wins.
The respiration game controller masks are designed using a CPR resuscitation mask, TGS-822 organic vapor sensor and connect via ethernet cables to a game console. The console consists of programmed PIC micro-controllers, on-board LED display graphs, an audio sample processor, and speaker amplifier system. All hardware is housed inside a Playstation2 case.
The software screen display of BLOWHARD is designed using Max/MSP/Jitter.
The game is part of the Hybrid Vigor exhibition, at the Beall Center for Art + Technology on April 6 - 16, 2005.
A Game Investigating The Rhetoric Of Fear Culture [we make money not art]
Rediff.com: All you need to charge your mobile is -- air!
Students at the Department of Industrial Design at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi have attached a turbine with a mobile phone that helps charge it even when the user is travelling, Head of the Department Professor Lalit Kumar Das told PTI.
"The electricity generated by the turbine when moved by wind energy could charge a cellphone in an emergency. It generates electricity to the tune of 3 to 4 watts which is sufficient to charge a mobile phone," he said.
The specially designed turbine, which costs about Rs 200 to be developed inside a laboratory, is so small that it could be easily kept in a pocket, he said.
The primary objective of the device is to extend mobile 'connectivity' where there is no electricity. The device also saves energy, though not to a significant extent, he said.
The electricity could also be used for other purposes such as illumination and playing a radio. High intensity light devices (HILDs) and radio require low energy to function that could be easily provided by the turbine, he said.
Using air to charge cellphones? IIT-Delhi does it! [Rediff.com]
Wired News: College junior Kyle Taylor is downloading hundreds of songs by No Doubt, Bruce Springsteen and others onto the Compaq laptop in his cramped dormitory room. With a few more clicks of his mouse, Taylor is watching commercial-free Seinfeld episodes on his computer. In just minutes, he then downloads the entire movie A League of Their Own.
The 20-year-old is not breaking any laws. Nor is he at risk of expensive lawsuits brought by the entertainment industry over copyright violations.
Taylor and his classmates at American University -- and thousands more students at other U.S. colleges -- are among the earliest customers of a new generation of legal downloading services approved by the largest music labels and Hollywood studios. Students appear enthusiastic, despite some early kinks that can keep them from loading songs onto iPods.
"You can one-click-download an entire album, and the downloading time is, like, a minute," Taylor said. His laptop holds more than 3,000 songs.
In the search for online customers, entertainment companies are aggressively pursuing college students, who cannot remember life before the internet. This generation works off laptops more than it watches television, plugs into high-speed university networks, uses the web for homework and headlines -- and on average carries around more than 1,000 songs on a hard drive.
Already, dozens of schools are rolling out downloading services from Ruckus Network, RealNetworks, Napster and Sea Blue Media. So important is this university market that Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the world's largest label, has paid the entire bill at some schools during trial semesters. Sony-backed artists are available for downloading on all the major services.
Students Use Next-Gen Downloads [Wired News]
STLtoday.com: It's easy enough to hang artwork on your wall, but have you ever considered turning your wall into a work of art?
Beyond faux finishes, crown molding, chair rails, wainscoting and baseboards, new decorating techniques and products are giving three-dimensional grandeur to walls that is nothing but artistic.
Maya Romanoff of Chicago, a textile designer and wallpaper master, said that he began as an artist trying to sell items for people to put on walls. But that wasn't the satisfaction he was looking for. He wanted his art to be the room, the walls, the finite boundary.
If people wanted Romanoff on their walls, he figured that they'd be willing to go all the way and make their walls into a Romanoff creation, not a backdrop but a focal point. His wallpaper products are well known and well regarded for their texture and artistry.
Paint may be the cheapest and easiest way to redecorate a room, but wallpaper can be more dramatic and pretty easy if you opt for just one accent wall. The newer wallcovering products no longer take many messy hours to apply or remove. Big patterns are great for concealing less than perfect walls.
And as Romanoff is fond of saying, wallpaper is art.
Not your grandmother’s wallpaper [STLtoday.com]
mcall.com: Combine medieval Jewish mysticism, a fizzy strawberry-flavored drink loaded with vitamins and a splash of holy water and you have the perfect fusion of two of the hottest fads sweeping the country: Kabbalah and energy drinks.
Next week, the hip, the curious and the thirsty in the Lehigh Valley will be among the first consumers east of the Mississippi to find 16-ounce cans of Kabbalah Energy Drink at select convenience stores and supermarkets. It helps that the East Coast distributor, XL Beverage, is based in Bethlehem.
What is Kabbalah Energy Drink? A $2 can of sweetened, carbonated, caffeinated, vitamin-charged water to which some Canadian mountain spring water blessed by a rabbi is added.
New energy drink puts fizz in Kabbalah [The Morning Call]
Mobile Digest: Orange tells us that its 3G Mobile Office card is being put to unusual use by scientists in the UK. Researchers over here are using the cards to let them access and control one of the largest fully robotic telescopes in the world based over in Hawaii. They can access the internet from their laptops to connect to the Faulkes Telescope, allowing them to check out and download images received from the star gazer wherever they may be. Great PR story for Orange, and one that certainly sparked our interest.
3G to help stargazers [Mobile Digest]
Gizmodo: A fridge so adorable that you could just eat it up is really the last thing you want when struggling with your diet [You actually wrote that? —ed.], but for the skinny crowd, Fujitronic makes a series of animal-styled mini-fridges. Available shaped as a polar bear or puppy dog, they feature an on-door LCD which can house a virtual pet to keep you entertained while you wait for your bacon craving to pass. It's unfortunately $400 (plus $120 shipping!) for just 3.2 cubic feet, but it at least features a "conventient [sic] and practical rotary fruit tray" to make up for it.
Puppy/Polar Bear Children's Fridge [Gizmodo]
Engadget: Yes, it’s true. It was only a matter of time until Hello Kitty worked her evil magic upon this particular gadget, as she has on oh so many others. The Hello Kitty Crystal Xbox Console takes that definitively non-pink Xbox and converts it to its long-latent color scheme. During the promotional period the entire bundle comes with a Helly Kitty Crystal Controller and Hello Kitty Mission Rescue Game for $99 with the purchase of selected Samsung LCD TVs, but if you’re not anywhere near Singapore you’re gonna be relegated to shelling out a fortune on eBay someday to get your paws on one.
Hello Kitty Invades The Xbox [Engadget]
WorldChanging: Another great find from the Doors of Perception conference in Delhi: the Honey Bee Network, here in India. It is a network of people designed to find hackers and inventors from the countryside, the sort of people who don’t have two pennies to rub together but invent a coconut-tree-climbing machine so they can work better, or a man who had never been to formal school but heard on the news that government researchers were spending millions to built a mobile robot, and built his own to (supposedly) perform the same tasks. Another memorable example was a shock absorbing bicycle which has a gear which translates the impact of hitting a bump into turning the wheels, speeding you up instead of just inconveniencing you. (And with the roads around here, that could be quite an advantage--or send you headlong into disaster, I’m not sure which...)
The network works to connect these innovators to other people in other villages who can use their ideas, as well as companies that might license their inventions to provide them an income from their creativity.
Honeybee Network [WorldChanging]
We Make Money Not Art: Hasbro plans on launching a musical toothbrush called "Tooth Tunes" reports the WSJ.
"When pressed to the teeth, the toothbrush renders a recorded riff from a pop star that lasts two minutes -- precisely the amount of time dentists say children should spend brushing their teeth.
How does it work? "The two-minute recording is stored on a microchip no bigger than a dot atop the letter i. Push a button on the toothbrush, and a minicomputer starts playing the song. Sound waves are transported through the transducer to the front teeth, traveling from there to the jawbone and then to the inner ear.
Hasbro is in talks with several recording artists about getting rights to their recordings. Many artists would probably consider a gig in a toothbrush beneath their talents. But others might welcome the daily exposure in their young fans' lives."
Hasbro's "Tooth Tunes" [We Make Money Not Art]
USAToday: "Heat-resistant coatings," "high-temperature adhesives" and "machinable ceramics" aren't even in the same league as "Britney Spears" when it comes to popular Web searches.
But for Aremco Products Inc. of Valley Cottage, N.Y., they're golden.
That's because the customers for Aremco's high-temperature coatings and adhesives are typing those words into search engines such as Yahoo! and Google.
To make sure Aremco's Web site comes up when they do, the company bids from 50 cents to $3 to be part of the list of "sponsored" links that appear above and to the right of the primary search engine results. Aremco only pays when a potential customer clicks on a link.
Peter Schwartz, president and chief operating officer at Aremco, said he started placing search ads more than a year ago and is spending a couple of thousand dollars a month on the promotion.
"I can't tell you that we get an extra million a year in business, but our order frequency is up 20% to 30%," Schwartz said.
The online ads are taking the place of advertising in an annual industrial directory and dozens of monthly trade magazines for engineers eager to buy adhesives and coatings that can withstand 3,000-degree temperatures for use in hair dryers and halogen headlights.
Smaller companies find online ad niche [USAToday]
Free Business Ideas Newsletter
Ever wanted to be the CEO of your very own Starbucks or Amazon.com? Fire your boss and be your own boss? Now you can, with BIZNESS! - the free biweekly business newsletter about new business ideas, opportunities and innovations from around the world. More than just new business trends, BIZNESS! helps the aspiring entrepreneur (you!) with small business advice, business tips, and entrepreneur resources and opportunities.
Subscribe for free now! 
