Wired News: Picture this, you're shopping online for a new minivan, surfing automaker websites and buying guides. You then head to the homepage of your local paper to check out the headlines, and at the top of the page is an ad for a local car dealer, offering rebates and low financing on new minivans.

If you're like many web users, you probably find it creepy that your local paper knows you're looking for new wheels. Even so, advertisers are betting you're far more likely to click on the car dealer's ad than a random banner for a dating site or DVD rentals.

That's the theory behind behavioral marketing -- a growing niche in the online advertising industry focused on targeting promotional messages to an individual's online activities. Some might call such tracking across websites by a less flattering name: adware. Marketers call it a promising revenue stream.

Behavioral marketing was a prominent buzzword at this week's Ad:Tech conference in San Francisco. The conference, held in the midst of a boom period for internet ad sales, devoted considerable resources to identifying ways for online publishers to generate bigger profits from advertising. Many of the most popular strategies involved mining more information about individuals.

Ads That Know What You Want [Wired News]

One Buck Concept: When siblings Jackie Bell, 48, and Wayne Bell, 46, realized high-quality items were no longer readily available to stock their industrial salvage yard, they knew it was time to change gears. So they stuck with the concept of one person's junk being another's treasure and opened up a secondhand clothing store.

The Bells placed an ad in the local Classified Flea Market newspaper seeking clothes for 25 cents per item. Their first response was from the family of a woman who had hoped to open her own thrift store and amassed 10,000 pieces of clothing before passing away. The Bells were able to completely stock Reruns for the grand opening in San Francisco with that purchase, but they now buy most of their inventory from a nonprofit organization.

Despite initial plans to offer every clothing item at just $1 each, Jackie admits she yielded to the temptation to raise prices at first: "Once I saw all the great clothes, I took my eyes off the larger picture." When six months went by and the partners saw sluggish sales, they returned to the original plan. The day signs went up advertising their new buck pricing, they had their highest one-day sales to date.

One Buck Concept [Entrepreneur.com]

3M™: Whether at work or play, 3M™ Scotchlite™ Reflective Material helps you to be seen at dawn, dusk, or night, in all weather conditions.

Versatility, performance and fashion come together in Scotchlite reflective material. Designers can easily incorporate it into all kinds of footwear, garments, and accessories, from safety vests to high performance activewear. The results: attractive reflective clothing that helps make people more visible.

3M™ Scotchlite™ Reflective Material [3M™ United States]

Parking Network: Refinery, a Top 25 U.S. interactive agency, announced that it is building an application for the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA) that for the first time will link the City’s more than 1,000 off-street parking venues, even those not managed by PPA, through a consumer-friendly Web site. The site will allow users to view detailed location, availability, timing, and rate information in real time. The off-street parking locator is one of the first systems of it kind for a major metropolitan parking authority such as PPA.

This functionality, set to launch in 2005, is designed to make parking in Philadelphia more convenient and transparent by giving users the ability to review all viable off-street parking options by location, without leaving their homes. Refinery is designing the site with a state-of-art Geographic Information System (GIS) that combines detailed Philadelphia street map and attraction information with a rich database of off-street parking venues.

"Philadelphia has always been known as a City of innovation and we hope this changes the way people think about parking," said Joe Egan, Executive Director of the Philadelphia Parking Authority. "We believe this new service will help stabilize parking rates by providing consumers with information that will help them make informed parking choices".

Philadelphia's Latest Innovation: Virtual Parking [Parking Network]

Iconoculture: Millennials get a chuckle out of cheeky products that play off of intricate relationship interactions.

Be thankful they’re only passive-aggressive. ’Cause otherwise: Hello, horror-movie scenario. Needies interactive plush dolls – created by students at New York U’s Interactive Telecommunications Program – trade songs and flattery for hugs, then plot and scheme against each other to win human love and attention. Like big soft Furbies raised on soap operas, the interactive toys are modeled on high-maintenance, codependent relationships.

Needies each have an electronic nervous system, so they can tell when humans hug and squeeze them (or, as they disturbingly but somehow appropriately say, “give touch”) and respond with songs and flattery. That nervous system also enables them to tell when another Needie is getting more attention. Sound scary? Just be glad Gloomy Bear’s not interactive. Millennials get a chuckle out of cheeky products that play off of intricate relationship interactions.

Friendly Touch [Iconoculture]

Boston.com: In a downtown office building an hour's drive north of Silicon Valley, the technology revolution beats on.

Young musicians, their headphones plugged into desktop computers, are analyzing thousands of songs -- from popular artists to garage bands -- by more than 400 musical measures. In an adjoining room lined with rock posters and shelves crammed with compact discs, T-shirted engineers are shooting pool while employees on their lunch break jam in an acoustic rock session.

Welcome to Savage Beast Technologies Inc., a five-year-old software start-up that is busy building a ''music genome" to identify the world's recorded music according to vocal, lyrical, melodic, harmonic, and instrumental attributes. The results are fed into a massive database to spit out recommendations for music-loving shoppers at Best Buy, Borders, AOL, and other retailers that license Savage Beast technology.

Start-up composes a 'music genome' [Boston.com]

Iconoculture: Urban escapists looking for the perfect artisanal farm like the idea of raising animals for fun and profits that don’t involve slaughter.

They’re cute as heck and they can fetch big bucks: One alpaca stud recently sold for over half a million dollars. Small wonder alpaca farming is catching on with rurbanites, who love raising the gentle South American creatures and selling their soft, luxuriant fleece.

Handweavers and knitters pay several dollars an ounce for raw alpaca fiber, which is fine enough for wedding gowns and sturdy enough for rugs. To meet rising demand, more knotted-up city dwellers and retirees are joining the padded-foot stampede. The Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association now boasts 4,188 members, up from 626 in 1994, with many of them clustered in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle Times 4.6.05).

Seen and Herd [Iconoculture]

IOL: Displaying fancy toilet seats studded with flowers and shells, colourful bathtubs, faucets, mirrors and shower curtains, the well-lit window in this southern Taiwan city looks like a showroom for a trendy bathroom brand.

But this is a restaurant.

It's unusual theme is proving a draw for customers eager to eat food off plates and bowls shaped like western loo seats as well as Japanese "squat toilets".

Marton Theme Restaurant, named after the Chinese word "matong" for toilet, has become a hit in Taiwan's second largest city since its opening in May 2004.

Though bathroom decor seems a bizarre way to whet the appetites of diners, the idea has been so successful owner Eric Wang opened a second and bigger branch just seven months later.

"We not only sell food but also laughter. The food is just as good as any restaurant but we offer additional fun," says 26-year-old Wang, who gave up a career in banking to launch the business.

Toilet restaurant flushed with success [IOL]

New Scientist: Are you a real grump in the mornings? Do you wake up every day feeling tired, embittered, aggrieved, and all too ready to hit the snooze button? If so, then a new alarm clock could be just for you.

The clock, called SleepSmart, measures your sleep cycle, and waits for you to be in your lightest phase of sleep before rousing you. Its makers say that should ensure you wake up feeling refreshed every morning.

As you sleep you pass through a sequence of sleep states - light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep - that repeats approximately every 90 minutes. The point in that cycle at which you wake can affect how you feel later, and may even have a greater impact than how long or little you have slept. Being roused during a light phase means you are more likely to wake up perky.

The clock that wakes you when you are ready [New Scientist]

Entrepreneur.com: Playing games is an important part of every childhood--but for sisters Callie and Pam Weiant, the homemade game their mother created for them as children inspired them to become entrepreneurs.

The game had been popular in the Weiant family for years, and the sisters always thought it would make a great keepsake for other families as well. In 2003, they finally decided to go for it with a loosely based imitation called Gamesake. Players write their favorite memories on playing cards and then use them to move around the traditional board-game structure. Players add new memories year after year, and a keepsake is made. Says Callie, "We want people to create memories in a fun way."

Callie, 36, a former lawyer, and Pam, 35, a marine scientist, didn't know much about creating and marketing a game, so the biggest challenge, says Callie, "[was] that every day we were doing something new." They used savings and seed money from family to cover the $60,000 in startup costs--most of which went to manufacturing.

Be A Boardgame Boss [Entrepreneur.com]

Reuters: JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Thursday introduced a credit card that allows a consumer to merely wave it past a sensor to make payments, a function already common at many U.S. gas stations.

A top issuer of credit cards in the United States, JPMorgan Chase said its new credit card, called "blink," will be marketed this summer and can be used in movie theaters, convenience stores, specialty shops and drug stores.

Sheetz Inc., an East Coast convenience store chain, will be JPMorgan Chase's first partner to launch a co-branded credit card with the contactless feature.

Another early adopter of the new card is convenience store chain 7-Eleven which will test the card in 170 of its stores and eventually will accept it at its 5,700 stores.

"It is a real time-saver for the consumer, and for merchants it is an opportunity to move more people through the line more quickly," Tom O'Donnell, senior vice president of Chase card services.

JP Morgan launches 'contactless' credit card [Reuters]

Iconoculture: As fakes become harder to spot – and more expensive – taking the low road has become more acceptable. And Millennials just love to make a stylish statement.

Dutch design boutique Mind What You Wear takes faux up a notch with its Fakewear line. The popular faux designer bags are labeled, in spray-paint print, "Fake." Just so we’re clear about it.

The boutique’s Louis Vuitton knockoffs scream their black-market origins, while commenting on LV’s graffiti grab at street cool. And young consumers are finding the new faux refreshingly honest and... authentic (CoolHunting.com 4.7.05). Why? As founder Bea Correa puts it, "'Fake' has become one of the defining keywords of the current age."

Is phony becoming tony? Yup, on-target rip-offs have become status symbols of their own. Designer Isaac Mizrahi explains, "It’s exactly the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, which is why it’s chic" (Departures.com 5/6.04). As fakes become harder to spot – and more expensive themselves – taking the low road makes for a smarter, sassier, and more acceptable trip.

Love Fakes? [Iconoculture]

We Make Money Not Art: Aura is a prototype background communication device that aims to create a sense of emotional presence between two people who are separated by space or time.

An augmented sleeping mask records sleeping rhythms and infers an emotional state of the wearer. This information is transmitted to a remote location and mapped to musical selections in a music box that represents the remote partner.

The sleeping mask contains an electro-oculargram that detects eye movements typical of REM sleep. Data from the mask is used to grossly estimate whether or not the wearer has had a good night's sleep, which is in turn used to infer if he/she is in a good or bad mood the following day. This information is mapped to music compositions or selections that play inside the box. By opening it, the remote partner can listen to music that was composed from their loved one's previous night of sleep.

Sleeping Partner Music [We Make Money Not Art]

CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter Issue 16: 07/05/05 - 22/05/05

New Business Ideas/Opportunities Featured In This Issue:

WIRELESS
Bookmarking Retailers
A Tokyo-based company TechFirm is launching a service that connects consumers and small retailers using RFID.

GAMES
Playing Pacman On The Streets
The classic arcade game PacMan has resurfaced on the streets of Singapore using “augmented reality” technology developed by military-backed scientists at the National University of Singapore.

E-COMMERCE
Online T-Shirts Seller
All over the Web, people are unexpectedly finding that T-shirts are more reliable moneymakers than the original ideas that brought them to the Internet!

TECHNOLOGY
SpotScents
SpotScents uses scent projectors to deliver localized odors to a human's nose through the air without requiring users to wear devices.

Skin Networking
This month, NTT Labs plans to start conducting field trials for a radical new "human area networking" technology called RedTactont that uses the naturally-occurring electrical fields of human skin to transmit data.

TV From The Internet
We'll be seeing much more of “narrowcasting”, now that broadband Internet has finally become a more reliable conduit for the delivery of broadcast-quality video.

ENTERTAINMENT
Relax To Play
“Relax to win” is based on the idea that the more you are able to relax, the more points you will score.

MOBILE
1TouchConnect
An innovative cell phone service offers live interpretation, concierge assistance, and help services with one touch of a keypad!

Phoneworld
Cell phone companies need new services to keep growth going. So now they're blanketing offers for entertainment oriented add-ons that would have been unfathomable just a year or two ago.

SERVICES
Marriage Business
When Dane and Nancy Bryant were married two years ago, the guests gave them silverware, wine glasses, a picnic set and a business idea that dramatically changed their lives. The net-matched couple creates a business selling wedding invitations on CD.

Fun With Service
Metropolitan Moms organizes classes for moms who wanted to explore local New York City culture while taking their children along for the ride!

ONLINE
Home Searching
HousingMaps is just one of several innovative hacks giving users new ways to use information since Google launched its maps service!

GADGETS
Connect For Music
The Haptic Gloves allow their wearers to create musical compositions by linking hands together.

CONSUMER GOODS
Daddy's Shorts
Hook and Tackle has figured out a manly way for dad to stash the immediate gotta-haves, like bottle, binkie, and wipes!

MARKETING
Expert Marketing
Check out the following initiatives aimed at tapping expert outsiders (often designers and artists) for potentially lucrative new ideas.

RSS Marketing
MSN is using MessageCast technology to let Fox Sports fans sign up online to receive scores and news from their favorite teams via alerts and RSS feeds. Allowing marketers who cater to a sporting audience to tap into that is incredibly potent

AGRICULTURE
'Hanging' Strawberry Plant
Tutlui, a strawberry that grows on a bed suspended in midair, is one of the most successful agricultural inventions of the past two years.

HEALTH
No More Botox
Bye-bye, Botox? Probably not, but acupuncture facials do offer a drug-free (albeit pricier) alternative!

RETAIL
C28 Evangelists
At C28—short for Colossians 2:8—an overtly evangelical mall-based retail chain, one will find people like store manager Robert Villegas, 27, an Oceanside, Calif., youth pastor who may be the Energizer Bunny of a new kind of retail evangelism.

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

TechnologyReview: Cable television often boasts that it can deliver esoteric fare suiting nearly any taste. But it could be rendered obsolete by the likes of Bill Eason's hog cooking class.

The North Carolina cook's program -- self-described as an "all-day, whole hog class edited down to 45 minutes on how to find, select, prepare and serve whole hog from the man who cooks several hundred per year" -- will be available for a $1.99 download as early as next month on something called DaveTV.

It's the type of show -- niche programming to please any taste or whim -- we'll be seeing much more now that broadband Internet has finally become a more reliable conduit for the delivery of broadcast-quality video.

A number of startups are promoting this sort of "narrowcasting."

Theirs is a vision of a video universe of endless variety that will dwarf traditional television and pay-per-view offerings even as new players -- regional Bell phone companies among them -- emerge to vie for viewers with cable, satellite and other providers.

Next Via the Internet: Tailored TV To Suit Every Taste [TechnologyReview]

World Magazine: At first glance, the narrow store near the merry-go-round at Parkway Plaza could be any of a dozen Southern California mall-chain clones, the kind that hawk stud-belts and double-entendre T-shirts to skater-punks and posers: Back-alley brick walls, exposed-pipe ceilings, cutting-edge clothing lines, rock music throbbing from the rafters.

But the only double-entendres shoppers will find here are based on Scripture. The store is C28—short for Colossians 2:8—an overtly evangelical mall-based retail chain founded by Aurelio F. Barreto III, a California entrepreneur who made millions, found wealth bankrupt, considered suicide, got saved, then found he wanted to do something with his money besides lounge on exotic beaches sipping umbrella drinks.

Launched in 2001, C28 opens its sixth store this month in Palm Desert, Calif. Each store is aimed at fans of California board-sport couture: long shorts with legs like drainpipes, distressed outerwear, year-round logo-laden ski-caps, flip-flops, and jeans that might have been run over by trucks before being delivered by them.

But customers will not find at C28 any prototypical SoCal sales-dudes, tanned and ironic, biding shift time until they can hit the beach. Instead, they will find people like store manager Robert Villegas, 27, an Oceanside, Calif., youth pastor who may be the Energizer Bunny of a new kind of retail evangelism.

Retail evangelism [World Magazine]

New Scientist: The classic arcade game PacMan has resurfaced on the streets of Singapore using “augmented reality” technology developed by military-backed scientists at the University of Singapore.

While virtual reality immerses a user completely inside a computer-generated environment, augmented reality combines both real and virtual sensory information to produce a digitally-altered version of the real world.

The original arcade game, released in 1980, involves using a joystick to move a tiny yellow character - PacMan - around a two dimensional mazelike grid on a video screen. Cookies are scattered throughout the grid and PacMan’s aim is to munch as many as possible while avoiding being caught by the Ghosts chasing him.

The new game, called Human PacMan, superimposes a 3D PacMan world on top of the city's streets and architecture. Players enter the game by donning a wearable computer, headset and goggles before choosing to play the role of PacMan or one of the Ghosts. Players' movements are tracked using GPS receivers and motion sensors and they are linked back to a central computer system by wireless Local Area Network.

Human PacMan hits real city streets [New Scientist]

Iconoculture: Ask Cleopatra. Empowerment through beauty is an ageless desire for both women and men.

Bye-bye, Botox? Probably not, but acupuncture facials do offer a drug-free (albeit pricier) alternative: special tiny needles placed in the forehead, chin, and cheeks to tighten up loose skin and reduce wrinkling. From an acupuncturist’s perspective, the treatment works by increasing the flow of chi, or vital energy, to the face. It also increases collagen production, as well as blood and lymph circulation. Unlike collagen-induction therapy, which stimulates the skin by pricking it with a DermaRoller, an acupuncture facial uses needles precisely placed along meridian channels. The procedure can be done only by a licensed acupuncturist.

As alternative therapies gain fans in the U.S., beauty seekers are trying its varied treatments as an avenue to amping health and beauty. No toxins? All the better. Just ask Cleopatra. Empowerment through beauty is an ageless desire for both women and men.

Tighten Up [Iconoculture]

We Make Money Not Art: The Haptic Gloves allow their wearers to create musical compositions by linking hands together.

Each participants wears the gloves, headphones (through which they can hear their personal music) and a clip-on box housing circuits. As soon as they touch the gloved hand of another, they can hear their own music mixed with the other person's sound. The more people holding hands, the more sophisticated the track.

The interaction through physical touch attempts to physically bring people together even if they don't speak the same language.

Connect For Music [We Make Money Not Art]

Wired News: When David Yang recently looked for a new apartment in Chicago, he took an aerial tour of the city.

As a 22-year-old on a limited budget, Yang couldn't afford to hire a helicopter for his visual inspection of Chicago. Instead, he turned to HousingMaps, a hack that combines craigslist real estate listings with city maps from Google Maps. It lets users pinpoint locations, along with one-click access to photos and descriptions, of dozens of available apartments in more than 20 North American cities.

"It's like flying around the city looking at real estate," said Yang, a consultant for Deloitte. "If I know where my friend lives, or I know where an El (train) stop is ... I can just zoom in and see what's convenient to me."

HousingMaps, created by Paul Rademacher, a 3-D graphic artist from Santa Clara, California, is just one of several innovative hacks giving users new ways to use information since Google launched its maps service. Google Maps offers detailed maps of nearly anywhere in the United States or Canada on which users can quickly zoom in or out.

Hey Google, Map This! [Wired News]

USATODAY.com: Ferney Zantello uses his cell phone for a lot more than just talking. With his tiny Sanyo SCP-7300 he can surf the Internet, take pictures of his wife and kids, zap them wirelessly back to the family and pick up quick text messages from his wife through the day.

"Most people my age I know only use phones for conversations," says Zantello, 33, a staff sergeant with the Marines stationed in Oceanside, Calif. "But it's just a matter of time before everyone will use their phones this way. Once they experience it, they won't be able to turn back."

Zantello's sentiments are exactly what the wireless industry is banking on. After selling more than 1.6 billion cell phones worldwide over the past few years and convincing nearly everyone who would ever want one to sign up for basic cell service, cell phone companies need new services to keep growth going.

So now they're blanketing offers for entertainment oriented add-ons that would have been unfathomable just a year or two ago.

Enter whole new world with your phone [USATODAY.com]

DMNews: MSN is using MessageCast technology to let Fox Sports fans sign up online to receive scores and news from their favorite teams via alerts and RSS feeds.

Fans visiting the MSN Fox Sports site at msn.foxsports.com can choose to get such information through their PC via MSN Messenger, mobile device or e-mail. They also can opt for a combination based on their message status on MSN Messenger, an instant messenger service.

"Marketers will have the opportunity to tap into a focused, fanatically interested audience," said Royal Farros, CEO of MessageCast, Redwood City, CA. "Sports fans are just crazy about this stuff. We reach out over the MSN network and actually find a fan with information they want. Allowing marketers who cater to a sporting audience to tap into that is incredibly potent."

MSN Gives Fox Sports Fans News via Alerts, RSS Feeds [DMNews]

Haaretz: Tutlui, a strawberry that grows on a bed suspended in midair, is one of the most successful agricultural inventions of the past two years. The innovation is expected to change the way this veteran yet problematic crop - a vegetable that is actually a fruit - is grown.

Despite the huge investment necessary to convert the creeping strawberry to a hanging plant, growers who have made the change report business successes beyond all expectations. The good results stem firstly from an unbelievable increase in yield. A dunam of creeping strawberries yields six to seven tons of fruit, while the hanging version yields up to 12 tons.

Moreover, of the yield from creeping plants, only between 800 kilograms and one ton are export quality. In contrast, 3 to 3.5 tons of the hanging strawberries are export quality - and that is where the big money is!

New `hanging' strawberry plant wows Europeans [Haaretz]

Entrepreneur.com: While typical "Mommy and Me" classes can be great fun, Molly Snyder, 30, decided to give the old format a spin when she started Metropolitan Moms. Instead of classes focusing solely on the children, Snyder's idea was to organize classes for moms who wanted to explore local New York City culture while taking their children along for the ride.

This former investment banker got the idea when, three months into her maternity leave, she realized she didn't want to leave her daughter for a full-time position. However, she thought it would be fun to explore the city's many museums and galleries--with her daughter in tow. "When I had this idea, so many people didn't understand what I was talking about," says Snyder.

Fun With Service [Entrepreneur.com]

Trendwatching: Marketing and advertising sure is fun, but true CUSTOMER-MADE involves co-created goods, co-created services, co-created experiences! So, waking up to the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of experts, innovators, inventors and so on outside company walls, research labs and innovation units at large corporations are increasingly NOT going it alone. Check out the following initiatives aimed at tapping expert outsiders (often designers and artists) for potentially lucrative new ideas:

Last summer, Core 77, the industrial design site, teamed up with watch maker Timex for a global design competition called Timex2154: THE FUTURE OF TIME (celebrating Timex's 150th anniversary). Designers from more than 72 countries explored and visualized personal and portable timekeeping 150 years into the future, resulting in over 640 entries. Winners can still be viewed online, and in the Timex Museum.

Expert Marketing [Trendwatching]

Iconoculture: "Have bottle, will travel!" That’s the modern parent’s bottle, er, battle cry. But where’s a dad to stash the immediate gotta-haves, like bottle, binkie, and wipes? Hook and Tackle figured out a manly way to make do – and give an existing product a contemporary pop-friendly spin. Their Bottle Shorts do the trick, with a formula-size side pocket and deep front and back pockets perfect for packing pacifiers. Diaper-dude bags are dandy, but committed dads (CDs) could handle a handier alternative.

Here’s the secret: What’s called the Bottle Short on baby-goods sites like DueMaternity.com is actually Hook and Tackle’s old fave, the BeerCan Island Short. A very different bottle, er, kettle of fish, indeed. It’s a clever nod to the CD desire to do right without looking like a doofus. And a mindful market turn that makes an already good product do double (diaper) duty.

Quick Drying, Barf Resistant [Iconoculture]

USAToday: When Dane and Nancy Bryant were married two years ago, the guests gave them silverware, wine glasses, a picnic set and a business idea that dramatically changed their lives.

Dane, a Web site developer, had decided to make CD wedding invitations for the 115 guests. The discs featured a photo montage of the couple, a two-minute video of them asking the guests to attend, and directions to the ceremony and reception.

Along with the usual replies to the RSVPs, Bryant received three offers from invitees to sell the CDs for him if he went into business.

A couple of months later, Elegant Invites Inc. was born.

"Once I started getting feedback, the bells really went off," said Bryant, 40. "I thought we had to do something with it."

Since the Bryants met on the matchmaker site Match.com, they figured it was only natural for them to launch a business linking technology and matrimony.

Net-matched couple creates wedding invitations on CD [USAToday]

Technology Review: This month, NTT Labs, the research and development wing of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, plans to start conducting field trials for a radical new "human area networking" technology called RedTactont that uses the naturally-occurring electrical fields of human skin to transmit data.

The slim, PCMCIA-based RedTacton transceiver combines a an optical receiver circuit equipped with a super-sensitive photonic electrical field sensor and a crystal to transmit data over the surface of human body at up to 10 megabits per second between wearable devices.

Linked only by touch, the transceivers can also connect to similar transceivers worn by other users or embedded in any objects in real space, such as turnstiles or consumer electronics. Promising better security and far less interference than short-range wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, ZigBee and Near-Field Communications, RedTacton will likely be targeted for use in applications such as wireless headphones, wearable medical devices, security applications, and point-of-sale interactions.

Adventures in the Skin Trade [Technology Review]

Yenra: An innovative cell phone service offers live interpretation, concierge assistance, and help services with one touch of a keypad. 1TouchConnect is the first international telecommunications provider to combine convenient local and international calling with traveler assistance.

"We created 1TouchConnect to bring added comfort, convenience and security to vacationers and businesspeople who are once again traveling in record-breaking numbers," says Claude Buchert of TeleplusGroup. "We're an international company so we understand the traveler's dream of communicating with anyone anywhere. We want our customers to think of 1TouchConnect as their friend in a foreign country."

Travel Cell Phones [Yenra]

Popgadget: Here is a game I will never be able to win. If, like me, you are also chronically unable to relax, then “Relax to Win” could either finally make you achieve this long awaited goal, or … send you straight into a mental institution.

“Relax to win” was developed by Media Lab Europe and the Orange Brand Futures group, the major UK cell phone service provider. In order to play the game, which is based on the idea that the more you are able to relax, the more points you will score, you need the above sensor designed by Philips Designs. By placing it between your fingers, the device will measure the player's galvanic skin response and sends the data by wireless connection to a PC or cell phone screen.

Relax To Play [Popgadget]

We Make Money Not Art: SpotScents, developed by Yasuyuki Yanagida at the Media Information Science Laboratories in Japan, uses scent projectors to deliver localized odors to a human's nose through the air without requiring users to wear any special devices.

A scent projector is composed of an air cannon that launches vortex rings which can travel several meters. Because Scent Projectors emit only a small amount of scented air, different scents can be delivered within a short time frame without air conditioning equipment.

Possible application: at home people can enjoy movies or videogames featuring smell switching that corresponds to changes in scenes or advertisers could provide a series of short "scented" commercial messages to be broadcasted on TV, artists could add odors to multimodal pieces without worrying about mixing smells from adjacent works in an exhibit.

Future versions of SpotScents will closely combine the olfactory experience with audio/visual content, so users can feel the air of "the world beyond the screen."

SpotScents [We Make Money Not Art]

Startup Journal: Dan Mowry thought he knew just how to turn his family entertainment newsletter into a successful online business. Two years ago, he designed an attractive site and loaded it up with features to entice readers and advertisers: electronic crossword puzzles, a history quiz and cartoons. Almost as an afterthought, he designed a T-shirt with his company's logo, a circus ringmaster holding a megaphone.

Today the online and print newsletters have flopped. But the shirts are pulling in up to $3,000 per month, as Mr. Mowry joins the growing ranks of entrepreneurs profiting from an improbable but lucrative Web business model: selling T-shirts.

All over the Web, bloggers, artists and entrepreneurs are unexpectedly finding that T-shirts are more reliable moneymakers than the original ideas that brought them to the Internet.

Selling T-Shirts Is Big Business on Web [Startup Journal]

RFID in Japan: A Tokyo-based company TechFirm is launching a service that connects consumers and small retailers using RFID. Consumers having RFID-chipped phones can "bookmark" their "favorite" stores by showing their phones to RFID readers installed in stores. Information about a "bookmarked" store is automatically transmitted to a mobile phone. Consumers can access information about all "bookmarked" stores using dedicated mobile application software.

On one hand, this service allows consumers to easily manage and access information about their favorite stores "anywhere at anytime" using mobile phones. On the other hand, stores can collect lists of people who may be interested in them and use the lists to send bargain information etc.

"Bookmark" this store right here [RFID in Japan]