The Uber-Review: Walt Disney is working on a multimedia player that selects songs based on the owner's latest mood via wrist sensors. The sensors, measure and collects body temperature, perspiration and pulse rate to build a profile of what music or video to play. Based on the profile, the device comes up a song or video to match the mood. If nothing is available in your media library to match your mood the player can download something new to do the trick. Using Tivo-esque qualities, the player will get better at matching media with the owner's mood based on rejection or approval of the selections. Now for the quintessential Disney portion of the player, "the device could display animated cartoons when the owner is particularly happy".

The Disney Mood Player, Plays Songs Or Videos Based On Your Mood [The Uber-Review]

The Sunday Times: Women have always treated the ladies like a no man’s land, a place where the barriers and bitchiness of womanhood come down and two strangers will bond over the texture of a Stila lip gloss, the pigment in a Nars blusher, or a simple, “I really like your top.” Given our ability to turn a lavatory into a private boudoir of chat and beauty, it’s a wonder that nobody thought of the Powderpuff Girls sooner.

For £400, you can hire in this crack team of professional make-up artists in sexy but prim Agent Provocateur-inspired uniforms, who will preen your lady guests with a VIP hair and make-up session — and they do it all in the loos. Katie Reynolds, Powderpuff’s girl-in-chief, says that, at weddings, they tend to be booked for the start of the reception so guests can have their make-up touched up before the next stage in a long day. “At late-night parties, though, you ’ll get women coming in who want a whole adventurous change to their look, mid-evening.”

Reynolds is a ballet dancer-turned-make-up artist, with a love of retro style. She says the Powderpuff Girls offer more than just a useful hair and make-up service: it’s a whole aesthetic. “I love Lulu Guinness’s look,” she says. “We’re coming from the same place, playing on that 1950s style, when women looked immaculate."

The Powder Room [The Sunday Times]

Yenra: The spring television and print advertising campaign for Candie's will feature four celebrities: Singer, actress, megastar Hilary Duff; Grammy nominee Ciara; and actresses Michelle Trachtenberg and Samaire Armstrong. This is the first time the brand has enlisted four stars to appear in an advertising campaign. Past Candie's spokespeople include Destiny's Child and Kelly Clarkson.

Hilary, Ciara, Michelle, and Samaire are all unique in their talent as well as their style. Mixing the four girls in an advertising campaign was the ideal way to showcase all of Candie's product categories which are available nationwide exclusively at Kohl's Department Stores.

Iconix CEO Neil Cole stated: "Bringing together the hottest young stars of Hollywood in one ad campaign is an excellent way speak to young women, who may identify with one or more of the stars. Kohl's has embraced our brand and we are thrilled with the response to Candie's at Kohl's."

Celebrity Marketing Campaign [Yenra]

BusinessWeek: For products as individual and personal as the look of your face, it is remarkable that cosmetics merchandising in the U.S. has remained stuck in its longstanding "look but don't touch" tradition. On one hand, drug stores sell cosmetics in sealed-plastic packaging that require shoppers to buy things like lipstick without a chance to try it on. Alternatively, department stores allow more hands-on access, but only with the hovering attention of a sales person whose commission is driven by pushing a specific brand. Both approaches leave something to be desired.

Spotting a void in the marketplace, Sephora has staked out the middle ground. Three years ago Europe's leading retail beauty chain moved into the U.S. with a simple, if radical, concept. It created a retail environment that invited customers to roam the store and try on different lipsticks, eyeliners and blushes made by many different manufacturers. Instead of department store-type cosmetics counters that force shoppers to interact with a salesperson to sample a product, Sephora is organized around freestanding racks that feature such chic brands as Bulgari, Christian Dior, Gucci, Lancome and Calvin Klein.

Sephora's open, minimalist displays entice shoppers with sumptuous product colors, packaging and bottle design. Strategically placed mirrors, tissues, cotton swabs, astringent and makeup remover encourage sampling. Prices usually out of sight in department stores are prominently marked. Without the pressure of a salesperson eager to close a sale and move on to the next customer, shoppers feel free to spend an hour or more trying out different colors and different brands until they arrive at the exact ones they like.

Sephora: Liberating Beauty Products [BusinessWeek]

Springwise: Slate is an all-inclusive laundry service for NYC residents available through the web. Customers sign up for a weekly flat fee of USD 50-60 (GBP 29-35/EUR 42-50), receive a Slate hamper, then choose a pick-up time. Which means no standing in line, no counting and itemizing, no financial surprises: Slate does the sorting, and determines which garment needs to be cleaned by which process (anything from hydro-carbon, wet-cleaning, hand washing, to regular laundering). Cleaned clothes come back wrapped, tagged, and good as new. The environment also gets a gentler treatment, as the company uses a combination of bio-degradable and organic agents.

In Slate's own words: "You are dealing with someone who speaks your language. You bought USD 250 dollar jeans and you are taking them to be cleaned where? To the run-of-the mill cleaner in his dreary shop down the block, who doesn't care as much for the clothes as you do? We speak the same language: fashion. When your clothes come back, they as new as the day you bought them at Barneys. On the surface we are a clothes cleaner, but underneath we are a fashion label."

Laundry chic [Springwise]

inQ7money: Fortune cookies used to be found only in a few Chinese restaurants. Or seen in Hollywood movies. This delicacy was immortalized, for instance, in a 1966 film "The Fortune Cookie" starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

Fortune cookies, which resemble the boat-shaped ancient Chinese gold ingots, are each imbedded with a strip of paper containing a prediction, lucky number or aphorism, either thought-provoking or outrightly amusing. First popularized in the United States, these are now available in the local market and have become a "Kung Hei Fat Choi" giveaway.

Lucky Fortune has yet to go full-blast with its domestic promotions, but the duo say the "Gold Coin" cookies are hot products during the months of December, January and February. Barely a year after the product was launched, the company's plant in Cainta now operates at full capacity 24 hours a day to cope with huge demand this peak season.

Partners bet on fortune cookies [inQ7money]

PittsburghLIVE.com: It is now possible for luxury-loving, label-conscious consumers to eat their meals from dinnerware created by their favorite fashion designers.

In a time when when singers, actors, and media personalities ranging from Sean Combs and Gwen Stefani to Mandy Moore and Nicky Hilton have added the title fashion designer to their resume, it only seems natural that fashion designers would cross over into the field of home design.

Rosenthal, a German dinnerware manufacturer and subsidiary of Waterford Wedgwood, partnered with the late Italian designer Gianni Versace in 1993 to create the Rosenthal Versace collection that includes dinnerware, stem glass, cutlery, silverware and giftware that is sold locally at Glassworks in Shadyside, Louis Anthony Jewelers in Bethel Park and Contemporary Concepts in Turtle Creek and McCandless.

Fashion Plates [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]

Yenra: ANI has appointed DZP Marketing Communications to lead the strategic development and repositioning of Atkins Advantage. DZP has designed a new national print campaign designed to articulate the Atkins Advantage: a unique nutrition advantage versus the competition: high fiber, high protein, vitamins, minerals, low sugar, and no trans fats.

"Our new management has streamlined operations and built a foundation for strong financial performance, enabling us to invest in the new DZP campaign which educates consumers about the nutrition advantage of our great-tasting Atkins Advantage bars and shakes," said Neumann.

"Today's consumers are better educated about nutrition than ever before; we feel Atkins Advantage provides exactly what they are looking for: better taste and better nutrition versus the competition," said Neumann. "DZP's insights and creative solutions have resulted in a comprehensive, integrated campaign that clearly positions Atkins Advantage nutrition bars and shakes."

Atkins Advantage Brand [Yenra]

Mainichi: Aging is the name of the game when it comes to fine wine. Top producers mature their brews in oak barrels; connoisseurs will keep a bottle in the cellar for years so they can savor the complex bouquet at its peak.

For Hiroshi Tanaka, all that waiting is just a waste of time -- and he says he's got the machinery to prove it.

"We can now electrolyze young wine and ship bottles of fine wine out in no time at all," declared Tanaka, president of Japanese startup Innovative Design and Technology Inc., which runs a small laboratory in Hamamatsu, west of Tokyo.

"Think of the savings we'll make. Shorter production time, no need for storage, no need to invest in barrels," he said.

The company is in talks with wineries in California and Washington state to start providing its U.S. affiliate, BW2 Holdings, with young wine to treat and sell, Tanaka said. BW2 hopes to sell the bottles on the Internet later this year for an affordable US$5.

Bordeaux Beware! [Mainichi]

CScout: By connecting the real world with information from the Internet, users can explore geographical spaces with the eye of an insider. There is a huge variety of technologies which can be used to enable visitors to find their way around the globe. So far, most applications are used to tour museums, tourist sights or foreign cities. The most obvious applications are audio tour guides, recorded to CD or downloadable to cell phones, iPods and PDA’s. New online tools enable users to tag certain locations with special barcodes which let interested visitors retrieve the hidden information with their cellphones.

Annotated Spaces [CScout]

TRENDWATCHING.COM: US-based Magnolia, a division of BestBuy, is turning the art of installing home theatres (from reclining seats and huge screens to sophisticated sound systems) into a branded, nation-wide business: "Magnolia is the new service that will customize your home theater [i.e. tell you exactly what to buy] and make it all work together [i.e. come to your house and hook it all up]". There are currently 70 Magnolia store-in-stores in BestBuys across the US, targeting a massive market: according to the National Association of Home Builders, 36 percent of people building new homes want a media room, with the majority spending USD 5,000-55,000 (EUR 4,125-41,250/GBP 2,840-28,400) on their systems. International expansion sounds like a no-brainer.

INSPERIENCES [TRENDWATCHING.COM]

SPACE.com: Frequent flyer miles will for the first time be good beyond this planet, based on a new offering from Virgin Atlantic airways and its space-related sister company Virgin Galactic.

Flying Club members will be able to convert their regular miles into space miles. To get to space, members will need to log 2 million miles down here.

"A journey into space seems like a distant dream for many but this deal makes it more even more achievable for our frequent travelers to become astronauts," said Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Galactic. "We expect the first Virgin Galactic space flight to take place in 2008 which gives our Flying Club members time to save up all their miles."

Virgin Galactic commercial flights are expected to cost $200,000 initially but the company expect prices to fall over time. Virgin Galactic will own and operate privately built spaceships, modeled on the history-making SpaceShipOne craft, which won the Ansari X-prize for repeat trips to space by a privately built craft.

Frequent Flyer Miles Good for Space Travel [SPACE.com]

gizmag: You’d think we would have already perfected the best way to produce a cup of coffee from coffee beans, but several years of research by Stanford University mechanical engineering lecturer Alan Adler (the inventor of the Aerobie flying disk which holds the world throwing record of more than a quarter mile) appear to have found a better coffee machine.

Independent reviews suggest the new Aerobie AeroPress delivers the smoothest, richest, purest and fastest cup of coffee (under 30 seconds) you’re likely to find and the bonus is that the AeroPress costs just US$30.

The AeroPress Coffee Machine: a new concept in an ancient art [gizmag]

Yenra: Predictive text software developer Tegic and love author John Gray offer the top-ten tips to help ensure a successful union of texting and dating in 2006.

It's no secret that text messaging is on the rise. In fact, even texting to share amorous thoughts is on the upswing, according to the first annual T9 Texting Outlook Survey. Sixty percent of those who sent text messages have sent one to tell someone they love them or miss them.

"Sending a text is a great way to get to know someone better and to let them know you are thinking of them. Text messages are an informal and fun way of communicating," said Dr. Gray.

T9 predictive text software anticipates the word that a user is entering as they press a key just once for each letter. For example, keying love requires just four keystrokes (5-6-8-3) instead of eleven when tapping out letters individually. And Valentine can be reached in only nine steps.

SMS and Date [Yenra]

Italy Magazine: We are sure this happens to everyone all the time. You find yourself in Rome - just have a couple of hours at your disposal - and are not sure whether to spend them in the gym working out or sightseeing. Well - you don’t have to make that choice anymore!

The ever resourceful Romans have come up with a whole new take on sightseeing in Rome, which I am sure will have traditionalists jumping up and down with rage. In short, the latest trend for the fitness-conscious visitors of Rome is a guided tour of Rome whilst jogging. One of the routes claims to take you in 90 minutes and 5 miles down the Spanish Steps, through the city’s very heart and across the Tiber River, you get to Castel S. Angelo and the magnificent St.Peter’s Basilica.

“An absolutely striking route, not to be missed on your first visit to Rome.”, says the Sightjogging website.

Another route takes you in 60 minutes through 2000 years of history round the Imperial Forums and the Colosseum. The trip is handled by multilingual trainers jogging tourists along predefined routes. The clients are met at the hotel or at predefined locations and during the route the trainer gives cultural information about the highlights of the route itself in the language chosen by the clients.

Sightjogging anyone? [Italy Magazine]

canyoncourier.com: Whether you’re a child of the West, or the West Coast, you’ll feel right at home at Rock’n U Ranch, a new boutique in downtown Evergreen offering distinctive apparel to suit tastes from Manitou Springs to Malibu.

"It’s L.A. style," says owner Lisa O’Farrell. "Fun and funky." It’s a lot more than that, though. Located on Main Street’s north end next to Qwest, Rock’n U Ranch also features a marvelous selection of hand-crafted leather garments and trendy casual fashions, plus lots of jewelry and other accessories to match both.

New downtown boutique perfect for surf or saddle [canyoncourier.com]

Although initially created as an anti-hangover elixir, Resurrect is now becoming a part of the daily diet for the health conscious individual. Formulated with over 19 vitamins and herbs, Resurrect has the properties to help detoxify your liver, aid digestion, neutralize intestinal toxins, and increase energy and endurance.

These vitamins and herbs help detoxify the human body from all the toxins faced on a daily basis, such as alcohol consumption, air pollution, and cigarette smoke. Resurrect can also be used as a mixer with your favorite liquor. Because of its refreshing, fruity flavor and the ability to help detoxify the body, Resurrect mixes wonderfully with vodka, gin, and rum.

Resurrect

Strategiy.com: This Season, shoppers in Dubai will be able to see and buy Shahmina shawls from stores of Pride Of Kashmir across Dubai. Shahmina is a variety of the finest Pashmina, with a very fine, 350- micron fiber. This new range is intended to replace the shahtoush; the finer than fine wool, which is banned because the goat that produces the hair is on the verge of extinction.

The classical, traditional themes still retain their prided of place with exquisite hand-embroidered borders. Hand embroidery finds itself at its breathtaking best in the peerless jamawar work that graces the most exclusive and expensive products in the range. At the same time, there is something for those who prefer their fabric simple too, in the form of unadorned, plain shawls that hark back to the most ancient of traditional simplicity.

With a range that runs the entire gamut from earthy pastel tones to brilliant primary colors and goes on to includes all shades of dark and bright, Shahmina shawls from Pride of Kashmir are destined to find a place on the wish list of everyone from the savvy fashionista to the conservative traditionalist.

Pride Of Kashmir unveils new shawl collection [Strategiy.com]

WashingtonPost.com: Tennis can be a great workout if you have skilled, competitively matched partners playing singles. For others, the game is more stop than go, sprinkled with cuss-muttering frustration: hit, run, whack ball into net, stop. Hit, return, re-return(!), stop, curse, hail taxi to retrieve errant shot, etc. Entertaining, yes, even social. But not a heart-rate booster.

Cardio Tennis, a national program being offered at a variety of venues in the Washington area, seeks to change that. The workout runs participants around the court urgently enough to keep their heart rates in the cardio-training zone (65 to 85 percent of maximum heart rate) while helping improve tennis skills. It's billed as similar to an interval workout. Armed with a racquet, a watch and my well-honed ability to count heart beats via my carotid artery, I showed up to give it a try.

On an indoor court at Sport Fit Bowie in Bowie, instructor Kevin McClure starts me and four other participants with warm-up footwork moves followed by a repeating drill in which we hustle from one spot to another, squaring up to imaginary balls and swinging imaginary racquets, culminating in a phantom overhead slam down a nonexistent opponent's throat. No unforced errors!

Cardio Tennis: Advantage, Heart [WashingtonPost.com]

DailyCandy: Click. Scroll. Click. Scroll. Click. Scroll.

Whoa, shopping online is, like, totally wild!

Or — not so much. Which is why we are stoked to introduce you to Etsy, a new, experimental, and totally awesome website that challenges the norms of online shopping.

Run by a group of computer whiz kids, the site offers indie designers the space to showcase and sell their handmade work (kind of like an eBay for crafty types). It’s easy and cheap to post any creation (craft supplies, clothing, geekery, vintage gear, edibles). But it’s even easier and more fun to shop.

You see, the beautifully designed Etsy utilizes technology that lets you search not just by category or top sellers but also by color (just click any of the virtual swatches) and geography (you can finally find out what’s being made in Scottsbluff, Nebraska). You can even look at stuff via time machine or in 3-D (explore for yourself.)

Later this month, they’ll be employing multiuser shopping, which allows you to you invite friends to browse along with you in real time. You get to see each other’s cursors move across the page as you search and click. Discuss/fight over finds without a phone, e-mail, or IM.

Just Browsering [DailyCandy]

Far Out Art: Check out Far Out Art's website!

They search the world over, visiting art fairs, galleries, local craft exhibits looking for the highest-quality, coolest furniture and home furnishings available... all artist-designed, all very unique and all available for you to take home and outfit your home to your own personal tastes. They've got furnishings like beds, shelves and tables plus great candleholders, wine racks, CD racks and much much more.

Far Out Art

The Cincinnati Post: What will the fashionable bathroom be wearing this year? Egyptian-cotton towels? Spa lotions and potions? Sure, but if you really want to impress your guests, consider a roll of trophy toilet paper. Why settle for utilitarian white when you can flaunt sophisticated black, from Europe, no less.

The ebony tissue, trumpeted by its maker, Renova, as "the first chic toilet paper ever," was introduced last year in boutique hotels in Madrid, then found its way to French retail customers via Monoprix, the Super Target of France.

Now Renova, based in Portugal, plans to have the product on U.S. store shelves early this year, said Jose Pinheiro, international brand manager. In the meantime, style-conscious consumers can buy it online at www.wellbeingworld.com.

Style on roll with chic black tissue [The Cincinnati Post]

The Patriot News: The Hershey Co. plans to introduce a low-calorie chocolate candy product in March.

Hershey's Sticks will be offered in four flavors: milk chocolate, caramel-filled milk chocolate, mint milk chocolate and rich dark chocolate.

Sticks will be individually wrapped in a box of nine. Each Stick - the size and shape of a writing pen - has 60 calories.

Hershey plans new product [The Patriot News]

Sephora.com: Antin has long required his model and actor clients to shower with bottled spring water the night before a photo shoot so their strands are in top condition for the next day—and free of what Antin says are the dulling and drying effects of tap water. So when Antin created his Jonathan Product hair care line, he used only de-ionized, purified water to offset the dulling minerals found in tap water. Now, Antin has taken water purification to the next level with the introduction of his Beauty Water™ Shower Purification System, a revolutionary water filter for your shower—and the closest you can get to showering with pure spring water short of a trip to the Rockies.

According to Antin and his team of researchers, tap water is loaded with chlorine, heavy metals, and other harsh chemicals that dry out the hair, strip the skin and hair of natural protective oils and prematurely fade hair color. This breakthrough water filtration system removes these damaging elements, rendering hair soft, shiny, and all the more manageable. “The biggest comment we get about the shower filter is how much softer it makes your skin and hair,” says Antin.

Besides improving your hair condition, the Beauty Water™ Shower Purification System may actually improve the quality of your shower: The actual filter attaches to your existing showerhead, and then a luxury showerhead attachment—complete with massage and water pressure variation settings—attaches on to that. The powerful purification filter is made of Amorphous Titanium Silicate, a potassium-charged mineral that’s coated with carbonized coconut shells. These two ingredients work together to remove synthetic chemicals and heavy metals like copper and lead, while a KDF-55 filter whisks away chlorine.

Jonathan Antin Brings Pure Spring Water to a Shower Near You [Sephora.com]

The VanCouver courier.com: T&T Supermarket is celebrating the arrival of the Year of the Dog in style this month.

Walk into any T&T right now and you'll be greeted by a blaze of red and gold, as the stores gear up to celebrate Chinese New Year-which this year includes a more polished offering of T&T's popular table-ready, takeout Chinese New Year's menu.

The Hired Belly is a big fan of T&T, if for no other reason than its well-stocked live seafood tanks, which offer up an affordable, fresh shellfish feast on a whim. There's more, of course, from aisles of staples and specialties to frozen dim sum, Asian vegetables, barbecued meats to go and baked treats.

Whether you're a self-confessed kitchen klutz or a seasoned dabbler in Chinese cuisine-no fuss, no muss-these well-executed dishes offer the perfect chance to put on your own Chinese New Year's celebration at home.

"Think restaurant food at supermarket prices," jokes T&T's Melina Hung, who says busy schedules and the lack of an official Canadian holiday make it challenging for people to find time to prepare the dishes they need to celebrate in style.

Chinese New Year takeout [The VanCouver courier]

DEXIGNER: LaCie kicks off 2006 with 6 new storage products designed to help people easily manage their digital lives. Fresh new LaCie solutions for 2006 are Lacie Little Big Disc, Lacie Rugged Hard Drive, kwarim, LaCie Two Big, LaCie mini Hard Drive & Hub and LaCie Slim DVD+/-RW.

LaCie has again teamed up with world-renowned designers including Neil Poulton and Karim Rashid, and award-winning tech companies such as LightScribe and Roxio, to develop the freshest new hard drives and DVD burners on the market.

And stay tuned for the launch of a brand new "Customer Profiles" webpage that showcases how filmmakers, photographers, musicians and many others are using LaCie products to get things done.

LaCie Kicks Off 2006 with 6 Fresh New Storage Solutions All by Famous Designers [DEXIGNER]

Iconoculture: Who’s the fairest? Those gazing into the Conduit Group’s Daydreams mirror by designer Jason Miller find themselves in a beautiful landscape. Each mirror contains a digitally produced photo of an ocean or a forest. The scenes offer an escapist setting for the harsh realities of life in front of the mirror (and the harsher realities of rushing for work in front of it).

Wrinkles, zits, and bad hair days happen. But there’s a window of opportunity for distraction, amusement, and the joys of fantasy in the looking glass over the bathroom sink or in the hall. A more beautiful image in the mirror? The cold, hard truth isn’t what everyone’s after when they look in the mirror day after day. For Millennials or Xers bent on having their homes their way, mashing fiction with reality has an increasingly important place in the scheme of finetuning home accessories.

Conduit Group’s Daydreams mirror blends fiction with reality [Iconoculture]

BBC News: The contents of a woman's handbag have long remained a mystery - often even to the owner - but a new design offers to shine a light on the problem.

A solar-powered handbag designed by a student from Brunel University promises to make finding keys and other items at the bottom of a bag easier. The handbag, dubbed Sun Trap, uses a solar cell attached to the outside of the bag to trap energy from sunlight. The energy is stored in an internal battery which lights up the lining. The lining is made from an electroluminescent material similar to that found in mobile phones and is lit up by the bag's zip which acts as a switch. The bag goes dark when the zip is closed or after 15 seconds if it is accidentally left open.

A secondary use of the portable battery is as an emergency charger for mobile phones and other wireless devices. Safety and usefulness were uppermost in Rosanna Kilfedder's mind when she came up with the design.

"I had the idea for Sun Trap handbag after seeing so many friends frantically searching their bags for house keys, usually on a dark doorstep," said Ms Kilfedder. "I also noticed friends using their mobile phones like torches to examine the contents of their bag, which gave me the idea of lighting up the bag," she said.

Solar handbag lights up contents [BBC News]

Iconoculture: Mothers of Organic – otherwise known as M.O.O. – is an online beehive of pro-organic moms. The maternal healthnuts share info and inspiration about how to raise healthier, happier kids and steer clear of pesticides, preservatives, and pollutants.

The all-natural network was created by farmer-owned food label Organic Valley. Nutritionists, organic chefs, wellness experts, and celebrity activists (like Raffi!) regularly contribute advice, exposés, and personal experiences.
Multimedia downloads, educational tools, and fun activity suggestions help wellness-minded moms instill the organic spirit (and healthy eating habits) in their kids.

Organic has moved out of the specialty aisles of our grocery stores and now pop off almost every shelf.

M.O.O. is an online beehive for all-natural, pro-organic moms [Iconoculture]

Iconoculture: Big Mama is watching. MealPay.com enables parents to set up an electronic debit-card system that logs their kids’ cafeteria purchases and bans certain foods altogether.

The ATM / debit-like card is accepted in 76 school districts in 24 states (CSMonitor.com 11.22.05). Kids use it to purchase food at the cafeteria, then parents can go online to track what and how much was bought.

There are certain loopholes in the system, however. Does purchase equal consumption? Does surveillance undermine a teenager’s burgeoning sense of independence? Shouldn’t schools offer only nutritious food in the first place? We’re guessing worrywart and Control Freak parents won’t care.

Parents are down with V-chips and media blockers. Why not food filters?

MealPay.com helps parents control what their kids eat at school [Iconoculture]

The Independent: Fine. I'm feeling absolutely fine, because the jet lag has worn off and I'm at the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show. Honda is feeling fine, too. "Fine Technology, Fine Times, Feel FINE!" is its motor show motto. And there's more fine-ness at Toyota, in whose Fine-X you can discover that "Ecology and Emotion meet in a fun-to-drive time in which you can enjoy the joy of steering freely at will". Fine words, indeed.

Specifically, you can enjoy steering the Fine-X nose-first into a parking space then sliding the rear end in to complete the manoeuvre, thanks to four independently steering wheels able to turn sideways. It's a parkophobic's dream, able also to do an about-face in its own length by steering each wheel through 45 degrees and making the rear wheels rotate in the opposite direction from the front ones.

As you might expect, in a show strong on hybrids and cars powered by electric fuel cells, the Fine-X with its vast gullwing doors and vegetable-matter, CO2-neutral interior features both technologies. And back at Honda we find fuel-cell technology pushed ever further with the long, low, sleek FCX concept, whose "vertical flow" cells are so compact they can fit into the structure's backbone. You can also feed the FCX the hydrogen it needs from Honda's Home Energy Station, which converts natural gas into hydrogen and minimal carbon dioxide.

Tokyo's take on the cars of the future [The Independent]

BizReport.com: The images are painted directly onto building walls in urban areas, graffiti-style. Wide-eyed kids, portrayed in a stylized, comic-book rendering, pose with a mysterious, hand-size gadget. One licks his like a lollipop. Another is playing paddleball with the thing.

What looks like artful vandalism, though, is really part of a guerrilla marketing campaign for Sony's PlayStation Portable, a device that can play games, music and movies.

In major cities such as San Francisco, Miami and New York, Sony has paid building owners to use wall space for the campaign, and the images have become a familiar sight. It's the latest effort by a big corporation to capitalize on the hot world of street art to reach an urban market that has learned to tune out traditional advertising.

Nike Inc., Time magazine and even stodgy International Business Machines Corp. are among the growing list of companies that have dabbled in street art to get their marketing messages out.

The trend makes some artists squeamish even as others start marketing firms or open galleries. In Washington's Adams Morgan neighborhood, cell phone maker Nokia Corp. used sidewalk chalk drawings to promote its N-Gage, a cell phone aimed at gamers, when it launched the product in 2003.

What Looks Like Graffiti Could Really Be an Ad [BizReport.com]

CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter Issue 24: 17/12/05 - 31/12/05

New Business Ideas/Opportunities Featured In This Issue:

DESIGN
Walking Music
The Digital Sound Bag lets you slip your personal music player into a clear acetate pocket and plug it into built in speakers.

Custom Walls
Single Tapete ('singles wallpaper') sells photographic wallpaper, featuring photos of whoever/whatever.

FASHION
Custom-ers Made
Consumers spend hundreds of dollars for custom jeans that shape the body to show off their best features.

GADGETS
Kid Tracking
The mTrack's i-Kids phone can pinpoint a child's location to within 20 metres via phone or net.

Classic Taste
Gizmo accessories are the in thing right now and it’s a race to see who can provide the market with a luxury end version of these products.

ROBOTS
Labour Free
iRobot have developed the perfectly named Scooba - Floor Washing Robot: a revolutionary new hard floor cleaning system.

MOBILE
Scented Phones
Japan’s Keitai KunKun smelltones release subtle (yet unmistakable) aromas like Berry and Wild Nature fro your phone!

RETAIL
Selling the Retailing Experience
Consumers have many more [retail channel] choices today. You have to give people an added reason to come into your store, something that makes the act of visiting a shop as rewarding as acquiring the good itself.

ADVERTISING
For the Rest of Us
In-vouge advertising: frill-free commercials!

The Displax Interactive Window
Displax® Interactive is the solution that allows people to interact with a projected multimedia application, just by pressing the display with a finger.

Amateur is Fine
Brown-Forman and Richard Branson launched Virgin Vines. Starting with a Chardonnay and Shiraz, the partnership seeks to promote wine consumption by dissing those who take wine too seriously.

FOOD & BEVERAGE
Pure, Sweet HINT
Think ice cold water with a slice of fresh fruit - water that quenches your deepest thirst while adding just a bit more flavor.

Starbucks Drivethrus
It got hard to ignore coffee lovers' demand for a quick java fix without leaving the warmth of their driver's seats!

CONSUMER GOODS
Greeting Umbrella
The Polite Umbrella, by Joo Paek, respects people’s personal space in a public area, is shrinkable.
http://www.coolbusinessideas.com/archives/greeting_umbrella.html

Beating Arachnophobia
The Spider Catcher is an innovative new product which uses two sets of bristles to gently catch the spider or bug, carefully trapping it until you decide when and where to let it go.

Caffeine Shock
Introducing Shower Shock, the original and world's first caffeinated soap from ThinkGeek!

SERVICES
Fun Training
Companies are starting to look for new ways to playfully train and educate their employees and even customers.

LIFESTYLE
iTrain: Your Personal MP3 Trainer
Designed by yoga/pilates guru Grace Lazenby along with a team of Hollywood personal trainers, there are 11 different workouts ranging from iStretch to iSculpt Ballet. Each one is a personal training session/soundtrack.

Hip Dads and Mums
With an increasing demand for nontraditional baby accessories, Über Baby is a hotspot for parents as young as 20 and grandparents as old as 80.

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