Springwise: Garden watering bans are a fact of life these days, and not just in dry climes like much of Australia and the Western US. But a new Australian invention can keep lawns and gardens green without using any extra household water.
The Water-Leech, which retails for AUD 200 and up is a breadbox-sized device with a universal hose attachment that hooks up to shower or sink drains. Instead of letting grey water escape down the drain, a pump in the unit draws it into a self-contained storage tank. The pump is powered by a rechargeable battery instead of a wall plug to prevent any possibility of electric shock while its in operation. When the Water-Leech tank is full, owners simply wheel the unit outside to water their plants. (Providing biodegradable soaps and detergents are used, water from showers, baths, laundry, sinks and dishwashers is completely reusable.)
Low cost grey water recycling [Springwise]

Strange New Products: The Zilopop is marketed as a breath freshener, in the form of a stainless steel lollipop.
It’s made in Germany and marketed in the USA by Charlotte, NC-based Frieling USA, where it’s dubbed, “SmellKiller”.
When your saliva touches Zilopop’s stainles steel lolly, it activates its “weird science” to neutralize the foul-smelling molecules in your mouth.
After one to two minutes suck, all odors in the mouth removed. Zilopop consists of a very high-quality stainless steel, the property has, in conjunction with moisture to neutralize odors.
By suck at this stainless steel is the breath of food smells clean. The stainless steel zilopos is tested and safe.
Zilopop – Stainless Steel Lollipop [Strange New Products]

So you have seen advertisements from commercials to billboards. Now advertisers are looking at your skin to place their ads! Look at how this Orange County based company is getting venues to let advertisers on their customer’s hands.
This is a new form of advertising and is completely different from the television commercials and magazine ads people are used to. What do you call advertising on your hands? “Well I like to call it Handvertising”, said Mike Brown CEO of Handvertising USA.
Handvertising USA is transforming the way advertisers are looking at your skin, more specifically your hands. “Almost everyone has been to a county fair, swap meet, bar or club and had had their hand stamped for proof of entry. We have found a better use for this space that could make everyone happy” said Mike.
HandvertisingUSA.com

Gearlog: In the past couple years, plenty of laptop-bag makers have ventured beyond the ubiquitous black-nylon clones; but I rarely see a bag I’d use even if I didn’t have a laptop to put in it. But the Vintage Laptop Satchel, from Solo, has such great, simple styling and uses such beautiful materials–espresso-colored buttery leather on the outside, a gorgeous rich-blue lining–that I’d take it anywhere.
It’s really good looking, but it also fulfills its function admirably. The Satchel can fit laptops up to 15.4 inches; the laptop section isn’t thickly padded, but it’s fine for small bumps. Just don’t fling the bag around. There’s another section inside large enough for papers and magazines, as well as three gadget slots and a smaller zippered compartment.
Hands On: Solo Vintage Laptop Satchel [Gearlog]

Cool Tool: This service will digitize your old slides, negatives and photographic prints at high quality and at a very cheap price. I’ve been using them to scan my 30-year backlog of photographs and I have been delighted with the results. I’ve used other services to scan my old photos; ScanCafe is by far the best deal. Their prices are fantastic. To scan a slide is just 24 cents, a color negative 19 cents.
Here is how it works: You pack up your images and mail them to ScanCafe’s headquarters in Northern California. They count them up, and repackage them before shipping the pieces to India. In India they are scanned, touched up, rotated and then privately posted to your account at their website. You then go through the images online and select which ones you’d like to keep. You are allowed to dismiss (and not pay for) up to 50% of the total for that order. You can reject images because you aren’t happy with how they look online, or simply because you don’t want the image. In the specific case of original photo negatives, there is no reliable way to communicate which image(s) you want on the strip, so ScanCafe will scan the entire strip of negatives. You’ll have to reject the particular frames you don’t want (but no more than 50% of the total order. Combine them with slides to keep your percentage down.)
ScanCafe [Cool Tool]

Protect your discs the easy way with Protective Disc Skins from d_skin. They protect your DVD, data, video game and music discs from scratches even while they play. Just snap a d_skin onto your favorite discs and consider them protected. The beauty is, d_skin stays on your discs even while they play. That’s right – your discs are totally readable right through the skin. Once your discs are skinned, there’s nothing to take off or put on when you’re playing, storing or transporting. One d_skin does it all.
Protective Disc Skins from d_skin

“Caller tune Advertisement” is all about publishing advertisements as caller tunes on user’s mobile phones, so that the callers will listen to the advertisement until the user picks up the phone. In a nutshell, this idea is all about the mobile users trading their ringtone airtime for monetary benefits, which can be used to publish advertisement.
This concept is all about publishing advertisement as a replacement for caller tunes or in-conjunction with caller tunes in user’s mobile phones. In return, users will get monetary benefits like free recharge coupons, discounts in bills, partial reimbursement of bills, free talk minutes, free value adds like free SMS, etc. These kinds of freebies will attract users to allow users to give up their ring tone airtime to place advertisement. Gaining publisher base will be a challenge. A good publisher base means a huge market potential. The success of this advertisement medium will be determined by the publisher base.
This new business idea is patent-pending and its owner, TarryOnline is looking for interested investors.

Cool Hunting: Bulky design, fussy mechanisms and the trickiness involved in resealing the bags offsets the glory of vacuum sealers’ ability to keep our precious Roquefort, pineapples, mushrooms and the like at their freshest. In steps Oliso’s Frisper Freshkeeper to the rescue. With its compact egg-shaped design, stupid simple operation and bags that open and reseal almost effortlessly, the Frisper solves all the problems of your grandma’s vacuum sealer and then some.
Its patent-pending technology makes sure that it works quickly and powerfully to suck the air out of the specially designed bags. Unlike other models that require alignment with the entire edge of the bag, the device seals along predesignated spots making it easy to position. The modification means that the Frisper is about a quarter of the size of other sealers, not much larger than a person’s hand—something that those of us who store their vacuum sealer in the basement, unused, are pretty stoked on. It’s great when reinvention improves on usability, but better yet when it makes it useful at all.
Oliso Frisper Vacuum Sealer [Cool Hunting]

The Cool Hunter: The newest front in the ecological war on waste appears to be denim. Hailing from the unlikely origins of India, Sharkah Chakra has appeared on the market as the answer to the organically-leaning, ecologically-savvy consumer’s denim conundrum.
The company’s philosophy is, “to make the world’s best and only hand made denim using a simple age old concept of treating others as you wish to be treated.” Using this Golden Rule as their guide, Sharkah Chakra has harnessed the Free Trade talents of indigenous indigo farmer, dyeing masters and tailors. The laudable process comes together to create an equally praiseworthy product: stylish, wearable jeans for the masses.
Sharkah Chakra – Organic Jeans [The Cool Hunter]

Canton Daily Ledger: At some point in life, just about all of us have spelled something out on our plate with food. A University of Illinois Horticulturist has taken this concept to new heights – spelling out the words “Fresh Salads” on a billboard advertisement using real, growing lettuce.
Pierceall was first contacted by the Leo Burnett advertising company to ask for his assistance in creating the billboard for one of their clients, McDonald’s Corporation — the goal being to stress the fresh salads in their menu. “Burnett googled horticulture and Chicago and my name kept coming up, so they called me,” said Pierceall.
The billboard was mounted in Wrigleyville near the intersection of Addison and Clark streets. Pierceall said that the “shelf life” of the billboard is unlimited as defined by Mother Nature, and even she can’t be pushed. “The ad agency wanted the billboard to be up this summer, but I told them it had to wait because lettuce is a cool season crop and would never be successful in the summer in Chicago. The seasonal nature of the plants defined the presentation timing and the eventual length of the presentation, kind of like installation art.”
Pierceall has over 30 years of experience in environmental education and landscape design. Currently he is advisor of a horticulture degree-completion program for Chicago area students.
U of I horticulturist grows salad billboard [Canont Daily Ledger]

Here’s a million-dollar question: how do I increase the Google PageRank of my website?
According to search engine optimization specialists, the two most crucial factors affecting your website’s ranking are the availability of useful content and quality links. You’ve got to have helpful, regularly-updated and keywords-rich content on your website before you can attract the Googlebot over and rate your website highly. But, without sufficient inbound links, how is a reader from Brazil going to find and read your interesting content on your website? Not only that, but the inbound links have got to be from quality, relevant website too.
If you have a website or a blog, I’m sure you agree with me that it’s an uphill task to acquire quality links. So, the next million-dollar question is: how can I increase the number of links to my website?
You can exchange links manually; email the PageRank 5 website’s webmaster and ask for a reciprocal link. You can also add your website to web directories such as Yahoo! and DMOZ. Or you can advertise your website through pay-per-click exchanges such as Google’s Adwords. All these methods have their pros and cons. What if you have an advertising system that includes all of the pros and would let advertisers get better rankings in search engines with a few simple clicks of the mouse?

Yes, you have such a system, and I’m referring to the new TNX.net. TNX (short for “thanks” in SMS-speak) is a new innovative business idea. It works wonders for both advertisers and publishers. For advertisers looking to improve their websites’ rankings, TNX allows them to buy millions of links from other sites in few clicks. For publishers looking to earn some money, it’s a good way for them to monetize their websites. All links are direct; they are located on main pages and high-ranking inside pages. Links are displayed prominently on well-noticeable spots for maximum exposure, and are tied in with keywords so that Googlebot will take notice.
TNX offers link targeting by specific niche and geographic region. That makes it a breeze if you want to target Chicago residents who are looking for florists. You can also filter by the Google PR of each page and link popularity (Yahoo! backlinks) of each website. TNX makes it possible to combine different types of targeting and compare the efficiency with different configurations. TNX even provides a calculator of how many links you will get on based on the parameters you chose and your spending plan. Creating an ad campaign is a painless process with TNX’s well-designed Ad Campaign Wizard.
For publishers, TNX offers an easy way to sell links and monetize your website. It’s free to sign up and get a publisher’s account, and you’ll be automatically credited with 2,000 TNX points upon signup. In TNX, transactions are carried with TNX points. You can use TNX points to pay for advertising of your website. You can also hold on to your points and watch its price grow or sell your points to TNX (funds are credited to your PayPal account) or any other TNX member. TNX is currently doing a promotion whereby you can receive additional 5,000 points free by posting on this thread in the DigitalPoint forums. TNX points are now being valued at $0.61 per 1,000 points.
To sell links on your website, you simply grab the TNX system code and place it into your website. When the system code is placed on your website all the links that are purchased by advertisers will be automatically displayed on all pages that have TNX system code included. Whenever a link on your website is sold to one of our advertisers, you get paid. It’s easy for publishers to get started.
TNX even has got an affiliate program. When you refer a new webmaster to the system, you will receive 13.3% of all TNX points which he/she will earn in the future. You can then use the TNX points for your own advertising.
On a whole, TNX is a new business idea that promises to transform text link advertising on the Internet. Designed with an intuitive and easy system, it offers a good way for advertisers and publishers to participate in text link advertising.
This post is a sponsored blog post.