Expert Marketing

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 […]

Relax To Play

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, […]

SpotScents

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 […]

Toast Your Design

Iconoculture: Playful parents and kids will eat up products that introduce whimsy into mealtimes. Now burnt toast delivers messages that aren’t just smoke signals. The Pop Art Toaster brands toast with whimsical designs like a coffee cup or a smiling sun. Those are the brands that come with the $28 “Modern plastic” model. A $35 version comes with 6 designs: […]

Vent It On Machines

We Make Money Not Art: Gametrak is a game controller in the form of a pair of fingerless gloves to strap on your arms. It captures your movements forwards and backwards as well as up, down, left and right. You can punch opponents with your hands, pick up and play using real golf clubs or tennis racquets or bounce virtual […]

Split Chores

Popgadget: A Spanish designer has come up with “Your Turn”, a washing machine which uses fingerprint recognition technology to ensure the same person is not using it twice in a row. “I thought it would be good to finish with macho man from the ice age who doesn’t do anything around the house except drink beers,” said Pep Torres was […]

For Sweet Tooths

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 […]

Remix Culture

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 […]

Star Wars In Action

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 […]

Learning Ecosystem Through Tech

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 […]