TRENDBIRD: Edopter is a unique concept that attempts to combine crowd-sourcing with internet buzz to predict new trends. It’s called “social trendcasting.”

The way it works, is by allowing users to generate “trends” according to what they think will catch on. Some trends are “cewebrities” (pictured below), “Batman: The Dark Knight,” and “tap water.” The user who makes the trend writes a “pitch” - the reason they think it will catch on. Then the Edopter system scans the web to measure current internet “buzz.” Users can join a trend, and give their pitch, upload photos and videos related to the trend, and discuss the trend with the other users in that trend. The more discussion and content you add, the more likely more people will join, thus increasing the value of the trend.

Edopter Attempts “Social Trendcasting” [TRENDBIRD]

Nuebbo is a new digital and virtual business card holder for the Internet. The free service provides you with all of the benefits for which business cards were designed: Maintaining the creative investment in business cards, preserving the visual nature in our memory, with all of the advantages of being a 100% web application. With Nuebbo, you can access all of your contacts including updated details from any device with an Internet connection. Nuebbo card holder makes it easy for you to manage and locate your contacts.

Nuebbo

Ideas are the basis of potential business opportunities. Good ideas do not necessarily represent good opportunity. However, you never really know the true potential of a good idea until you take action and implement it. A good business idea that is not implemented will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupies. If for any reasons, you are unable to implement your ideas, why not submit your business ideas to an online community and have it executed collectively by a community of aspiring entrepreneurs from all around the world?

Gogme.biz, which stands for Globally Owned Globally Managed Enterprise, administers a pro-business online community formed by aspiring entrepreneurs and subsequently facilitates entrepreneurs to collectively own and manage a business entity over the internet. Entrepreneurs are encouraged to contribute their business ideas. The best business ideas selected through internet voting will be implemented through the online community. The online community makes collective decisions on business planning, marketing and other business activities through internet polls and forums. Real life business staff will follow and carry out these decisions. Through business blogs and twitters, the operation manager will update daily business activities and challenges faced. Business mentors are invited to give advice so that entrepreneurs can make the best decisions. Progressively, entrepreneurs will know how their collective decisions shaped the businesses!

Anyone can contribute a low startup capital of US$100 to become a co-owner of a business entity that owns multiple internet and brick-and-mortar businesses and collectively managed by an online community. Learn to be an entrepreneur with the community through a combination of legal ownership, online participation, implementation of business ideas, social networking, decision-making, interacting with business mentors, managing businesses via a business excellence framework and getting explicit business knowledge of various industries.

Most crowd-sourced and crowd-funded projects does not sufficiently reward participants and to some extent promote mass mediocrity. With Gogme, 100% of the net profits derived from the businesses created by the online community will be shared by the entrepreneurs. The Gogme Points System rewards entrepreneurs with points for submitting business ideas, referring friends, participating in online discussions, internet polls and other online activities. Points can be use to bid for business takeovers and franchises at reasonable rates. You have a higher chance to win in the bidding if the business takeovers or franchises were formed by the implementation of your idea. As such, an idea contributed by you, implemented by the online community, eventually comes back to you as a sustainable and profitable business for takeover or franchise!

http://www.gogme.biz

This post is a sponsored blog post.

Springwise: Tikatok is an online community any child can use to write and illustrate stories, share them with friends and family, and even print them out as real paperback and hardcover books. Children can create a book free-form, or they can use the site's "StorySpark" templates to help them get started. Words and drawings are easily saved with a book editor that opens right on the site, requiring no extra software to download or install. Children can drag and drop text screens, write their ideas, change fonts and colours, and insert and delete pages at will. They can also easily add their own original artwork by drawing their pictures and scanning and uploading them, or by mailing them into Tikatok. Using the site's Friends feature, children can invite other friends through an email link to join the Tikatok network. They can also invite others to read their books, join and post their books to Book Clubs on the site, and participate in discussion threads with one another. Security and privacy on the site are stringent, as one might expect. Using Tikatok is free; printed copies of books can be purchased in hardcover or paperback for about USD 20 each.

Book publisher for kids [Springwise]

The Man Registry, LLC, an online wedding resource provider for grooms based in Overland Park, KS, has launched the world’s first wedding registry and informational resource designed specifically for men. While most grooms have typically been left out of the wedding planning process, TheManRegistry.com is poised to change that. This unique website puts men in the driver’s seat, providing couples with the ability to register for gifts that appeal to grooms and help engage them in the wedding process.

The centerpiece of TheManRegistry.com is a specialized gift registry featuring hundreds of gifts tailored toward grooms, including barbeque grills and accessories, bar supplies, tools, and sporting equipment, just to name a few. Best of all — all of these items can be purchased directly from the website and shipped directly to the customer.

“We offer hundreds of products geared specifically toward men,” says Christopher Easter, co-founder of The Man Registry, LLC. “With TheManRegistry.com, grooms can register for a wide variety of items that interest them, ranging from bar glasses to power tools.”

In addition to the registry, the website also offers a wealth of information, how-to articles, and resources designed to help successfully guide the 1.25 million men who get married each year through every step of the engagement, wedding, and honeymoon planning processes.

“We understand that grooms have a lot of questions when it comes to weddings, whether it’s how to select the perfect engagement ring or give a memorable toast at the reception, and TheManRegistry.com will help them easily navigate the wedding process and have fun at the same time. TheManRegistry.com is truly the ultimate, one-stop resource for grooms,” Easter says.

[TheManRegistry]

Gemzies wants to help people getting started on the Internet, on serious topics. To do so, Gemzies aims to “start” at the point a Wikipedia-page “ends”. Gemzies-pages are focused on a single topic. On that topic, they provide a structured and community-rated list of suggested sites, videos, images, news and books.

Gemzies-pages are created and maintained by fellow experts, who want to show their expertise to the rest of the world. Gemzies provides a ‘virtual stage’ for these experts, providing for expert
ranking lists, expert search, and expert ‘tracking’. Gemzies has added Digg-type rating, and
Delicious-type tagging, to serious content focused on any single topic.

Gemzies

RedFerret: Password Chart is an online application to help you create really really strong passwords. These are the sort of passwords your average policeman would have trouble deciphering in a 40 year career. The neat thing is the printable chart for decoding your word or phrase, just don’t lose the chart or its identity number.

There is no magic snake oil here, its a simple substitution cipher. Here is how the algorithm works: 1. An MD5 hash of the chart selection phrase is performed and the first 4 bytes of the hash is used as a random number seed to a Mersenne Twister pseudo-random number generator. 2. The password chart is then filled using sequences of 1 to 3 random upper and lower case letters and optionally numbers and punctuation by grabbing successive numbers generated from the Twister. The reason for the random sequence length is to make reversing the substitution cipher a bit harder. 3. The alphanumeric characters in the password is then converted using the chart.

Password Chart - you want a strong password for nothing? [RedFerret]

TrendBlog: Tuyuan is a new, Beijing-based social networking site that employs facial recognition technology to let users get connected with friends. Free accounts come with 1GB of space. Once users upload a photo and tag a person, the service automatically suggests other pictures it thinks the same person is in. The site’s facial recognition technology is still being developed, and searches should become more sophisticated over time.

Facial Recognition & SNS [TrendBlog]

Here's an update on ClayValet (clayvalet.com), an online personal shopping service which we featured sometime ago. The Seattle-based company just recently debuted an improved site design and several anticipated features.

ClayValet enlists real people to personally answer user requests. The service caters to people who don’t have hours to spend sifting through endless search results and comparing countless options.

New features recently unveiled include:

- New User Tutorial: The most common question heard at ClayValet is, "This is great! But how does it work?" Now, new users and anyone interesting in improving their shopping experience can learn how get the most out of ClayValet. A simple tutorial with clear instructions is now available on the homepage.

- User Advice: The more people use ClayValet, the more engaged they often become. ClayValet’s comment posting feature gives users a new opportunity to further participate in the shopping process by contributing ideas and posting shopping suggestions to others.

http://www.clayvalet.com

TrendCentral: The newest entry to the world of online communities is weplay, a social network for youth athletes and their parents and coaches.

Young athletes can create their own profiles in which they can post news, photos, and videos. Through such, they are able to connect with friends and teammates, manage their practice and game schedules, talk to coaches, view sports tutorials, find out about local sports events and, in what is expected to be one of the site's main draws, interact with pro athletes including Peyton Manning, LeBron James and Derek Jeter.

WEPLAY: NEW SOCIAL NETWORK YOU NEED TO KNOW [TrendCentral]

TrendCentral: Whether your personal goal is to drop 20 pounds, quit smoking, hit the gym, or even stop biting your nails, stickK uses the power of a "commitment contract" to encourage you to "stickK" to your word.

Developed by two Yale professors with backgrounds in law and economics, the stickK concept is based on the idea that most people will commit to something if either their reputation or their funds are at stake. With this in mind, users are asked to create a Commitment Contract in which they choose a goal and a timeframe, add stakes (completely optional), choose a referee (sister, coworker, etc.) to monitor progress, and choose supporters (your cheering section). The Commitment Journal, in which users leave detailed accounts of their progress (or lack thereof), facilitates an honest, well-documented account of the journey to success or the shameful downward spiral to failure. Add optional stakes? Success gives you your money back, and Failure gives the money to charity (or the lucky someone you've chosen).

STICKK TO YOUR GOALS [TrendCentral]

TrendCentral: For parents, leaving children unsupervised with the Internet is basically as scary as sending them to the playground alone. Created for kids ages 3 to 12, this G-rated browser takes out the fear and intimidation of web surfing for both parents and children. Kids can explore and research any topic as all links offered have been approved as child-friendly by parents and teachers. For example, if a child wants to watch skateboarding videos on YouTube, KidZui has already made sure that the videos available to them are appropriate (according to age, reading ability, and developmental readiness). Additionally, the site encourages learning by providing other topics of interest related to the search subject; a search for skateboarding may lead to surfing, then perhaps water and dolphins. Parents are alerted (via email) to the topics their kids search, so not only do they know what their kids are doing online, but they also have another window into their interests.

NEW WEBSITES FOR PARENTS YOU NEED TO KNOW [TrendCentral]

Webware.com: Coordinatr is a new events communication service that's been designed for creating spontaneous get-togethers among tight knit groups of friends. The setup is similar to MyPunchbowl and Crusher, with just a few form fields that need to be filled out to create an event. What makes the service particularly useful is its integration with high profile media sharing sites and a great mobile service that lets you send quick distributed messages to the rest of your party friends.

While MyPunchBowl was one of the first of these services to really embrace that people using these services share their party media elsewhere, Coordinatr takes the process a step further by giving everyone with access to the event page a special tag to use. Adding that tag to photos (on Flickr) and videos (on YouTube) will automatically add them to the community page without requiring anyone with administrative access to the event to have to link up content manually.

Coordinatr turns small parties into small effort [Webware.com]

Smart mobs re-chart direction - from business to pleasure. The fuel behind mob mentality evolves from its infancy in civil disobedience and business demand to art and social effect. As the days of rights movements and tuangou (Chinese team buying) plateau, group thought accelerates in-step with art and technology.

Social antagonizer, Improv Everywhere, has used this mentality to organize mass synchronization worldwide. ‘Freezes’, events where hundreds of strangers show up to a location called out online and simultaneously freeze in place, have taken off. Just this year, they’ve occurred in New York, Paris, Montreal, Shanghai and more. The study often results in applause from passers-by. Online and mobile technology allows complete strangers to gather without notice and have a coherence that leaves security baffled.

Taken to the next level, curators are asking just how intelligent smart mobs are. James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds”, hypothesizes that a diverse crowd is wiser at making decisions than even experts. The Brooklyn Art Museum takes on this theory and puts it to the test. A new exhibit, ‘Click’ will attempt crowd-curation. If expectations are met, the projections Charles Leadbeater has made in his book “We Think”, will continue to come fruition. It is anticipated that mobs that think and act collectively will lead areas previously dominated by scholars, organizations and corporations.

Katie Sherman is a NY-based freelance writer. After years of multi-tasking at downtown ad agencies, she's recently returned from a European backpacking sabbatical. During the day she works as a Copywriter in Soho. In the off-hours she concentrates on analyzing social/ cultural trends, business innovation and local entertainment. Her work has been published on PSFK.com, CoolBusinessIdeas.com, EatDrinkSleepny.com, and Glamourite.com. Email her at katie_sherman@hotmail.com.

Normal Room shows you interior design and home furniture from all around the globe. Search the image database and explore the differences and similarities in architecture and home decoration between people in different countries.

As a member you can post your own photos to Normal Room, comment on other photos and even send your favourite picture as an email-card.

http://www.normalroom.com

Expectations for change are high this year. And with so much emphasis being put on brilliance, you’ve got to consider the methods that get us there.

Focus groups tell us what we knew. One-way lectures tell us what you know. Sharing aggregates what we all know.

Enter the Unconferences. Forum One Communications, BlogSavannah, SoCon and more have accepted the idea of informal, participative discussions which have been gaining traction in tech circles since the ‘80s.

Its simple really. The idea that the smartest people at a conference are the often in the audience. The agenda is open-sourced via online wikis, or better, strewn about on whiteboards day-of. Come ready to share, especially if someone inquires on your area of expertise.

The congregation was born from Foo Camp, an annual, invite-only hacker event hosted by publisher ‘O Reilly Media.

Because if Burning Man taught us anything it’s that what some see as anarchism, others see as creative freedom.

Katie Sherman is a NY-based freelance writer. After years of multi-tasking at downtown ad agencies, she's recently returned from a European backpacking sabbatical. During the day she works as a Copywriter in Soho. In the off-hours she concentrates on analyzing social/ cultural trends, business innovation and local entertainment. Her work has been published on PSFK.com, CoolBusinessIdeas.com, EatDrinkSleepny.com, and Glamourite.com. Email her at katie_sherman@hotmail.com

TrendCentral: A geographical filtering site, EveryBlock aggregates relevant news and data to inform users about what’s happening in their neighborhood, block, street or zip code. Currently only available in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, the site focuses on traditional news articles (from both national and local papers and blogs), civic information (crime, building permits, restaurant inspections), and “fun from across the Web” (photos posted to Flickr, reviews on Yelp, missed connections on Craigslist). Expect this hyperlocal site to be a hit, especially as the locasumer trend continues to grow.

EveryBlock

TrendBlog: Moshi Monsters, a UK based social networking site aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 12 years old, might become Club Penguins biggest competitor “Tweens” can adopt and customize their very own pet monsters. The more they play with their monsters, the “happier” the monsters will be. At the same time playing games on the site earns points, which can be used to buy items for the pet monster. Parents might like this site, because the games and puzzles “created” by the monster teach vocabulary, math and logic. But players can also interact with each other, typing in speech bubbles and leave messages for one another. There is no charge, since the companies hopes to successfully sell Mosh Monster merchandise.

Social Virtual Worlds for Tweens [TrendBlog]

NYTimes.com: Mr. Buckman got the idea for BookMooch on a visit to Norwich, England, in late 2005. A local community center had a book-sharing corner, he recalled, “with a sign that said ‘Leave a book. Take a book.’”

“People were bringing in boxes of books and looking at other people’s books to see what they might want to read and talking to one another about books,” he said. “I wanted to see if I could capture that same sense of community online.”

BookMooch now has 40,000 members around the world, according to Mr. Buckman, and people are joining at a rate of 300 a day. Participants create an inventory (the books they want to give away) and a wish list (the books they want to own). The “library” has some 750,000 titles, and Mr. Buckman estimates it will hit one million by the end of December.

Members are notified by e-mail when a book they would like becomes available. Some get recommendations from fellow moochers, who happily talk up their inventory on the members’ forum, while others browse the site by category, hoping to stumble across a treasure.

Clear the Bookshelf and Fill It Up Again, All Online [NYTimes.com]

ooVoo has a free, real-time video technology that lets consumers experience face-to-face conversations over the Internet. ooVoo’s new video communication service features clear, high-quality video and audio in real-time. By sharing a story, a smile and visible emotions with ooVoo, communication becomes more meaningful and fun.

With ooVoo up to six people can connect on a call at the same time with high-quality audio and video that allows them to see one another, talk and share in the same way they would in person. Consumers only need a broadband internet connection, web camera, speakers and microphone. In addition to video, ooVoo lets consumers send video messages to both ooVoo and non-ooVoo users, Instant Message (IM), and share files, such as documents or pictures — for a complete communication experience.

ooVoo

Good business networking websites are hard to come by, and the ones that do exist generally stick to narrowly-defined strictures. GlobalBusinessNetworking.com aims to blow away that way of thinking by providing a total business networking service in one site.

The site is split up into several areas each of which is devoted to a specific facet of business networking. The main core of GlobalBusinessNetworking.com is its Contact management and Networking features. The networking feature especially is considered to be at the heart of the site. It allows you to create specific groups, invite members in and discuss topics which are relevant to both you and the group. It also includes a nifty anti-spam feature to stop the occasional naughty posts.

When you see a positive post, or if you've had a great customer experience, you can let other people know by using the Share your experiences feature. Perhaps one of your sales guys just sealed a great deal? Give him a 5 star recommendation! Speaking of sales you can also put up details of your products and services in the Buyers and Sellers area. The last posts are shown in a prominent area on the site, so you're going to get instant exposure.

Most companies have important news or events they would like to let the world know about. www.GlobalBusinessNetworking.com caters to this requirement with its News & Events area. Not only can you post up your own news and events for other members to see, but you can also browse through 6 live RSS feeds from international news sources. Saves time having to go to several sites to catch up on what's happening.

There are two other sections of the site we'd like to mention - the Recruitment area and your Profile page. Recruitment does exactly what is says on the tin, you can post up details of open positions if you're looking to hire, and also post up your own CV if you're looking to be recruited. The Profile area takes care of your own info, and has a rather nice feature - video profiles. You can upload either a short video of yourself, or paste in a link to a longer YouTube video. If you don't have a video, then you can either upload your own picture or simply leave the default picture in there. This is a great feature of the site and something we really enjoyed.

www.GlobalBusinessNetworking.com provides a great place to do all your business networking. If you're not already a member, give it a try!

This post is a sponsored blog post.

TownConnect is an exclusive, private online service that organizes and connects families to people, activities and organizations in the towns in which they live. Because today’s families juggle full, fast-paced schedules, they can easily lose touch with the people and activities in their towns. TownConnect brings people together to create stronger communities and keeps people in the loop.

From sports schedules to carpools, TownConnect is designed to help track and manage the lives of busy families. A centralized family calendar, address book and private family blog make it easy to keep tabs on all elements of day-to-day family activity. TownConnect makes it easy for members to integrate events and contacts from their existing tools like Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL and Yahoo.

TownConnect.com

Iconoculture: Got an itch for the good stuff? There's nothing more teeth-gnashing than making that big-time buy and then finding out it went on sale. But who has time to track the ups and downs?
A new site, PriceProtectr.com, monitors prices so consumers don't have to. The free service follows prices at 46 stores, including Amazon, Sears, Costco, Best Buy and Target.

Consumers enter the URL of the product from the retailer's online store, then sit back and relax. If the cost goes down, Price Protectr emails a notice and tells consumers how to track down that cash.

A sweet receipt: Consumers wary to fork over major bucks for, say, a plasma TV can feel more confident that someone has their back.

Why make your customers rely on an independent service? Offer an automatic email notification service for refunds and brand loyalty will get a boost.

A new site protects consumers from falling prices [Iconoculture]

Yuuguu, derived from the Japanese word for fusion, enables users to see, share, and take control of each other's computer screens and applications. Unlike previous Web collaboration solutions, Yuuguu supports Web browsers on any device, including mobile phones - for unprecedented flexibility. Users can securely share their screen with anyone at any time, whether they're on a PC, Mac, or mobile phone.

Free and easy-to-use, Yuuguu can be used by team members working on a project or by friends sharing applications. Colleagues and friends can message and chat while they share screens for enhanced collaboration. The platform includes high quality, low cost voice conferencing services for one-to-one and one-to-many voice calls. And Yuuguu's integrated presence status brings a sense of community to Web sharing, as users can see when friends are online and click to invite them.

Yuuguu - http://www.yuuguu.com

Webware: There's something to be said about Web services that been set up to help people coordinate things in the least stressful way as possible. I dig sites like CircleUp that offer a way to set up polls, or solve quick logistical questions amongst a group, without requiring the creator--or the users to agonize over interface and execution. That's why MyPunchBowl's new checklists feature is pretty much the best addition to a party planning service yet.

The idea is simple: you as party creator make a list of things you need for the party. This list is just for you in a GTD sense. You can hit one button to add any items to your "potluck" list, which is made public to all your invitees. Your party goers can then claim each item that they'll (hopefully) bring to the party, or add their own items, helping you avoid harassing e-mails or phone calls to coordinate.

The new checklist feature launched alongside several other updates. The service is continuing its foray into the world of themes with about two dozen Halloween templates, and a new duplicate party feature that lets you clone a party you've already made to reuse--which is helpful if you want to recycle things like a guest list and directions. There's also a bounce notifier to let you know if your party invitations never made it to your addressees' mailboxes.

Figure out who's bringing what with MyPunchBowl's checklists [Webware]

Webware: Whether you custom order a sleek, suede couch or drag in a ratty, plaid one found on Craigslist, planning where to put it can be a pain. Floor Planner can help. This site from Dutch designers enables you to arrange what you have in your own flat or conjure up a dream home.

Add your home's measurements, maybe a background picture, and topic tags to help other users find your plan (or keep it to yourself), and you're ready to drag and drop sofas, plants, tables, countertops, and so on into your rooms. You get one plan for free, just enough to mock up an apartment. Should you become addicted--or need this tool for work--pricing ranges from $29 per year for five projects with the Plus account, up to $1,140 annually for an enterprise business. The animated how-to was pretty helpful for getting started, but I wish it had audio narration. Luckily, the site worked equally well in both IE and Firefox.

You can add textures, such as the grain of a hardwood floor or red velvet couch upholstery. You can even drop in a pinball machine, if it fits (you had to visit the basement of my childhood home to play ours). In addition to figuring out how to squeeze in our furniture, we need tools to help maximize the energy efficiency, available natural light, and indoor air quality where we live--such as a MyAbodo for grownups mixed with power sensors and software, such as Agile Waves or the Lucid Group's Building Dashboard.

Floor Planner helps to plan your pad [Webware]



Lyro: Lyro is a service that helps people expand their individual-level professional identity on the Internet. In today’s global economy, it is more important than ever that each of us is discoverable online. Using technology, innovation, and user-driven features, it is the mission of Lyro to empower our customers through the formation and marketing of their personal-level professional brand, resulting in improved visibility and broader opportunities.

We provides an open, fully searchable, and user-driven tool for professional branding on the web. Some time back we had a thought - more of a question really. Why isn't basic business contact information internet searchable and controllable at the individual level? As we looked at the marketplace, nowhere could we find a truly "open" product that made this information accessible online and also put control of the information in the hands of the individual. As we played around with new ways of displaying people's basic contact information, the simple concept of an online business card emerged. After a little research, we realized that no one else was providing open, easily accessible online business cards. Although a web-based business card concept was novel, we questioned whether an online business by itself would be compelling enough to grow in popularity with millions of users. That more we talked with our customer base, the more we realized that they desired a product whose features were entirely driven by fellow users.

Lyro - http://www.lyro.com

TrendCentral: Users first select a product from NetHaggler’s list of stores that includes everything from Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s to Best Buy and Circuit City. They then specify a preferred price at which the site can aggregate demand and ultimately negotiate with the merchant on behalf of the prospective customers. When a bulk bargain price agreement is reached, NetHaggler notifies all hagglers with the option to buy, but no one is required to buy in the end.

Team Buying [TrendCentral]

The Next Net: Remember all of those B2B exchanges that were supposed to change the industrial landscape before they evaporated at the tail end of the last dotcom boom? Well, at least one of them survived—a small company based in Atlanta called MFG.com. Today, it is a thriving Web marketplace for manufacturers and their suppliers. I talk with CEO Mitch Free in this week’s episode of the New Disruptors.

MFG.com is a Website where engineers and purchasing managers from places like Apple or Northrop Grumman can put up CAD diagrams of parts they want manufactured and get bids from suppliers all over the world. In the past twelve months, over $2 billion worth of parts have been sourced over MFG.com.

But instead of trying to take a cut of each transaction like eBay does, MFG.com charges a subscription fee of about $6,000 a year to each supplier. Free says the company is on track to pull in $25 million in revenues this year and is running at break-even. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the largest outside investor (he learned about it from one of the engineers at his spacecraft startup, Blue Origin). Germany’s Samwer brothers—their startup Alando became eBay Germany—also own a stake.

An eBay for Manufacturers [The Next Net]

Springwise: Created by a Dutch IT specialist based in the Czech Republic, bringsome.com hopes to create a loose-knit social network of people who are willing to ‘bring some’ over for others. Some in this case means anything consumers want from another country that they can’t get in their current place of residence. Whether it’s canned coffee from Tokyo, a local brand of cachaça from São Paulo or an 80GB Sony PS3 from Seoul, bringsome.com encourages members to ask for them to be brought by others.

The website is a few months old and only shows a handful of requests and offers. Dave Ruzius, bringsome.com's founder, plans to add features if the concept catches on, and suggests delicatessen shops might be interested in supplying the network with locally sourced products. (Bringers are free to charge a fee for shipping or bringing goods over.) While built as a tool to help friends and colleagues get the products they want from abroad, bringsome.com could of course pull in advertising as traffic grows. Creating a network of personal couriers makes for an intriguing business model, not unlike online swapping communities.

C'mon, bring some [Springwise]

TrendCentral: Fan fiction has long been thriving online in places such as LiveJournal, and now a new online community called FanLib is serving as a hub for all things fan fiction. Site users can post their own fiction, read others’ work sorted by show/book or writer, save specific stories to a customized favorites list, and embed content badges into social networking profiles. Fantasy and sci-fi are currently dominating the community, with Harry Potter, Stargate: SG-1, CSI, Supernatural, and Star Wars being the top ranked “fandoms”. The site is already receiving support from publishers such as Penguin Books and HarperCollins and entertainment companies such as Showtime Networks and Starz Entertainment. Some of these marketing partners are even planning to produce collaborative storytelling events online.

Fan fiction hub [TrendCentral]