In Search of the Music DNA

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 […]

Alpaca Farming

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 […]

Toilet Restaurant

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 […]

Smart Sleepers

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 […]

Be A Boardgame Boss

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, […]

Blink Contactless Credit Card

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 […]

Love Fakes?

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 […]

Sleeping Partner Music

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 […]

CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter Issue 16

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 […]

TV From The Internet

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 […]