DailyCandy: Let’s face it. E-cards meet a need. When, say, you forget your brother’s birthday. And when you throw a Bachelor finale party for your pals. But those fast and free messages don’t make anyone sentimental. Nothing says someone cared enough to send the very best like a beautifully designed traditional note in your mailbox. (That strange thing attached to […]
Well Wishes
eMall Commerce
NYTimes.com: A new shopping complex in Ohio will try to combine the convenience of online stores with the hands-on experience of browsing at a mall. Sometime near the end of 2006, the complex, called Epicenter, is scheduled to open in Columbus at the Polaris Fashion Place. The nucleus of Epicenter will consist of two parts – the Buypod, a hand-held […]
Social Searching
TechnologyReview.com: Google’s personalized search uses an individual’s search history to help tweak search results. For instance, if a person has looked for cars extensively in the past, a search for “Jaguar” will return car sites rather than ones featuring large wild cats. While Google’s new tack is admirable, Yahoo’s soft-launch is more startling, since it moves away from the company’s […]
Personalization Business
TrendBlog: It probably started in high school. You did not want to look like everybody else anymore. You colored your hair and decorated your jeans jacket. And now you can even customize your own sneakers on certain websites or at the NikeID-store (slogan: perfection is personal). We call this Personalization, a trend which, by now, is very grown up. It […]
More Than Plain Gray
TheDailyTimes.com: Homeowners who want something other than plain gray curbing in their landscape now have a myriad of options thanks to a new Blount County business. Johnny Bishop, owner of Curb Appeal, said, “We mainly do decorative landscape curbing. It’s like concrete curb but we put colors and designs in it. It looks really good bordering flower beds and driveways […]
Casual Gaming
NYTimes.com: Far from the bloody streets of “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” and light years from the deep space, run-and-gun menace of “Halo 2,” lives Flo. She is the cartoon-cute stockbroker who chucked it all to operate a modest diner that is the centerpiece of a highly successful yet relatively low-budget video game called “Diner Dash.” The staff of GameLab […]
Little Boutiques
StartupJournal: On a recent trip to the local mall, Suzy Lee ran her usual errands, shopping for her two children at Gymboree and buying makeup and a few basics at Neiman Marcus. But before leaving, she made a slight detour to Talulah G, a boutique with a name most shoppers wouldn’t recognize. The independently-owned shop, which opened at the Las […]
O-Synchronized
O-Sync: Recovering your mobile contacts automatically and seamlessly into your phone* is a breeze with O-Sync’s Free Over-the-air Contact Synchronization service. O-Sync interplays between the Web and your phone wirelessly, enabling you to backup and perform synchronization of your phone’s mobile contact database, anytime anywhere, without cables. That’s not all, Hot Link with your mobile contacts by inviting them into […]
Stroll-dating
Telegraph: Purveyors of speed-dating, the frenetic method of finding love through dozens of noisy three-minute encounters, will have you believe it is responsible for thousands of relationships, more than 50 marriages and at least six babies. The events are thought to generate up to £5 million a year and about 4,000 people a week take part. But for the 15 […]
Vending Machine for Beers
ThePublican.com: A vending machine for bottled beers and RTDs aimed at pubs, bars and nightclubs is being launched by a young entrepreneur. Michael Bowes, a 23-year-old from Glasgow, is the man behind BarHand – a “robotic” vending machine which aims to relieve the pressure on busy barstaff. BoozeBox, a similar vending machine, was launched in March and received criticism on […]