USAToday: When Dane and Nancy Bryant were married two years ago, the guests gave them silverware, wine glasses, a picnic set and a business idea that dramatically changed their lives. Dane, a Web site developer, had decided to make CD wedding invitations for the 115 guests. The discs featured a photo montage of the couple, a two-minute video of them […]

Global:Ideas:Bank: In an age when e-mail and text messaging are making letter writing obsolete one program is fighting to create an online permanent record for future historians and biographers. The website www.libraryoflife.org is the brainchild of Stephen Forsyth who wanted a way to preserve the memory of his late brother, James. The project aims to record the names and biographies […]

FastCompany: The residents of northern California got their first taste of Umpqua Bank last July when the ice-cream trucks rolled in. Only days earlier, the little-known Oregon community bank with the weird name had made headlines when it announced the acquisition of a local 27-branch bank. Now, here came Umpqua’s advance guard: trucks filled with free ice-cream sandwiches. Corny? Maybe. […]

Entrepreneur.com: After Helane Cohen lost her mother in 2000, the time she spent alone helped her identify the two things she loved most: children and cooking. It was then that this tech executive decided to leave behind a six-figure salary and launch Le Petit Cookery, a cooking school for children. Three months later, Cohen, 40, brought in good friend Steven […]

WorldChanging: Another great find from the Doors of Perception conference in Delhi: the Honey Bee Network, here in India. It is a network of people designed to find hackers and inventors from the countryside, the sort of people who don’t have two pennies to rub together but invent a coconut-tree-climbing machine so they can work better, or a man who […]

Iconoculture: Dinner and a movie? Yawn. Prosaic daters find a creative crutch at Xperience Days, an innovative planning service that sends couples on customized superdates in New York, California, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Xperience Days’ “concierges of love” guarantee that clients and their prospective mates live the experience of a lifetime, from salsa dancing and Ferrari racing to copter rides and […]

Businessweek Online: In the sales world, one of the most common stumbling blocks is price objection. A potential deal may be moving ahead smoothly, but when numbers enter the conversation, eager customers can suddenly turn and flee. What I’ve found, however, is that humor can be used to move the sale along at almost every stage of the process. Humor […]

Entrepreneur.com: Bored by the idea of giving her husband a traditional gift basket to celebrate his promotion, Kate Dyer-Seeley made her own by filling a sleek, plastic box with treats including brainteaser games, mints and other cool, fun items. When her husband took it to work, the box was such a hit that Dyer-Seeley, 29, and two friends, Karen O’Hollaren, […]

Engadget: We were seriously wondering why Google hadn’t already rolled this out (especially with their movement towards the geographical with maps.google.com and their purchase of Keyhole), but Yahoo’s definitely beaten them (and everyone else, it seems) on the driving directions via SMS tip. Hit the “Send to Phone” link on their Yahoo! maps page and you’ll get the data via […]

Springwise: With a name like Sparschwein, it has to be good! Indeed, Munich-based Sparschwein (German for piggy bank), is a new direct seller venture encouraging Germans to go on a domestic treasure hunt, exploring their basements, attics, cabinets, and garages for valuable items, especially fashion accessories, antiques, baby products, computers, electronics, cameras, domestic and garden appliances, design furniture, and certain […]