New Business Ideas/Opportunities Featured In This Issue:
TECHNOLOGY
Energy Tent
If you don’t like to rough it, can’t do without the conveniences of home, or just need a base camp to recharge your camera or MP3 player after a day on the trail, the Eureka N!ergy tents have three 12-volt plugs to charge your accessories.
Paper Thin Video
In the race for ever-thinner displays for TVs, cellphones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all — a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video. Sony released video of the new 2.5-inch display Friday.
ONLINE & SOCIAL NETWORKS
Videopedia
It’s not Wikipedia, it’s a videopedia. At 5min.com you can learn everything from how to make an origami barking dog (useful!) to how to spackle a wall (frivolous!) to how to pour beer (necessary!).
Faithster
Xianz is among a bevy of new religion-affiliated sites that are drawing the faithful from across the Web in growing numbers. Year-old Xianz, which bills itself as the faith-based MySpace, has grown to 500,000 unique visitors and has 35,000 registered members, says co-founder Bob Hutchins.
Home of Fan Fiction
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.
TRENDS & INSIGHTS
Green Track
UK supermarket Tesco plans to introduce carbon footprint labels on all 70,000 products it sells to allow shoppers to compare carbon impacts. Implementation will take a while: the company is currently investigating how to develop a “universally accepted and commonly understood” measuring system.
GADGETS
Rugged Laptops
General Dynamics’ GoBook MR-1 claims to be the smallest fully rugged ultramobile PC, and it may very well be. It weighs 2 pounds, and is about the size of a small jewelry box. It was made to have all the same features and capabilities of the full-size GoBook XR-1 but in a more compact form factor.
“Driving” Ability
Kids with disabilities who can’t maneuver joysticks don’t have to miss out on the fun of radio-control cars. Dream-Racer builds technology that enables kids to “drive” the cars using simple body movements instead of joysticks.
CONSUMER GOODS
Green Milk Bottles
Designed and manufactured in Britain, Greenbottle is a biodegradable milk bottle that uses a smart two-part system to aid recycling. The bottles are composed of a cardboard outer manufactured from pulped, recycled cardboard.
TRAVEL & TRANSPORT
Extreme Budget Airlines
Now a new generation of discount carriers is set to make Southwest look downright generous. The latest breed is borrowing a page from Ryanair, the Irish carrier that roiled airlines across the continent with near-zero fares and scant amenities—and became the biggest European airline in the process.
TOURISM
Shutter Attraction
The Kennedy Space Center will open the Shuttle Launch Experience, an amusement-ride-cum-astronaut-flight-simulator designed to mimic the 17,500-mph liftoff of a NASA shuttle orbiter. The 44,000-square-foot attraction isn’t just a ride; it’s a flight simulator on par with what astronauts in training experience, says Bob Rogers, CEO of BRC Imagination Arts, which built it.
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