CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter Issue 10

CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter Issue 10: 30/01/05 – 06/02/05
New Business Ideas/Opportunities Featured In This Issue:
WIRELESS
PetsMobility PetCell
It’s a cell phone and GPS unit on a collar, with its own private number, allowing you to speak to your dog or cat!
RFID Tagging Getting Big
ProfitLogic’s software is already at work in Gap and Target stores, and President Scott Friend sees many more retailers following suit.
GPS School Bags Help Find Children
“Oribie Navi Land” is a GPS school bag for tracking kids. Japanese school bag manufacturer Kyowa and security systems and services company Secom are collaborating to release this product+service package this November.
DESIGN
My Treehouse
The HangOut is a 2.9 meters diameter housing module designed — by Vancouver-based Tom Chud — to be suspended from a tree.
Keychain Plants
To sell small living plants for your keychain is a genius idea!
Cool
They’re words often applied to new clothes or new cars – not phones. But that’s changing, and Motorola’s Razr V3 offers a good example.
SERVICES
Take a Seat
A relaxing way to wait for a flight – sitting in one of those fancy massage chairs you’d see in high-end stores.
Go Partying with PartyBuddys
A six-month-old service that is basically a nightlife tour company.
ENTERTAINMENT
Electronic Arts and ESPN Sign 15-Year Deal to Sell Games
Electronic Arts, hoping to shore up its eroding dominance in the sports video game market, has signed a 15-year deal giving it the exclusive right to use the ESPN brand in games.
Back Seat Gaming
Backseat Playground is a mobile gaming research project that will enable kids to play with the world outside their window from the back seat of a car.
CONSUMER GOODS
Sunglasses with a Digital Music Player
Introducing the Oakley Thump — sunglasses with a digital music player built into the frame.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Have It Your Way
Burger King Corporation is actually flip for the winning burger on The Apprentice – the Western Angus Steak Burger – and began serving it nationwide the next day.
Eat Your Heart Out
Create cookies in the form of popular movie stars, such as Renée Zellweger and Jack Nicholson. One cup of flour, two cups of sugar and three eggs later, the first cast of LikeUms was formed.
MOBILE
Mobile Messaging Device
Ogo from Cingular provides mobile workers with a relatively inexpensive way to send and receive e-mail and SMS messages.
A Sweet Valentine’s Day
The digital images of Sweethearts candy, the famous tiny pastel-colored candy hearts with sayings such as “Be Mine,” will be brought to wireless handsets by FunMail, a leading wireless entertainment company.
TECHNOLOGY
Patients Put on Thinking Caps
Imagine having the ability to connect your brain directly to a computer for blissful freedom from keyboard and mouse!
The Battery of our Shirts
It may only be a matter of time before we will be using our shirts to charge our cellphones.
An iPod That Listens
A US firm specialising in metadata for music files is working with a voice recognition company to enable voice-controlled music devices for use where hand control is impractical.
RETAIL
Japan Bean Plants Sprout Messages
Ever wanted to say “I love you” and never found the words? Well now you can buy a plant that says it for you.
TRENDS & INSIGHTS
Rising Giants
Asian Paints (India) and Lenovo Group (China) are two companies that portray the rise of their respective country’s businesses into multinational companies.
View this issue of the CoolBusinessIdeas Newsletter by clicking here. Subscribe for free (bonus gifts included with subscription) by clicking here.