New Business Ideas/Opportunities Featured In This Issue:
FASHION
Chic Celicase
Here’s a superlative mini bag for all the Gizmodivas! Celicase, or Celi for short is a Turkish leather, compact purse that is designed to carry your most essentials. And when I mean most essentials, it can be a cell, PDA, ID, iPod, cash, passport, tickets, gum, lipgloss, cards..
Demin Code
DENIM CODE, the new French brand of jeans, has come up with a revolutionary concept consisting of making it possible to access an audio/video recording free of charge from a pair of DENIM CODE jeans.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Eating Greens
Kids eat up a healthy menu of herb-crusted chicken, sushi rolls and plenty of fresh veggies. No, really: Mean Greens outsells two competing cafés that dish up traditional campus fare like cheeseburgers and pizza.
TECHNOLOGY
Voicemail To Email
Why listen to your voice mail messages when you can read them? That’s what a new crop of companies is asking — they’re developing software that turns voice mail messages into transcribed e-mail or text messages.
TRAVEL & TRANSPORT
1-800-CAB-RIDE
Jason Diaz’s 1-800-cab-ride.com (800-222-7433) plans to be the one-stop online shop for scheduling taxi cabs. Essentially, 1800cabride.com is a car service that doesn’t own a single automobile – it uses a network of independent cab shops around the country to arrange rides from one central dispatch office.
HOMES & LIVING
Toilet Breeze
You’ll overcome your bathroom shyness with the Breeza, a deodorizing toilet seat. The four-stage process removes 95.8 percent of bathroom odors. (And with a number that specific, you know it’s scientifically tested.)
ADVERTISING
Free Photocopying
An innovative Japanese company is offering university students free photocopies. This free love is made possible by printing ads on the back of the copy paper, which is slightly thicker than normal to prevent ads from shining through. For JPY 400,000, advertisers can have their message printed on 10,000 sheets of paper.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Caffeinated Seeds
Now they’re selling sunflower seeds laced with energy boosters like caffeine, taurine, lysine, and ginseng. The product named, “SumSeeds”, are described as premium roasted sunflower seeds supercharged with the same stuff found in “energy” sodas.
AUTOMOBILES
Steering Wheel Notebook
If you feel that driving is too safe, than you should ‘danger things up’ with a steering wheel laptop. While the design is still in concept stage, I’m sure you can copy the idea by duct taping your laptop to the wheel.
DESIGN
Funky Coffin
Well, little did we know that the good people of Ghana had taken their art to a whole new level. We just stumbled across a website that sells a variety of African goods, particularly this line of wonderful coffins. Aside from the pictured Nokia coffin, they sell a Ferrari, a Subaru, a beer bottle (!) and a computer mouse coffin.
SmudgeGuard
The SmudgeGuard stays dry making it less likely to re-smudge the paper. Because it’s only protecting the areas most prone to smudges and because the material is thin, he can also type on a keyboard or do other things while wearing it.
CULTURE & MUSIC
BurnLounge
BurnLounge is a community-powered digital music service. BurnLounge provides music fans with the necessary software and an expansive catalog of music, to create and sell music (and fan merchandise) to peers from their own digital music stores.
MOBILE
Mobile Network
Sonopia works with Verizon to handle calls and data transfer, and lets anyone from a rock band to a church group set up their own mobile network brand. In return, the mini carrier will receive 3-8% of revenues generated by the customers they sign up.
ONLINE & SOCIAL NETWORKS
Lifecasting
Not since the ‘90s JenniCam craze has a personal webcam attracted so much attention. Justin.tv is the live videostream of Justin Kan, a 23-year-old web entrepreneur in San Francisco who has coined the term “lifecasting” with his no holds barred self-documentation approach. Kan has attached a camera to his head that delivers a 24/7 stream of his life from his point of view.
E-COMMERCE
Voice Advantage
Starting today you can test out a new service that attempts to combine the best of social networking with Internet-based telephony. In short, it gives visitors to your Web site or a blog a free local number to call from virtually anywhere. All you have to do is add a widget to your site, blog or e-mail signature.
LIFESTYLE & LUXURY
Music Craftmanship
Now, Gresso have developed their own line of MP3 players called, The Symphonia Collection. The model is again crafted from African Black wood, whilst the front panel is made of a scratch resistant 18 carat gold surface. The idea behind it’s conception is for the Symphonia to be worn as a piece of jewelry rather than an MP3 on a lanyard.
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