31 posts tagged “trends”
Spotted on Springwise:
One of the world’s favorite fast-food options just got even more convenient with Wonderpizza —the world's first vending machine to serve up piping hot pizzas in less than two minutes. The Wonderpizza machine stands at about six feet high, six feet wide and three feet deep, and holds up to 102 pre-sliced 9-inch pizzas in separate and sealed trays. The pizzas are frozen using a special process. Once they’ve been thawed and placed in the machine, they have a shelf-life of 12 days. Standard varieties are Cheese, Vegetables and Ham, but other varieties can be produced on request (minimum order is 39,000 pizzas). Using a high-intensity toaster oven cooking process, Wonderpizzas are heated upon order and delivered fast and hot at a suggested retail price of USD 5–6.
Based on more than five years and six million dollars worth of research and development, Wonderpizza originated in Italy and is now beginning worldwide distribution, seeking regional and local distributors, dealers and agents.
Website: www.wonderpizza.org — www.wonderpizzausa.com
Spotted on Springwise:
buymybrokenipod.com is a young start-up offering consumers a very simple way to sell their broken or unused iPods: after indicating which model they'd like to sell and what condition it's in, the website gives an instant price-quote. Send it in, and payment is transferred via PayPal within 24 hours after the iPod has been received.
The iPods are usually sold in bulk to small businesses who fix them for a living, replacing cracked screens, expired batteries and dead hard-drives, and reselling them to consumers. Generally, iPods received by buymybrokenipod.com are in good condition.
The company takes pride in extending the lives of dead or used iPods, and keeping them out of landfills. Electronic waste accounts for 2 percent of America's trash in landfills but 70 percent of its toxic garbage.
Website: www.buymybrokenipod.com
Spotted on Springwise
Using Postful, anyone with access to email can send a real, paper letter to anyone with a postal address. Here's how it works:
Send an email to quickletter@postful.com, with the mailing address in the subject line, write the letter in the email's message body, click send, and the email is printed and posted.
Postful does not add branding or advertising.
Users can set up special email addresses for frequent contacts. Rather than typing out Aunt Kate's postal address every time, a user can create auntkate@postful.com, specifying her address, and Postful takes care of the rest. Combine that with Jott, the voice to text service, and anyone can send a printed letter by 'jotting' a voice message. Not limited to text, letters can also include photos—view a sample letter.
Pricing is simple: USD 0.99 for the first page and USD 0.25 for each additional page, which includes full-colour printing, paper, envelope and first-class postage. Currently only available in the United States, but international mailing is one of the most requested features from beta users, so Postful is hard at work to start offering that as soon as possible.
Postful currently sends out any email entering the system within 24 hours, excluding weekends. The start-up aims to decrease turnaround time over the next months, aiming for any email received by 3 PM PST to go out as post the same day.
More info at: http://www.postful.com/
No longer confined to head shops and hippie threads, hemp products are generating major buzz in the food industry as the next dairy alternative. Made from ground hemp seeds, Hemp Milk boasts high levels of protein, omega fatty acids, amino acids, and a slew of vitamins and minerals such as magnesium, iron, and GLS (Gamma-Linolenic Acid), a substance which claims to fight cancer, inflammation, and auto immune disease. From vegan to lactose intolerant, as well as curious foodies, consumers now have yet another non-dairy option to satisfy their tastes
Here's a recipe you can try:
Hemp Milk
Ingredients:
1/4 cup shelled hempseeds
1 cup water
flavorings (vanilla, maple syrup or honey)
Directions:
Place seeds into a blender and add small amount of water 1 inch above the seeds. Turn blender on at multiple speeds and agitate seeds so they become a thick hemp cream.
Then add either vanilla, maple syrup or honey or only a ripe banana and serve as a thick drink or add water at a ratio of 4.75 water to 1 part seed for a lighter hemp milk.
Spotted on Springwise
Turning any cell phone into an eager personal scribe, Jott transforms spoken messages into text. After signing up for the service online and validating their phone number and email address, users dial Jott’s toll free number (877-568-8486), say ‘me’ or the name of a contact or group of contacts, speak for up to 30 seconds and then hang up. Jott transcribes the spoken words into writing, and sends the message to its destination as an email or text message. Transcription usually takes a few minutes, or up to 20 minutes during peak hours. The original audio message is retained, and is linked to in the email for reference.
The service is deceptively simple, and lends itself to countless applications. It can be used to leave notes to oneself, from a reminder to buy a carton of milk, to capturing a brilliant idea. Or to draft emails, memos, or the next chapter of a novel while driving home from work. Lawyers and doctors, accustomed to speaking their correspondence and notes, can dictate on the fly.
Intriguingly, Jott has humans transcribing voice messages. Since phones are often used in noisy environments, and Jott’s founders didn’t want members to have to train speech recognition software, Jott uses a mix of machines and overseas agents that also work on medical dictations. For privacy protection, agents have no way of associating personally identifiable information with the recorded jotts they’re transcribing (unless a users makes that information part of the recording).
Jott is currently free, but will at one point offer members the choice between a free, ad-supported version, or a premium version for a fee. Which could bring in tidy revenues, since this is exactly the type of service that users are more than willing to pay for once they’ve incorporated it into their daily routine. Jott is currently only available in the United States and Canada.
Spotted on Trendcentral
Created by two Seattle-based engineers, iConcertCal is a program that scans websites such as JamBase and Tourfilter for show dates, matches them up against one’s iTunes artists, and ultimately creates a custom concert calendar. Updated weekly, iConcertCal also gives users links for ticket purchasing and venues so that they’re ready to click the second tickets go on sale. As live experiences become more coveted (and harder to secure tickets for), this program is becoming a must-have for music fans.
Spotted on Springwise
Just launched at the Musikmesse in Frankfurt by Swedish start-up the DeVillain Guitar Company, the Centerfold guitar solves a problem that every guitarist has experienced: portability. The folding guitar is a patent-pending product developed by an airline pilot who's also a fervent guitarist. Having a hard time taking his guitar with him everywhere he went, Fredrik Johansson started working on a prototype for the instrument that's now being brought to market.
The guitars, which are handmade in Sweden, slip into a small backpack which will have no trouble fitting into an overhead luggage bin. The neck folds down with strings still attached, and if it's in tune when you fold it, it will be in tune when you unfold it. The neck and body are connected with an airplane aluminium bolt that ensures maximal connection. Lefty versions aren't currently available, and DeVillain will only produce 300 guitars this year, for a direct to consumer price of EUR 2,600 or USD 3,370. A folding electric bass is in the works.
While it’s been testing privately, this social communication service has now opened up to the public. A solution to the communication gaps sometimes found in e-correspondence, Jaxtr gives users a click-to-call option that can be put on a social network page, blog, eBay posting, Craigslist listing, etc., giving an immediate connection to a phone line (mobile or land) for free.
Phone numbers remain private and callers don’t need a Jaxtr account to click-to-call. As VoIP catches on and people look for more personal connections, this could ultimately take off.
Spotted on Springwise:
Parents who are looking for family-friendly hotels, restaurants and other attractions for their next family vacation may want to point their browsers to Parentography—a new online community that invites ‘Parentographers’ who have been there and done that to weigh in on what spots were most accommodating to their brood.
“Parents can share stories, photos, excursion ideas, ratings and reviews on all sorts of family-friendly places and activities. They can search for things to do by location, season, their children's age and other important factors.” The idea is to create a community where parents can share details that typically aren't found on the usual travel websites, such as which restaurants have kids' menus and highchairs available and which hotels offer kiddie pools. Besides reviews, members can also describe excursions, highlighting a string of activities and places. Naturally, Parentography’s content isn’t just relevant to travelers, but also to first-time parents and families relocating to new areas.
While content is limited at the moment, Parentography has employed a novel solution to quickly build its library of reviews. To help celebrate the site’s launch, those who submit the 100th, 200th, 300th and so on posts will win USD 100, onward until a grand prize of USD 1,000 is given to the lucky Parentographer who writes the 1,000th post. Not only is this a great incentive for contributors, but Parentography gets 1,000 content items for a rock-bottom price ;-) The start-up’s business model is advertising-based. The potential to expand on this idea to reach other niche (travel) markets is virtually limitless—might there soon be a Parentography-like forum for pet owners, golfers or other interest groups?
Website: www.parentography.com
Contact: www.parentography.com/support/new
Coca-Cola and L'Oréal are teaming up to create a nutraceutical beverage called Lumaé, a tea-based ready-to-drink beverage that will contain ingredients that can help women care for their skin, and could become the mass market’s answer to popular upscale nutraceutical beverage Borba currently available in Sephora stores.
Coca-Cola's spokespeople are coy about the development, but is expected to be launched in 2008, and the product will be sold in department stores (early plans call for distribution in Saks Fifth Avenue) rather than mass-market retail outlets where Coca-Cola's offerings are more commonly found, such as 7-Eleven.
It will be aimed at "active, influential, image-conscious women over the age of 25, who embrace health and wellness".
Such nutraceutical products are already popular overseas. In Japan, for example, Coke has launched several entries including Love Body, which it claims not only burns calories, but contains an ingredient rumored to increase bust size.
