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Our
latest edition is now online. Ideas featured this week:
 Schedule
online flight check-ins ahead of time
Tourism & travel / Life hacks
While being able to check in for flights online has made life
easier for
airline passengers, it isn't always as convenient as it could
be. Check
Me In solves that, for a small fee.
 Recyclable
Travelodge can be built in 12 weeks
Tourism & travel
Travelodge UK recently announced that they're building hotels
made
of steel modules that resemble shipping containers, creating
nearly
instant structures that can be disassembled and reused
elsewhere.
 Neighbourhood
approach to renewable energy
Eco & sustainability / Homes & housing
Homes with wind & solar energy generators can find themselves
with
surplus energy at some times but not enough at others. Qurrent
could
help them share with neighbours, using a sophisticated server.
 Navigation
system gives drivers a visible lifeline
Automotive
Follow the red line: Virtual Cable has designed a dashboard
display
that virtually 'paints' a line on the road ahead, showing
directions
instead of speaking them.
 Rice
babies, weighed to measure
Lifestyle & leisure
Yosimiya sells bags of rice printed with a newborn's photo, name
and
date of birth. The bags are shaped to resemble a swaddled infant
and
contain the baby's exact weight in rice.
Starter kits for home-made cleaning products
Eco & sustainability
Besides kits for home cleaning, Eco-Me also sells kits for
making
natural body, baby and pet products—all from natural, readily
available
ingredients.
Social shopping meets interior design
Homes & housing / Media & publishing
Amateur interior designers can go all out on Design My Room,
decorating to their hearts' delight. Other consumers can tag
along
and buy straight from an automatically populated shopping list.
Auto insurance by the mile
Automotive / Financial services
Consumers can now buy auto insurance in increments of a thousand
miles; when their odometer reaches the end of an increment, the
coverage expires. Pay as you drive!
 Hotel
as retail space
Retail / Travel & tourism
The Emerald 5 ShowTel is reportedly so named because it is meant
to be a showcase of environmentally responsible products.
Virtually
everything a guest might see or touch in the hotel will be for
sale.
 Cartoon
stardom for every child
Entertainment
Personalized DVDs make it possible for children to watch
themselves
interact on screen with their favourite cartoon characters—from
Spiderman to Dora the Explorer.
Over the holidays, we spent some time looking back by picking
our favourites* from the new business ideas we covered last
year—most of which are still highly relevant for 2008. Since any
publication is as much about its readers as its writers and
editors (especially if those readers also
contribute), we didn't want to withhold your favourites. So,
here we go, in order of most viewed in 2007:
1.
Pay-what-you-want restaurants (Austria, Australia & United
States)
2.
Craigslist meets YouTube—online video classifieds (United
States)
3.
Soft drinks for the undecided (Singapore)
4.
A Blind Call—accidental charity (Belgium)
5.
Customized daily vitamin packs (United States)
6.
Motorcycle taxis rescue stranded business travelers (The
Netherlands)
7.
A bank run for and by street kids (India)
8.
Free photocopies for students (Japan)
9.
Chichi cupcake delivery (United Kingdom)
10.
Fresh & frozen gourmet baby food (United States & Sweden)
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