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Dan Fenstemaker has beefed up his Web site, and he’s getting ready to be busy during the holiday season, reports CantonRep.com.
Why? Fenstemaker’s invention will be featured over Thanksgiving weekend on DIY Network’s “Cool Tools” television program.
Inteletool — interchangeable telescopic tool — is just that. The tool head comes off the pole and the handle telescopes for a longer reach. The interchangeable tool heads are full size, commercial grade steel and come in a round point shovel, leaf rake, hoe, steel garden rake, spade, scoop, two broom styles, lopping shears, tree saw and aluminum scoop.
The telescopic pole reduces to two feet, a size small enough to store in a backpack or duffel bag. Planned are a 4-foot pole that extends to 8 feet, and a 6-foot model that extends to 12 feet.
Coming up with the idea was a collaboration. “My sons and I were working together, and we thought there had to be other things that could go on a telescopic pole.”
During the initial stage, he used materials from his workshop, bought parts, and hired a local machine shop to do fabricating and welding. The first attachments were a rake and hoe, then “Why not come up with a whole line of tools that interchange on an industrial strength telescopic pole?” he thought.
Who knew a doodle could make you a millionaire – and could land you on national TV? That’s what The New York Daily News asked.
It did just that for 18-year-old Rachel Segal, from Ashland, Oregon, inventor of something called “The Doodle Bra.” The high school student appeared on “The View” as part of a segment about teen millionaires.
The bra is made of white cotton and can be colored with erasable markers (ergo the “Doodle” name). The company provides non-toxic, washable markers and stencils, so you can wash your doodle clean after you’ve worn it.
So far, the senior has sold roughly 1,000 Doodle Bras, moved through an online business set up by the girl and her parents.
The contraption runs $9.99 and can be purchased from DoodleBra.com, which also markets other doodle-ready garments, from shoes to purses.
The idea for the bra came back in 2008, when Segal and her friends, looking to amuse themselves on a lazy summer day, began drawing on Segal’s only white bra with colored markers.
Segal plans to stick with the business even after she leaves for college next year.
A British translation firm will vet expectant couples’ off-the-wall baby names, ensuring their offspring aren’t saddled with monikers that mean something embarrassing in another language.
Today Translation’s new service might have come in handy for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, who probably thought naming their daughter Suri was a safe bet.
“It sounds incredibly nice, but in Japanese, we found it means pickpocket,” said Jurga Zilinskiene, the company’s chief executive, whose first name means “farmer” or “earth worker” in Greek.
The translations are sometimes a pleasant surprise, though. Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale named their youngest son Zuma, which means “peace” in Arabic, “new day” in Mayan and “running horse” in Japanese.
“You’ll rest assured you are picking a good name,” Zilinskiene said. “At the end of the day, it’s something a person has to live with for the rest of their lives.”
If you’re one of the surprisingly large number of Americans who follow the Tour de France every summer, you may have noticed massive, gorgeous printed messages on the route roads, reports Fast Company.
Nope, they’re not paint–they’re made of chalk, and they’re sprayed on the road surface by ChalkBot, a massive trailer-mounted inkjet printer sponsored by Nike and the Livestrong foundation. Check out how ChalkBot works.
This smart Upcycle Ottoman by Gus* Modern is made of repurposed jute bags that were once used to carry organic fair trade certified coffee according to Inhabitat.com.
Produced in a limited quantity, each piece is unique and shows the branding and markings of the bags used in the process.
No word if they still carry that wonderful coffee scent, but you can still identify which company produced the beans and where they came from.
Editor’s Note: What other throwaway packing materials could be re-purposed into saleable products?
For many consultants, real-time collaboration with clients is extremely important. Setting up one-on-one phone calls is easy, but if you need to have three or more parties on the line, things get tricky — and expensive, says Small Business Computing.
FreeConferenceCall.com offers free private conference lines. Just enter your name and an e-mail address on their site to receive an instant account.
FreeConferenceCall will provide you with a dedicated dial-in number and an access code, which are ready for immediate use 24/7 — no need to make a reservation. Long distance charges may apply, but there are no additional charges from the company.
Calls can be up to six hours in length, and the company offers free recording and downloading of the calls. Recordings are accessible by phone or computer, and you can distribute, archive or even send recordings to your listeners via RSS and podcast.
CNNMoney.com asks, short on cash? Join the new old economy and swap.
There’s no recession in barter,” said Debbie Lombardi as she navigated the crowd at the Barter Business Unlimited’s Annual Business & Holiday Barter Show, in Bristol, Conn.
More than 1,000 people affiliated with 100 vendors of all kinds packed into a hotel event space to wheel and deal and trade their wares. As Lombardi, the event’s host, worked the floor, dozens of small business owners stopped her to ask questions. One owns a bicycle shop. One is a longtime friend and jewelry-store owner. One sells lingerie and adult toys.
It’s the newly popular return to the old “it takes a village” way of doing business.
The barter show functions in its own cash-free world — like a high-tech Burning Man. Members have cards linked to accounts of “trade dollars” which they can spend on anything on offer from businesses in the barter network.
Glendale mom Laurie Lupinetti opened Young Chef’s Academy in 2005 so she would be home more with her daughter Sarah, then 6 months old.
It was an opportunity for Lupinetti to blend her love of cooking and love of children while fulfilling the dream to own her own business. Opening the cooking school for children allowed her to quit a job that had her traveling out of town every other week.
“I wanted to be in my bed every night and wake up to see Sarah every morning,” Lupinetti said.
Now, four years later, she’s looking for a buyer for the Mason business so she can devote more time to her 16-month-old son Giovanni, who was recently diagnosed with Fragile X Syndrome.
It is a genetic disorder that impairs a child’s mental growth and often causes delays in other areas such as speech and language development.
“I know that it can grow. I believe in the concept. So far it’s flourished just by word of mouth,” Laurie said.
Laurie plans to work through the transition to new ownership and would like to teach an occasional special event class.
If you’ve ever been out while pushing a baby in a stroller, then you probably know what it is like to try and help them fall to sleep or stay asleep. While you could always drape a coat or blanket over the stroller to help keep the sun out and help your child sleep, it is no means a perfect solution.
Cara Sayer faced a similar problem while out with her baby. In hopes of helping her baby stay asleep while they were out with the stroller Cara would always try to drape something over the front to help block out the sun. The only problem was, they never liked to stay in place. It was from that experience the SnoozeShade was born.
Anyone in the UK that purchases the SnoozeShade before January 31st of 2010 will receive a 10% discount with free P&P.
Tell us a little about the Snoozeshade.
SnoozeShade is the UK’s, and possibly the world’s, first blackout blind for prams and pushchairs. It has been designed to help baby sleep when napping in a pram. It is a secure alternative to draping blankets, pegging muslins or hanging coats over a pram when baby is napping. It is a compact and portable shade that can be popped in a handbag or kept in a buggy basket to be used whenever it’s needed. It is a universal fit; so far we haven’t found a pram or pushchair with a hood that it doesn’t fit. It can also be used on rear-facing car seats with hoods and works on twin and triplet strollers too. A double-hood buggy version is in the pipeline.
Toronto-based Sprouter is an online community that allows small business owners and entrepreneurs to share links, ask questions and share expertise with their peers, reports trendspotter Springwise.
Whereas most social networks focus on connecting users with people they already know, the premise behind Sprouter is that it’s often the people one hasn’t yet connected with—but who share common goals and interests—that can be the most valuable resources.
Accordingly, the site’s search function can help members find not just entrepreneurs in their area or industry, but also those who are discussing a topic of common interest—funding, for example. Members of the site can create profiles and start real-time discussions around any concept, company, association or event.
Sarah Prevette, Sprouter’s founder and CEO, explains: “The power of social networking by individuals has been made more than evident, and Sprouter is striving to create that same sense of community and sharing for entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs face struggles on a daily basis—from how to get funding to the best business tools to use. Sprouter can provide the forum for real-time networking and collaboration so everyone can benefit from mistakes and successes.”
Sprouter is free for users, and hopes to generate income through partnerships with venture funding agencies and small business associations, Prevette told the Financial Post.
Sprouter also hosts monthly events to bring local entrepreneurs together for in-person networking. The site’s community currently includes members from all over the world, including India, Australia, Europe and North America.
As any entrepreneur who’s spent some time trying to understand the venture capital universe will tell you, VCs typically invest locally, reports Fast Company.
The logic goes like this: Having startups to invest in nearby makes it easier for both parties to interact, get guidance, brainstorm, etc.
So if an entrepreneur believes that getting venture capital is incumbent to his startup’s success and location is important to venture firms, it’s probably worth spending some time thinking about where your startup will call home.
A look at the Q3 2009 venture capital funding statistics compiled by ChubbyBrain offers a data-driven view of venture investment by geography, which may help entrepreneurs with another data point as they consider the age-old question of location, location, location.
In 2001, Sunit Saxena made a midnight run to the grocery store for wonton wrappers. When he couldn’t find any, he went looking for a clerk. The aisles were empty. He discovered the workers holed up in a back room tearing price tags off merchandise to reprice it for the next day, reports CNNMoney.com.
I asked how many they had to do. They said, ‘Don’t ask,’” he recalls. “I said, ‘This is nuts. Technology can automate this stuff.’”
In 2002, Saxena quit his job and launched a new endeavor: Altierre. The San Jose-based company makes computerized shelf labels that let grocers change prices over a wireless network, saving time and paper.
Of the three largest U.S. grocery chains — Kroger, Safeway and Wal-Mart– two are now testing the labels.
Ad.ly, is a brand new Twitter advertising network that inserts ads once per day into your Twitter stream. They seek your approval for each ad before they automatically post it. Because they work off a quality score, a user with a few hundred real followers could easily make more money than a robot with thousands of followers that is ignored by all of them.
Today they announced a 12% referral system. This is HUGE. Jeremy Schoemaker (ShoeMoney) has already made over thirty thousand dollars through ad.ly, and if he’d signed up under you you’d have made of $4,000!
TIME’s picks for the best new gadgets and breakthrough ideas of the year, we’ll feature some of the ones we find interesting.
If it’s impossible for a race car to be “good” for the environment, maybe it can at least be a little friendlier.
Meet the WorldFirst F3 project, a Formula 3 race car developed at England’s University of Warwick: it has carrot fibers in its steering wheel, potato starch in its side mirrors and cashew-nut shells in its brake pads. The whole thing runs on a biodiesel mix of chocolate and vegetable oil.
In a small effort to make the car even greener than it already is, the designers coated the radiator in a substance that converts ozone emissions into oxygen.
But for small companies trying to navigate the minefields of setting up and running a business — especially for the first time — not getting legal advice can end up being even more expensive.
What does a cash-strapped small business have in the way of alternatives? One solution: mine the Web.
In the Small Business section of FindLaw Answers, you can post questions and get answers from other people, including lawyers on the site. FindLaw Answers has four small-business topics covering everything from business structures to trademark, copyright and patent issues, contracts, licensing, permits and labor issues.
Or try JustAnswer.law, part of a larger for-fee Web site with a roster of online experts in a variety of areas — including business law.
FindLaw offers legal forms services that can help small businesses incorporate or set up an LLC (Limited Liability Company). You fill out an online questionnaire. FindLaw partner LegalZoom.com creates and files the articles of incorporation with the appropriate Secretary of State and sends you the documents when they arrive. You follow a few simple steps to finalize the incorporation.
In tough economic times, it can make sense for consumers to be both transumers—eschewing the burdens of ownership in favor of shorter-term privileges—and sellsumers, making the most of what assets they do own writes trendspotter Springwise.
Aiming to facilitate both is NeighborGoods, a brand-new site that helps consumers borrow, lend, rent, sell and buy stuff in their community.
Focusing for now on Southern California, NeighborGoods is an online community that lets consumers save and earn money by sharing with their neighbors and friends any of the assorted tools, ladders and other things they use only occasionally.
Users of the site, which just launched into beta, can decide how they want to share their stuff. They can allow their friends to borrow an item for free while charging others a rental fee, for example, or they can decide to make the item available only to friends.
NeighborGoods helps facilitate transactions with a reservation calendar, automated reminders, wish-list alerts and private messaging. It also tracks and shares the transaction history of each member.
Neighbors can rate each other and even flag another member’s account if something goes wrong. Borrowing and lending items on NeighborGoods is free of charge. Members who want to earn money by renting or selling items must have a Pro account—currently free, but ultimately by paid subscription.
Besides the obvious financial advantages for those involved, of course, sharing tools and equipment—much like cars, bikes and boats—has distinct eco-benefits as well, minimizing the redundant things so many households typically buy.
Move over Chad Ochocinco. There’s a new iPhone sheriff in town – a stay-at-home mom of six who has taught herself how to program applications herself.
Now, Crysta Pleatman has successfully launched eight applications for Apple’s and AT&T’s popular device, with more on the way.
“This was just so new when it launched that I felt I had to be a part of it,” says the energetic 39-year-old. “I had been looking to get back into the working world and then this came along. And it’s perfect – I can set up my kids and then program away. I feel like I have found my calling.”
And that is becoming increasingly common, says Michael Chang, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based Greystripe, a mobile online advertising network that recently studied so-called “iPhone moms” and their impact on the market.
Pleatman herself stared with a simple game for toddler’s to help distract her own kids – complete with choices for boys (Army men and balls) and girls (mermaids and princesses). Now she has branched out into apps that help teens and parents decide the appropriate punishments/groundings for wrongdoing, as well as tests to help self-diagnose attention deficit disorder and autism.
But in her year-long process, Pleatman also finds herself in the plight of many independent developers. She has rung up nearly $100,000 in costs (mainly on credit cards), hiring and then firing a development firm and finally settling on a programmer in China to help her with the heavy lifting, even as her revenues to date haven’t hit $500. This is common, according to a recent study by Forrester Research that said a good application can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 to develop.
With the advent of “citizen journalism,” anyone with a camera, an Internet connection, and a few questions can become a member of the fourth estate. But how do you know if this reporting is accurate?
AppScout reports that YouTube has a new portal, dubbed YouTube Direct, intended to provide news organizations with a more organized way to find and use homemade videos about the day’s major news stories.
Let’s say a tornado touches down and wipes out a Midwestern town, a politician makes a newsworthy comment at a voter meet-and-greet, or a traffic accident has brought a major highway to a standstill. A news team might not be able to make it to the scene immediately, but you had your camera out and captured the action.
Now, through YouTube Direct, you can submit your video to the news organization of your choice and that station or Web site editor can choose whether to use or decline your footage via a private dashboard. The result? “Citizen stringers,” YouTube said.
Kate Evans, 25, said the device she created to help her battle insomnia as a student is now available online.
She designed the Light Sleeper while suffering from insomnia during her time as a product design student at the University of Central Lancashire and involves a blue light that moves across the bedroom ceiling, UPI.com reports.
It moves your eyes along a line, relaxing your brain,” Evans said. “This helps you drift off. Reading a book can make you more alert but this makes you switch off. It’s the first device that offers a simple, drug free and natural way of falling asleep for those who find it hard.”
Evans, who now works as a design director for firm Quincom in Oxford, said the company has been receiving large numbers of orders for the product from Japan.
Pamela Slim at Escape From Cubicle Nation has put together an interesting list of things you can do, right now, to stimulate a small corner of your local economy without spending a dime:
1. Mentor a new business owner.
2. Host an event at your local coffee shop.
3. Send an email to friends raving about your favorite business.
4. Give feedback to a business owner about something they should fix.
5. Constantly promote others on your social networks.
6. Hook up people who should work together.
7. Host a Laid Off Camp.
8. Attend a local Chamber of Commerce meeting.
9. Rave about your local community, and encourage investment and tourism.
TIME’s picks for the best new gadgets and breakthrough ideas of the year, we’ll feature some of the ones we find interesting.
This past summer, in a sixth-grade math class, New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein piloted a small program in which individualized, technology-based learning takes the place of the old “let’s all proceed together” approach.
Each day, students in the School of One are given a unique lesson plan — a “daily playlist” — tailored to their learning style and rate of progress that includes a mix of virtual tutoring, in-class instruction and educational video games. It’s learning for the Xbox generation.
The bulky dog crate in Betsy Hauser’s living room was really cramping her style, reports Forbes.com.
Her answer: a line of custom crate covers, pre-manufactured crate covers and dog beds, sold in various colors and sizes (all cotton and machine washable) through the Mutt Huttz Web site and fifty independent pet stores across the U.S.
Hauser launched the company last year with $17,000 in savings and loans from her family. As sales picked up, Hauser hired two part-time seamstresses to help sew custom crate covers and beds; a contract manufacturer in Monroe, N.C., handles the off-the-shelf stuff.
Hauser has booked $40,000 in sales through October. To attract a broader (and less affluent) audience, she plans to roll out the Mutt Huttz Cozy, an adjustable crate cover that fits many different brands of crates, at a lower price point in time for the holiday shopping season.
ReadWriteWeb is reporting that according to a new Forrester survey, almost 80% of Internet users in the US and Canada would not pay for access to newspaper and magazine websites.
Those users who would consider paying for content are mostly interested in subscriptions. Only a very small number of consumers is interested in making micropayments (3%). The study also asked which distribution channel consumers would prefer if their favorite print publications ceased to exist. 37% preferred the web, 14% mobile phones and 11% would prefer to read the content on their laptops or netbooks. 10% would prefer PDFs delivered by email and 3% would read the content on their e-readers.
44% of all respondents said that they wouldn’t be interested in getting their print content through any of these delivery mechanisms.
Forrester’s Sarah Rotman Epps took a closer look at the demographic profile of those users who said that they would be willing to pay. Gender and marital status had no influence on a consumer’s willingness to pay. Those who are willing to pay for magazine content are slightly younger that those who won’t (43 years vs. 47). For newspaper content, however, there was no difference. Income, too, only makes a small difference. Those with a higher income are slightly more likely to pay for newspaper content than for magazines.
The report concludes that there is no consensus among consumers about how they want content delivered to them. The fact that 10% still prefer PDFs clearly shows that we are still in a transitional period. What is clear, though, is that consumers aren’t very willing to pay for content online.
Christy Baker, a stay-at-home mom, liked the idea of buying educational games for her children, but found they were expensive and the children lost interest in them after a while.
She did some research to see if there was anyone who rented games for systems such as Leapster and Vtech, but found none. She thought, Why not me?
So she started www.smartyrents.com, a Web site that rents out games geared to children ages nine months to 10 years.
With a concept similar to Netflix, Baker and her friend Jennifer Scheidle set up their Web site about a month ago. Both Baker and Scheidle were teachers, and it was important to them that the games on the Web site be education based, not just regular video games.
Web site users buy a subscription, with packages starting at $9.99. Gift certificates are also available.
After receiving a game, the family can keep it as long as they want. If the child really likes the game, it can be purchased from the Web site.
