Archive for November 2009
Six Steps To Creative Breakthroughs
Innovation is a process. Follow CNNMoney.com‘s road map to generate game-changing ideas for your business. 1. Look Behind You History can be a great teacher. We were always looking back to see what did and did not work. It was fundamental. And it was what my clients were telling me to do. 2. Lose The [...]
Clay McDaniel over at Mashable has an interesting look at hot social shopping trends. A recent study from Burst Media found that 85% of consumers will shop online this holiday season, and the majority of those people will continue to shop online throughout the year. Now that online shopping is widespread – just try finding [...]
Free Apps And Services For Biz
Inc.com has put together a list of completely free apps for your smartphone or PC. Skype — Available for PCs and select smartphones (iPhone and Windows Mobile), Skype lets you make free phone calls to any other Skype user on the Internet via VoIP technology. PC users can also chat using video, swap files, or [...]
Business Opportunities Weblog’s 8th Birthday
Dane Carlson and the Business Opportunities Weblog celebrates eight years of blogging about quality opportunities and business ideas.
Unique products to inspire and amuse. Cat & Dog Toothpaste Caps. Finally, a reason to brush. Snow Shorts. Armour for your bum. Sweet Caffeine Beef Jerky. I’m giving up coffee! The Pillowig. A perfect gift for your narcoleptic friends. Photos by perpetualkid/orvis/thinkgeek/bookofjoe.
Inside Coke’s “Freestyle” Soda Fountain
At first, the Freestyle seems like a futuristic novelty: The touchscreen fountain allows you to pick from dozens of Coke products–far more than you could cram into a typical soda fountain. But that belies the real business case for the machine, reports Fast Company. It’s the machine’s guts that tell the real story. The fountain’s [...]
Pop-Up Shops Fill Short-Term Niche
With malls and shopping centers staring at record vacancies, The Star Tribune reports the lowly pop-up store is making a comeback. And it’s no longer limited to the fly-by-night store, as major chains try to wisely spend the cash they do have. Toys ‘R’ Us just opened 80 temporary stores across the country in an [...]
How Entrepreneurs Identify New Biz Opportunities
Raffi Amit,a professor of management at Wharton,offers insights into how entrepreneurs can identify new business opportunities and evaluate their potential and their risks in an article on the Knowledge Wharton blog. There are many sources for new venture opportunities for individuals. Clearly, when you see inefficiency in the market, and you have an idea of [...]
Editor’s Note: The inventor says he has been using his ‘alarm clock’ for three years???
Cotton Candy Truck Brings Sweet Biz
You might think that cotton candy is only something that you can find at your local fair; but if you’ve got a craving for something sticky and sugary that melts in your mouth and leaves your tongue bright pink or blue, then you’re in luck if you live in NYC, because cotton candy may come [...]
Mompreneur Creates Safety Mat For Kids With Epilepsy
Firstcoastnews.com: Joshua Duce loves the Florida Gators, Spider-man, and Spongebob Squarepants. Like many 6-year-old boys, he’s a happy kid, playing and laughing with a Wii controller in his hand. Sometimes the active boy just stops cold. He has drop seizures and they happen more than 20 times a day. His brain just shuts down. Joshua’s [...]
Virtual Goods Start Bringing Real Paydays
Silicon Valley may have discovered the perfect business: charging real money for products that do not exist reports, The New York Times. These so-called virtual goods, like a $1 illustration of a Champagne bottle on Facebook or the $2.50 Halloween costume in the online game Sorority Life, are no more than a collection of pixels [...]
A Winning Recipe For Student Entrepreneur
As a student, Julie Thatcher was pretty sure her business would be popular with the college set when she opened a restaurant in 2004 less than a mile from the university campus, reports The Juneau Empire. She and her friends had been spending late nights making waffles and drinking caffeine in the campus dorm kitchen. [...]
Turning Your Customers Into Fanatic Fans
Rieva Lesonsky at The Small Business Blog has an interesting look at how to turn customers into fanatic fans. Every team needs fans. And every business needs them as well. Several years ago, Ken Blanchard of “One Minute Manager” fame wrote a book called Raving Fans, essentially a parable about how businesses can turn customers [...]
Startups May Turn Publishing Industry On Its Ear
Rick Rieser was halfway through his daily jog this summer when the idea for Percy, The Perfectly Imperfect Chicken popped into his brain, reports The San Jose Mercury News. Today, the 52-year-old first-time author is preparing for a busy schedule of readings in the Midwest, toting boxes of the children’s book that was published with [...]
The New York Times is reporting that PayPal is seeking new ways to use its payment system. PayPal held its first developer conference in San Francisco to officially open its platform to software developers wanting to include payments in their Web or cellphone applications. With the new platform, any software developer can embed PayPal’s technology [...]
Home Based Biz Won’t Make You An Overnite Success
Believe it or not, it takes a long time to become an overnite success! Once you have chosen your particular home based business, the two most important things to remember are to stay focused and not to get discouraged, writes The Small Business Brief. I’ve had many active and enthusiastic business team members that were [...]
Leggings Let Young Girls Play Hard Without Scraped Knees
NWsource: While at Green Lake one day waiting to go on a walk with a friend, local designer Wendy Feller stumbled upon an idea. Why not design cute leggings made with strong, durable material and padded knees to allow her then five-year-old daughter, and little girls in general, to play hard without having to worry [...]
Only in tea can you find a drink for nearly any mood. There is a tea you can drink at bed time to help you sleep, there is one for when you get up in the morning and need a boost. In some countries a cup of tea is simply a part of the daily [...]
Kathie Delano and Debbie Draudt realized it was a tough time to start a new company last year when the micro business venture that was helping them find commercial kitchen space suddenly folded, reports The Denver Business Journal. But the two chocolatiers pushed on, finally settling in a 300 square-foot baking area in a south [...]
Little Startup Offers Hope For Future
Jeremiah Turner at Foster’s Daily Democrat has an interesting look at a little ‘green’ startup. I recently visited a nondescript storefront at an address I will not reveal because industrial espionage is very real when the stakes are high. And in this case they are very high indeed. Inside was a little startup company called [...]
Give Micro-Bizs More Attention
Many times micro-businesses have been neglected when it comes to the national development of this country, reports Ben Ssebuguz at The Observer. Most of the government programmes put their focus on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). All banks are looking at working with SMEs too, neglecting the Micro-businesses. The civil society organizations have also put [...]
When you’re traveling this holiday season, you can enjoy free WiFi, courtesy of Google, at 47 participating airports and on every Virgin America flight. Just bring a WiFi-enabled laptop or mobile device and stay connected to family and friends for free while you travel now through January 15, 2010. The list includes the international airports [...]
Startup Makes It Easy To Buy Pants Online
Brian Spaly’s quest for the perfect pair of pants led him and former roommate Andy Dunn to start a Web-only clothing company that wants to sell men’s trousers that fit — without the need for fitting rooms writes The Associated Press. Mass-market pants, the kind you find at chain stores, are often baggy and frumpy, [...]
Chris Anderson On Freemium Biz Models
TechCrunch reports on Chris Anderson’s presentation to the Y Combinator’s Startup School about Freemium Business Models. Anderson likened freemium to handing out muffins on the street to entice people to start eating your muffins. But with muffins there’s a significant cost to giving away each muffin. With digital goods, you can give away 90% of [...]
Despite all the talk of venture capital, angel investors, business loans and the like, the fact is about one-third of startup funding comes from credit cards. Plastic is the most popular source of outside financing to get businesses off the ground reports Entrepreneur. So it’s important for startups to consider the effects of the federal [...]
Mom/Daughter Team Make Up Perfect Recipe For Business
The Palm Beach Post: Stephanie Rolle’s mother, Betty, started baking her special oatmeal cookies with raisins last fall. “People just fell in love with them,” said Rolle, who recently opened Savannah’s Gourmet Cookies, Treats and Gifts in the Crowne Plaza hotel. Then people asked, “Can you be the concession at our high school play?” A [...]
The Goodie Bar Offers Accessories for Any Wedding
The wedding day is a special moment in any couples life and it is one that can be quite costly. Put that together with the millions of people that are getting married each year and that makes this a very profitable industry to be in. This is something Patricia Ottoni, the owner of The Goodie [...]
Turning A Million Dollar Idea Into A Million Dollars
If you have a million dollar idea and need some advice on how to get started, a new book and an inventor’s conference may be your ticket to booming business says 9News.com. The Hoola Hoop, Crocs, Post-it Notes, The Snuggie – all simple ideas that turned into millions of dollars for independent inventors and stimulated [...]
Reuters had an interesting story about a guy who makes $85,000 per year selling ad space on a T Shirt! His business is called, appropriately, IWearYourShirt.com. And that $85,000 per year has a nice ring to it. Think you could do something like this? When you look at his pricing (no more than $365 per [...]
An ATM For Recycling Consumer Electronics
Trendspotter Springwise is reporting that of the 140 million cell phones sold in the US in 2007, only 10% were recycled, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. That leaves a mounting pile of e-waste to deal with. Offering a solution is EcoATM, an automated reuse-and-recycle machine that makes it easy and financially rewarding for [...]
Nominate Your Favorite Local Business For A Free Commercial!
You can nominate your favorite local business for a free commercial! What will that winning commercial look like? Try this one on for size: You can see the page they created for it here: Cullman Liquidators
Mom-Inventor Creates New Stroller Shade
A mom who is using her life savings to set herself up as an inventor is ready to release her first product – the Snooze Shade writes The Surrey Herald. Cara Sayer, 37, says the product aimed to make mum’s lives easier, by providing a removable shade to attach to prams (strollers). The idea came [...]
PR.com is reporting that Atek, Inc. is making a timely flu season introduction of the Touch-Stick, a key-size implement used for hygienically pushing, tapping, and signing store keypads, ATM machines, elevator buttons, gas pump buttons, and other publicly touched electronic devices. The patent-pending Touch-Stick features a flat round tip for pushing mechanical buttons, a cleverly [...]
20 Entrepreneurs Give Inspiration
Business Week has a great article on How 20 Business Ideas Were Hatched In my experience, learning as much as possible how other people do things lets you find the “model” that most directly fits your own needs and personality. Finding models, examples, case studies about ideas and procedures that worked are worth seeking out. [...]
How To Stimulate The Economy Using Your Brain
photo credit: L_Family With the current economic situation, many business owners are taking it upon themselves to publicly complain about how the stimulus money is being spent, complaining about how some companies are getting stimulus money when they don’t deserve it. All this is doing is wasting their time when they should be out there [...]
General Mills Invites Inventors
Reuters is reporting that General Mills is extending an invitation to scientists, researchers, engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs around the globe to visit the company`s new innovation portal. Visitors to the site can find opportunities to partner with General Mills on initiatives across the company`s extensive portfolio of leading consumer brands. The new G-WIN innovation portal [...]
USPTO Unveils Fast-Track Patent Plan
Inventors with two or more patent applications pending at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office can have one of their patents fast-tracked – “jumped to the head of the line,” in the words of USPTO director David Kappos – provided inventors abandon one of their less pressing applications, reports Inventors Digest. The move is part [...]
How do you change people’s behaviors? Make it fun. Watch this video and see why after one change, more people took the stairs than the escalator.
Mompreneurs Juggle Kids & Commerce
Cincinnati.com: They fix lunch, shepherd the kids to swim lessons, do the laundry and somehow find the time to create businesses. They’re Mompreneurs, entrepreneurial moms who walk the tightrope between family and business, looking after the kids and the bottom line at the same time. Maybe it’s the economy, but moms on a mission to [...]
Former Inmate Turns Small Biz Owner
How many of us can truly say we found our life’s calling? Sewing found Johnny Wimberly as a teenager, long before he found this work as a small business owner, running Jed’s Custom Services in Sheridan, reports 9News.com. In 1992, Wimberly was convicted of aggravated armed robbery and spent six years in prison. “I went [...]
Flu Could Put Internet On Life Support
Like many big organizations, Comcast Corp. is taking precautions to halt the spread of H1N1 flu. For one, it has distributed bottles of hand sanitizer to employees reports The Chicago Tribune. But Comcast, the nation’s largest residential Internet provider, with 14 million high-speed subscribers, may have a bigger problem if the flu leads to rampant [...]
Biz Idea: Rental Christmas Trees
Trendspotter Springwise has an interesting holiday story about renting….Christmas trees. For all the traditional merriment they embody, Christmas trees are a) awkward to transport and b) terribly depressing when they’re discarded in January. No longer if Los Angeles landscape architect Scott Martin has his way; he founded The Living Christmas Company, which gives Los Angeles [...]
The Business Pundit has put together a list of the unique origins of 25 popular products. In 1928, accountant Walter Diemer worked at Fleer, but experimented with gum recipes on the side. One of his ingredient combinations was less sticky and stretchier than other gums. He discovered that it he could blow bubbles with it. [...]
Entrepreneur has an interview with Sean Spector, who, in 2002, co-founded Gamefly, an online company that is to gamers what Netflix is to movie lovers. What inspired you to start Gamefly? I had a voracious appetite for video games, and I couldn’t afford to buy all the games I wanted to play. I think that’s [...]
Kid Entrepreneurs Build iPhone App
Owen Voorhees may seem like an unlikely tech entrepreneur because he’s just 11-years old. But according to an Inc.com story, for the last nine months Voorhees has climbed a mountain of doubt, overcame unfamiliar programming languages and pored over college level computer science textbooks–all to develop his very own iPhone application. His app, MathTime, debuted [...]
Mom Creates Kids Only Social Network
ABC15.com: Kids love the Internet, but unfortunately so do sexual predators. Statistics show that nearly 100,000 of them are now on social websites chatting with minors. That concerned Mary Kay Hoal, a mother of five whose teenage daughter wanted to join one of the popular social sites her friends were on. Like any responsible parent, [...]
Inventor Of The World’s First Permanently-Tied Shoelace
The inventor of the world’s first permanently-tied shoelace has received acclaim from a unique source – the British Cheerleading Asssociation according to a story in The Ealing Gazette. Father-of-three Peter Greedy, who lives in Hanwell, got plaudits from the BCA for inventing the Greeper, the shoelace which never comes undone. Mr Greedy said he had [...]
You Are Cleverer Than You Think
Our notions of brainpower are radically changing. We are on the threshold of a new age of intelligence, reports The Times. Earlier this year, it was declared that we are in the age of intelligence: 2,000 delegates at the 14th International Conference of Thinking in Kuala Lumpur embraced the fact that instead of thinking agriculturally, [...]
Treehugger has an interesting story about a company that rents out goats to clear brush. Goats have many advantages: • They have a low impact on the environment due to their cloven hooves. • They are natural climbers and love steep slopes and uneven terrain. • They can go where machinery and other modes of [...]
