Archive for July 2011
Alcoholic Cupcakes: Tipsy Bakery
News-Leader: Do you need a liquor license to sell booze-laced cake? That’s one of the questions local entrepreneur Frankie Murphy is wrestling with as she prepares to launch her new business Tipsy Bakery. Murphy, 24, said she got the idea, ironically, from her mother. “On my 21st birthday my mom made me a Jello-shot cake,” [...]
How to Use a $100 Bill As Packing Material
Financial Padding consists of crumpled paper $100 dollar bill look-alikes that are a fun replacement for standard packing peanuts. Your recipient will be surprised, excited, disappointed and amazed, all in the same moment upon opening their package. Their dejection upon realizing that you didn’t real pad their $19.99 item with hundreds of $100 bills will [...]
Enloop: Bank Ready Business Plans for Real Businesses
Most Silicon Valley startups are aimed at the tech-savvy, iPhone carrying crowd that lives in Silicon Valley. Not this one. Enloop.com is a free tool that was launched to help small businesses and entrepreneurs in ‘real America’ with real businesses such as restaurants, daycare facilities, plumbing services, delis, jewelry lines and corner stores. How does [...]
Batting Machine Floats Ball in Midair
From the video’s transcript: The Jet Hitter from MRC is a batting machine that allows people to hit a ball that floats in mid-air. An industrial ring blower emits a fixed current of blown air, and a nozzle shaped and angled for optimized fluid mechanics floats a regulation hardball. “People have used a soft toss [...]
Self Driving Car for the Blind
Using robotics, laser rangefinders, GPS and smart feedback tools, Dennis Hong is building a car for drivers who are blind. It’s not a “self-driving” car, he’s careful to note, but a car in which a non-sighted driver can determine speed, proximity and route — and drive independently. Video below.
In 1990, former English teacher, Max Hardberger, started his own marine consultancy business in Louisiana. He was periodically retained by shipowners to extract their vessels from lawless ports without a clearance from local authorities. In 1998, following his admission to the California Bar, Hardberger began to practice maritime law alongside his marine consultancy and vessel [...]
Wired: The Army has autonomous robots scampering around on land. The Air Force has killer drones dropping bombs from the air. Now the Navy — understandably just a little jealous, and clearly not satisfied with its robotic helicopters — prepares to add two new seafaring ‘bots to the mix. “Blackfish” is a remote controlled, sawed-off [...]
Bike Fixtation: Bike Repair Vending Machine
Bike Fixtation is a self-service kiosks bicycle repair kiosk. The vending machines offer tubes, patch kits, use of adjustment tools and even access to a pump to fill up your tires. Each self-service Bike Fixtation kiosk features: Universal bike mounting system for on-site repairs Aircraft cable tethered bicycle repair tools Self-contained tire-inflation system compatible with [...]
Tornado Fries: A French Fry That Looks Like a Slinky
I just read an article about how a Delaware man and his family have opened a restaurant to sell “Tornado Fries” in their resort community. I’ve never heard of the food, so I did some research. According the article, tornado fries are deep-fried potatoes-on-a-stick that were featured on the Food Network series “Unwrapped.” I found [...]
Smooth Ride For Electronic Bikes
A bicycle going 20 mph is bound to attract some attention. However, if it is moving at that pace without pedaling, it will definitely turn heads. Dave Martin grabs everyone’s attention on purpose, reports Bellaire Examiner. After all, he is the owner of an electronic bicycle shop, RevolutionE. The shop is Martin’s encore career. He [...]
Inventor Invests In Pool Safety
What are some of the most popular attractions during a hot summer? The pool. It also has the potential to be dangerous. In 2002, a young girl drowned in a hot tub and that grabbed the attention of the government. They quickly implemented new rules that public pools, spas, and whirlpools would have to follow. [...]
Kristen Trautman was lucky enough to have an employer willing to teach her the various skills needed to run a boutique. However, when she found herself in need of a job, she found it nearly impossible to find the right position to fit her knowledge. So, she reached out to family members and started K. [...]
Do You Have a Google Plus Account? Want One?
Do you have a Google Plus account yet? If you do, I’d love to connect with you, so add me with this link. If you don’t have an account, leave a comment below and I’ll send you an invite.
Your Biz Is Not Your Hobby: Why Many Small Businesses Fail
A reader wrote: What business should I start? I have lots of hobbies and am sure I can find something, but how do I narrow it down to one that I will really love to do day in and day out. Many people start businesses because they enjoy doing something a recreationally. Since we’re all [...]
Camel’s Milk is Going to Be Big
As mentioned before here in 2009, camel’s milk might someday be a huge product, even if it’s origins seem dusty and remote: For the tattered-clothed young men in this remote community, milking a camel’s stubby udders at sunrise is not a novelty, but a daily chore to get milk valued by their tribe for generations. [...]
Today in Entrepreneurial History: July 22
On this day in 1952, Frank Zybach patented his center-pivoting rotting irrigator. If you’ve flown across the country, you’ve undoubtedly seen green circles of irrigated land, typically clustered together in the middle of brown to the horizon. Zybach grew up in Nebraska but was farming in Colorado in 1947 when he saw a demonstration of [...]
Space Race: There Are Dollar Signs on the Moon
Now that the last space shuttle has returned to Earth, NASA can get out of the way, and let the entrepreneurs race to the moon: “It’s probably the biggest wealth creation opportunity in modern history,” said Barney Pell, a former NASA computer scientist turned entrepreneur and now a co-founder of Moon Express. While Moon Express [...]
SBA Reaching Out In Michigan With Tour
Crain’s Detroit Business: Starting Aug. 10 in Mt. Pleasant, the tour aims to connect small business owners to help and resources. The tour is the first of its kind to be conducted by the SBA and will offer experts on financing, government contracting, social media, human capital, and financial management, along with success stories from [...]
Crack A Cold One… With Your iPhone
If you’re a beer enthusiast with an iPhone, Opena has created a unique phone case you will love. All you need to do is slide out the bottle cap opener and — pop — your beer is ready to drink, reports Inventor Spot. Now, thanks to some enterprising young beer-swillers from Down Under, you can [...]
Enterpreneur recently releases a list of the best business bars. Whether you want to rub elbows with investors or hear the latest business gossip. Elixer in San Francisco is the best bar for business gossip. among entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and folks in green business, “H,” as he’s known, is most renowned as the Bay Area’s [...]
Panning the Streets of NYC for Gold
CBS News: Many people have come to New York over the years in search of fortune. It is not true that the streets are paved with gold, but the sidewalks might be. Sometimes, in tough times, people think up the craziest ideas for making money. Take, for example, 43-year-old, unemployed jewelry setter Raffi Steppanian. As [...]
Young Entrepreneurs Dare You To Bring On The Bling
Janessa and Rachel may be under the age of 18, but they are already very entrepreneurial. Together they have launched a jewelry business, Bring on the Bling, that connects US customers with fun Peruvian pieces. With prices under $10 each, their pieces are affordable enough for people of all ages. I recently ask both girls [...]
Ideas are Worthless By Themselves
About five years ago, I was slaving away as a corporate IT drone, working on a dusty old shipping computer in a frigid warehouse. I was having trouble upgrading the UPS software because I had to type in a long string of numbers and my fingers kept missing the correct keys on the keyboard. The [...]
Insurance That Pays You When You’re Unemployed
Income Assure is a private insurance company that sells supplemental unemployment insurance so that you can maintain 50% of your income if you lose your job. Though state unemployment systems are designed to replace 50% of former wages, benefits are capped at a relatively low fixed dollar amount. So, once you earn above a certain [...]
When you are in a foreign culture, even simple things can be very interesting. Even grocery shopping. Candy Japan run by an Finish expat in Japan that is a subscription service where for a monthly fee you get a surprise envelope filled with random Japanese candy every two weeks. How It Works Every two weeks [...]
Angry Birds Are Biggest Back to School Trend
The hot new trend this back-to-school season is anything having to do with Angry Birds, according to CNN Money: Almost two years after it launched, the highly-addictive Angry Birds iPhone app in which birds are slung at pigs living in wood houses is still the No.1-selling paid app. Now for the first time, Angry Birds’ [...]
Kid Sells Rare Shoes for Big Bucks
The Bellingham Herald: Jon Zobel has a hot business going, flipping hip-hop-inspired, limited-edition sneakers, hats and watches to like-minded collectors for wads of cash. At 13, he’s part of a “sneakerhead” trend that began in the 1980s with the rise of hip-hop culture and has trickled down to teens who hoard birthday money and holiday [...]
Innovation Key In Poor Economy
A few years ago, Denis Place and his two partners left their jobs at Suss MicroTec to launch their own business. Today, Suss MicroTec no longer exists but their company, SemiProbe, is alive and well, reports USA Today. “In terms of employees, over the next five years, our expectation is to be at 60 to [...]
When Shree Bose was in second grade, she tried to make blue spinach. At just 17 years of age, she won the first Google Global Science Fair with her research into ovarian cancer, reports The New York Times. For the winning research Ms. Bose looked at a chemotherapy drug, cisplatin, that is commonly taken by [...]
The Struggle To Start A Recession-Era Biz
Finding the money to start a new business is not easy. So when Steve Antill found himself unemployed, he took the cash out of his IRA and launched Strictly Iron, reports Las Vegas Sun. The 34-year-old married father of two lost his job of 13 years and figured he would need to make it on [...]
Ever Wish You Had a Nurse in the Family?
PhillyBurbs: When her mother and mother-in-law both experienced serious health problems, Vikki Dargenio looked for a medical professional who could help them through the complex and often confusing maze of specialists, doctor appointments and treatment options. When she couldn’t find anyone locally who provided the service outside of a healthcare setting, Dargenio ended up giving [...]
Hawaiian Chariot: Wheelchair Motorbikes
A Hawaiian man, whose love for motorcycles was temporarily halted after an accident in 1982 left him a quadriplegic and no longer able to ride his bikes. In the years since, he’s remained a motorhead and continued to tinker and tweak various vehicles, including a scooter made from a mo-ped. But according to the Honolulu [...]
What recourse do you have if you purchase a coupon from Groupon or LivingSocial only to run out of time before it expires? Used to be that you had no choice but the consider the money wasted. According to the Today, it was only a matter of time before someone saw a business opportunity in [...]
IBM’s Watson Computer to Do Sales and Customer Support
Watson was the IBM supercomputer that played against Ken Jennings on Jeopardy last year. IBM has just announced that the next application for Watson is in sales and customer support. ExtremeTech has the story: Think about it: how many times have you asked a salesperson a question about a product, only to have a blank [...]
Fast Company: This summer, you’ll want to consider adding your smartphone to the plastic bib, nutcracker, and melted butter for your lobster dinner. If an initiative from EcoTrust Canada called ThisFish takes off, you’ll be able to scan tags on the coveted crustaceans (and a growing menu of other seafood as well) to learn more [...]
Niche Biz: Digital Textbook Rentals
If you want to make some money, tap into something a starving college student will pay for. That is exactly what Amazon is doing with their recent digital textbook rental launch. Students who cannot afford to buy their textbooks can now rent the digital version for a set price with a minimum rental period of [...]
Credit And Social Media Combine?
Social media, Facebook in particular, is a growing medium. People are still discovering the various possibilities with the service, and businesses are finding new ways to connect with customers with its help. American Express and Facebook are combining in a unique way. According to USA Today, AmEx has recently announced a long list of initiatives [...]
A question big companies often ask themselves: How do we reach the mom market? It may come as no surprise that it is a hard market to reach if you don’t really know what this select group of women want. However, if you are the woman behind Mom Central, you’re ready to let them know. [...]
Bill Gates to Reinvent the Toilet
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced the launch of a strategy to help bring safe, clean sanitation services to millions of poor people in the developing world. In a keynote address at the 2011 AfricaSan Conference in Kigali, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the foundation’s Global Development Program, called on donors, governments, the [...]
Nearly everything today is “Made in China”; nearly everything that is, except for two million chopsticks that are made each day in Americus, Georgia at Georgia Chopsticks. Business is booming, and the company plans to increase production from 2 million to 10 million chopsticks per day. Video below. More info here and here.
Plus: Netflix for Baby Clothes
Before having her first baby Caroline O’Connor was sifting through piles of hand-me-downs and gifted baby clothes when ,in the excitement of pregnancy, she wondered who she’d be able to handle all of the stuff associated with babies. The mountains of quickly outgrown baby clothes were foremost on her mind when she quipped to her [...]
What Are the Most Expensive Keywords?
Google AdWords is a dynamic, auction-based marketplace where advertisers bid on keywords to compete for top ad placement. The minimum bid per keyword is 5 cents, but this research shows that in highly competitive categories, Google can make up to $50 per click. According to Wordstream, these are the top 10 most expensive keywords to [...]
Cork N Canvas: The Accidental Franchise
Wall Street Journal (In Charge): Like many new small-business owners, Cathy Deano knew nothing about franchising when she and a partner launched a series of bring-your-own-wine painting classes in Mandeville, La., four years ago. Yet from the moment Cork’n Canvas opened its doors, the business started getting offers from enthusiastic clients who wanted to buy [...]
When the economy beings to sag, restaurants are one of the first to feel the strain. According to The Dayton Beach News-Journal, one restaurant is facing financial troubles if business doesn’t pick back up. The restaurant in its first four years had built a formidable following, attracting tourists, snowbirds and local workers. But the last [...]
Completing A Patent Application
Are you currently working on a patent application? IPWatchdog offers some advice that can help you make the most of your invention description. What is the structure of the components? What is the overall structure of the unit? How are things connected? How do they interact? How would they be made? How are the pieces [...]
The corn farmer might soon become extinct. According to Kahleej Times, Eduardo Rodriguez Hernandez recently created a unique robot that can plow, plant, care for, and harvest corn. The farmer up at five am to begin the day’s chores may finally get to sleep in during planting season. “This kind of parallel robot is made [...]
botl Filters Tap Water On The Go
As more people choose take the initiative to lead a greener life style, they are filtering the water they drink from the tap. While most on-the-go bottles have a built in filter that cannot switch between bottles, botl offers a unique botlfilter that can drop into almost any bottle. The ability to use any bottle [...]
Gotham Greens: Urban Rooftop Greenhouse
Gotham Greens is the the country’s first commercial urban rooftop greenhouse. They have a 15,000 square-foot facility atop a two-story warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that aims to put more than 100 tons of farm fresh produce into the mouths of hungry New Yorkers within 24 hours of harvesting. Business Insider has a photo tour.
Three things men love will be woven together when a new business opens in Howell later this summer — burgers, beers and shears. Pinckney resident Lance Lumpiesz soon will open the doors of Moe’s BarBar Shop, 106 W. Grand River Ave., a place where a man “can cut his locks and have a scotch on [...]
Joe Reynolds is a former cross-country athlete and house painter who’s love for marathon running but dread of miles and miles of endless pavement drove him to create the Great Urban Race in 2007. Great Urban Race is a wild urban adventure. Teams of racers travel somewhere between four to eight miles, solve twelve clues [...]
