Monday, August 13, 2007

"DailyDump" Unique Business Idea

A new start-up in Bangalore, India, hopes to arm consumers with products and services to empower them toward a simple solution for reducing landfill waste: composting. The Daily Dump offers an array of decorative composting containers that can be used in the home to manage organic household waste and convert it to useful high-quality compost. What's more, they offer a full range of service plans for customers wary of braving the ordeal on their own.

Composting pots and vessels made of biodegradable terracotta in a variety of shapes and sizes can be purchased on the website, which features a guide to help customers choose which is right for their needs. Rakes, spoons, spatulas and other supplies are also available. The website offers extensive information and tips, such as what items can and can't compost. Consumers who lack the time or desire to care for their composting pot can select a weekly, fortnightly or monthly service plan, with a Daily Dump ‘servicewalla’ dropping by to take care of maintenance: cleaning pots, adding dry leaves and stirring the compost. Those who don’t mind doing their own maintenance can opt out of the service plan and call Daily Dump when they have an issue that needs to be addressed by a professional.

The Daily Dump currently is limited to small residential composting, but the company has big plans for expanding its operations to include composting products for businesses and larger homes, solutions for dealing with inorganic waste and further ventures to address larger urban environmental issues. In the meantime, they hope to inspire others to invest in composting—and, as such, are not likely to mind much if copycat companies begin popping up in other parts of the globe, making it easy for them to be green.
More at:http://dailydump.org/

Online Publishing Tool

Create your own online magazines, fanzines, brochures, catalogues, portfolios and more. Using the formatpixel online editor you too can design page based projects, layout text, upload your own images, add interactivity and customise their appearance.

Edit the order of pages in your projects by moving, inserting or deleting pages to create multi-page presentations.
More at:http://www.formatpixel.com/

Lokad Is An Online Sales Forecasts Provider

Lokad is an online time-series forecasts provider. They claim "we deliver the most cost effective solution on the forecasting market".
This is the kind of technology that has allowed Wal-Mart to dominate the market so much, we have all heard about or seen how Wal-Mart's supply chain has enabled it to have less inventory on hand at any given time, signifigantly dropping the prices of the goods that it sells for not having to pay to have things only sit on the shelves. Lokad offers what it refers to as the "one-click" forecast, where they handle all of the graphs and difficult to understand statistical analysis and bring the answers to their clients in an easy to understand manner.
With plans starting at $20 a month it will be easy for any business to begin using this kind of technology. The costs saved by not holding onto excess inventory will easily cover the cost of paying for the service, making it an easy decision for a business owner to choose to begin the service. The Alexa Ranking illustrates that a lot of people are already visiting this site.
More at:http://www.lokad.com/

He Made Millions With This Wacky Idea

More than 20 years ago, Tony Gutierrez dreamed of making a piece of jewelry that could double as a bar tool.

Today, his dreams are coming true.

Gutierrez, now lives in Las Vegas, where his invention, the Bottle Ring Opener, has taken off.

The Bottle Ring Opener is just what it sounds like: a bottle opener you wear as a ring. The ring looks like jewelry from the top of the hand, but on the underside is a small bottle-opening tool.

Made of coated aluminum, the rings come in several sizes and can have customized logos.

They won’t appear in stores until later this year, but they are available online for $9.99 at Bottleringopener.com. Since the site launched on June 8, about 50 rings have sold a day, Gutierrez said.

For now, he isn’t concerned about the product’s profit as much as its purpose.

“People tell me ‘money, money, money,’” he said. “I don’t care about money. I just want people to have something of mine to enjoy. By having this company here, having something to do with me — I still can’t believe it. It’s huge.”
More at:http://www.bottleringopener.com/

TrialIPO is an upcoming company that will let you simulate having your Internet company go public

TrialIPO is an upcoming company that will let you simulate having your Internet company go public. There are really two ways in which TrialIPO can be used: for business owners looking to test the virtual market, and for individuals wanting to be involved from the investor’s standpoint. If you have a company and you’re thinking of taking it public, you could try it out for a two-year time period (or a time period of your choosing) and see how it goes. The individuals in the TrialIPO community get $5 million in virtual money to play around with, so if they like you’re site, they’ll invest in it and you make money. Participating individuals can also rate and review companies on TrialIPO, and see if their judgment calls could hold water.

The difficulty in launching a community such as TrialIPO is the necessity to get a large and intelligent membership base to become highly active for the social networking and trading aspects of the site. It would be most beneficial for the companies if these members were in fact real investors, and bringing in members like this is a goal for TrialIPO. Otherwise, the sample pool to work from, on the company end and the community end, doesn’t become a helpful one for statistical purposes. Similar sites include Spigit and MediaPredict.
More at:http://www.trialipo.com/
Via-Mash

Million Dollar Contest

iYomu, the social network for grown-ups, is holding a million dollar contest.

The iYomu community will choose one single member to take home $1 million. Starting with a series of puzzles, the iYomu Challenge will weed out the finalists for the community to vote on. The series of cryptic puzzles lets contestants earn points, and once the ten finalists are chosen, they’ll have to say why they should win the $1 million prize, and how it will change their lives. The money can be used in any way the winner sees fit, and users from around the world are eligible to play. Users can also earn points by completing their profiles and referring friends.

Starting from August 13, iYomu members will be able to begin racking up points until December 31, 2007. The community picks the winner in Feburary of next year. That gives iYomu plenty of time to gain some new members and more site activity, as people will want their shot at the hefty cash prize.
More at:http://iyomu.com/

VibeAgent, the hotel search tool

VibeAgent, the hotel search tool, has launched a new feature called My Maps.
it has reportedly climbed the ranks to become the 5th largest hotel site in the world. This may sound somewhat surprising, considering that VibeAgent has yet to launch, and is still in private beta, but this is largely due to VibeAgent’s new partners, OneTravel and TravelWorm. These partnerships have increased the search potential, making it the 5th largest hotel search in terms of bookable inventory. This increases the number of hotels in VibeAgent’s database to 120,000+, offering more resources for users to gather information from.

The MyMaps tool offers a personalized maps feature for users, which integrates with your existing network and throws in some geo-search functionality to top it all off. It’s also used as a search tool, helping you find new places, friends, and of course, hotels. Think of it as a geo-spatial way of managing your network.
More at:http://vibeagent.com/

StartForce.Com

You can have an online desktop with StartForce.com and all of your data saved on that online desktop, meaning that you can easily access all of the things that would usually be only on your computer from virtually anywhere, anywhere that has internet access that is. You don't have to worry about application either because Startforce comes with web application to view/edit your files without any downloading. StartForce.com doesn't cost a dime, sign up now and you can be uploading data to your online desktop within minutes.
You can store all your files and correspondence in one place on the Internet and access them from anywhere in the world. Logging into your StartForce desktop you can edit Word Processed documents and spreadsheets from this self contained desktop in your browser without having to worry about the software not being installed on the machine you are using in say an Internet cafe for example. The desktop it provides feels very much like Windows XP and provides you with:

* Web browser + favourites
* Word Processor
* Spreadsheet Program
* Games
* RSS reader
* Messenger client for ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Start Force. Which is great for people who may have this blocked on their firewall.
* Video Player
More at:http://www.startforce.com/