Tag: websites

HassleMe.co.uk is a simple internet service that allows you to enter a recurring message to yourself and set the time intervals between reminders. For example, you may choose to receive a reminder email every day to "Do some exercise" or to be asked every six months: "How many people want to buy your business?"

Ben Kaufman, who also founded mophie and kluster, is back with a new variation on NameThis: quirky. The premise is this: entrepreneurs and creative people in general are bubbling with far more product ideas than they can possibly pursue. Consequently, these ideas end up dormant or exploited by someone else. Described by Kaulfman as a "social product development company", quirky invites users to submit their product ideas for US$99 each - this ensures that only the best ideas are lodged. The quirky community selects one product from the pool of submitted ideas every seven days. From there, the community (known as "influencers") weigh in by voting, rating and influencing other people's product ideas.

Forget "Intel Inside". The world's biggest manufacturer of microprocessors has a new tagline: "Sponsors of Tomorrow". Intel's new three-year advertising campaign kicked off in May with the launch of a thoughtful new website, viral video ads and interactive display advertising in New York's Times Square and other branding hotspots around the globe.

Forget "Intel Inside". The world's biggest manufacturer of microprocessors has a new tagline: "Sponsors of Tomorrow". Intel's new three-year advertising campaign kicked off in May with the launch of a thoughtful new website, viral video ads and interactive display advertising in New York's Times Square and other branding hotspots around the globe.

In shopping mall design, the "Gruen transfer" refers to the moment when consumers respond to "scripted disorientation" cues in the environment (of course, with the goal of soliciting a purchase). It shouldn't come as a surprise, therefore, that the website of the popular ABC television program of the same name is extremely effective at seducing visitors who wander through its pages, making departure feel almost impossible.

There are lots of smart online tools for new music discovery (Pandora, last.fm, jango and imeem come to mind - most of which have become quite familiar with legal representatives of the music labels). But the idea of comprehensively aggregating the online listening and networking behaviour of users is a breakthrough.

A few months back, Matthews teamed up with software developer Shaun Ervive to turn the Deck of Secrets guides into iPhone applications.

The winning websites and digital campaigns in this year's Webby Awards - dubbed the "Oscars for the Internet" - were announced last night.

The idea of locking a bunch of creative people in a room until they have hammered out a plan for a new business is not new. In fact, it's been done at Mixer events around the world for a number of years. But the concepts - which tends to engender a form of Stockholm Syndrome in entrepreneurs held hostage by market problems - always seems to churn out interesting formative business. They might not always go on to become the next Google, but the process illustrates the power of focused collaboration.

Having one's head crammed full of digital passwords is a fairly recent phenomenon. So it's no surprise that almost no one has considered the...

The real value in this new digital media landscape rests with networks and the ability to extract what is interesting and useful from the cacophony created online by pornographers, pontificators and penny-stock pushers. Last August, US business magazine BusinessWeek lifted the lid on Business Exchange, a social media initiative that it had been developing for two years.

This week, Gizmag launched The Mobiler, a sister site covering all things mobile. With the release of Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion's Blackberry Storm, Google's Android project and other cutting edge products, it's safe to say that mobile is hot right now.

London-based uberVU is bringing order to the chaos with its conversation-tracking aggregation technology. Users enter a url they want uberVU to track (say, your blog url) and uberVU begins tracking everything published at that url (say, blog posts, comments and trackbacks), as well as conversations that kick off or fragment into the parallel universes of other blogs, Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, etc. These conversation threads are aggregated into the uberVU tracking interface.

Listening to everyone bang on about cost-cutting, home foreclosures and delayed retirements must be mighty wearying for the über rich. Fortunately, those who have more money than they know what to do with can leave the bear-with-a-toothache investment market alone for a while and indulge in several innovative new spending options.

We're all for applying creativity with a dash of the absurd as a way to stand out from the crowd. And what better way to leave a lasting first impression on potential business contacts than handing them a business card that will makes them chuckle, gasp or drool with envy?

While Rentoid contains the everyday items you'd expect to see listed (chainsaws, ladders, laptop computers, air conditioners, etc.) there are also some deliciously oddball items. You can rent an island, sports cars, private jets, a unicycle, a driveway, a full-size wrestling ring, an R2D2 projector, even a wife (listed in the "antique" category).

While Rentoid contains the everyday items you'd expect to see listed (chainsaws, ladders, laptop computers, air conditioners, etc.) there are also some deliciously oddball items. You can rent an island, sports cars, private jets, a unicycle, a driveway, a full-size wrestling ring, an R2D2 projector, even a wife (listed in the "antique" category).

Everybody loves transparency in government, right? Well, a US federal agency, called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, has taken this hallowed principle to a...

Now comes Add-Art, a Firefox plugin that not only blocks display ads but replaces them with curated art images. On first hearing about Add-Art I conjured a mental image of a zen-like, ad-free digital nirvana (angels singing, people dressed in white playing lutes, bunches of grapes scattered around). But don't expect Leonardo, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Van Gogh.

Now comes Add-Art, a Firefox plugin that not only blocks display ads but replaces them with curated art images. On first hearing about Add-Art I conjured a mental image of a zen-like, ad-free digital nirvana (angels singing, people dressed in white playing lutes, bunches of grapes scattered around). But don't expect Leonardo, Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Van Gogh.