Innovation That Matters

Healthy Bites Grill

Testing new products in an experience-economy setting

Technology helps local businesses connect with purchase-ready buyers

Respond.com

New-style tiki-lounges — a trend in global bar culture

Waikiki Wally’s Otto’s Shrunken Head

Cleverly using barcodes to sky-rocket online sales of used goods

Price Minister

Combining “song recognition technology” and mobile phones

Yet another new business that has figured out that consumers (a) love their cell phones and (b) are getting addicted to the ‘right here, right now’ lifestyle. So what’s the newest thing in the UK? When hearing a song they like but don’t know the name of, mobile phone owners (i.e. everybody) can dial ‘2580’, point their phone to the music source, and London-based Shazam will then send a text message (SMS) with the name of the artist and the track. Besides the technology enabling recognition of the songs (patent still pending), Shazam has built a database with almost 1.6 million tracks in it. Revenues come from partnerships and from the actual calls. Other services include sending song clips to friends, accessing your ‘tags’ on a personalised web page, and buy the CD straight away on amazon.co.uk. That’s right: not amazon.com: Shazam isn’t active in the US, mainland Europe or in Asia: plenty of opportunity for similar services or partnerships for entrepreneurs who act NOW. And with photography-enabled phones being shipped by the millions as we speak, who’s going to come up with an image bank, so that one day we can point our camera phones at clothes, furniture and gadgets in the public domain and find out where to buy them? The world IS for sale! (more…)

Successfully cornering a niche in the tough world of magazine publishing

Wallpaper Lucky