Canine Bed Bug Inspectors

Posted: Friday 12 Mar 2010, under category Ideas

A company based out of New York City is offering a unique new service to their customers: bedbug detection carried out not by humans, but by dogs. The company (called "The Bedbug Inspectors") was founded by Jeremy Ecker six months ago. Ecker and one other man, Oscar Rincon (both highly experienced with animals and certified by the NESDCA - National Entomology Scent Detection Canine Association), work together with their dog, Cruiser, in order to ameliorate the city's growing bedbug infestation.

Complaints about bedbugs have increased drastically over the past six years, from 537 complaints to 11,000 per year. For a while, bedbugs were not a problem for the majority of America but, with the increase in overseas immigration, the bugs, once thought to be eradicated by harsh chemicals like DDT, have found their way back into the country.

The cramped living situations in the city are not helping the problem either when you realize that the only barrier separating you from your neighbor is a relatively thin layer of bricks. Regardless of where you live, bedbugs are a problem. There are stories of families which have had to evacuate their million dollar bedbug-infested home in the Hamptons to live in a tent in their backyard until the problem is cleared up.

Rising rates of reported infestations (most likely much higher than we think since the statistics only apply to rental properties) along with most rental lawyers now recommending that their contracted buyers get a bedbug inspection before renting, call for an accurate method of detection. That's where "The Bedbug Inspectors" come in, most importantly because of their use of dogs to do the detecting. Researchers at the University of Florida have found that these "bedbug dogs" are capable of detecting both live bedbugs and their eggs with an accuracy rate of 96%. Compare that to the accuracy rate of a human detector, which is only 17-30%.
A big difference, right?

One point the company also makes is that they do not actually exterminate the bedbugs, they just detect them. This means that their detection will most likely be more honest than most exterminator's would be. "The Bedbug Inspectors" won't get additional income from actually carrying out the extermination. Not to mention that, if you use their service, you get a cute, furry animal to run around your house for a bit opposed to a potentially not-so-cute exterminator.

"The Bedbug Inspectors" work mainly out of the city and Tri-State area, but are willing to travel both nationally and internationally upon request. They charge $350 per session - a small price to pay if you're living in a tent on your lawn.

Tip: New York Times

Fiverr, or, What Can You Get for Five Bucks?

Posted: Thursday 11 Mar 2010, under category Ideas

It turns out the five dollars can still get you something after all. Like a mobile version of your favorite website. Or guy who writes your company's name on his arm. Or a pretty girl who leaves a flirtatious message on your Facebook page. Fiverr.com is a marketplace where people sell all manner of services for the price of 5 dollars, not a penny more or less.

The site is a lot of fun, especially for the creative and silly things people propose, but there are also some more serious proprosals as well. Just think of it as going to the dollar store, you know you're probably not going to find anything really good, but at least you won't have to pay much for it.

Tip: Iddictive

A Company that Kidnaps Its Thrill-Seeking Clients

Posted: Tuesday 9 Mar 2010, under category Ideas

I

Call it designer adbuction. A French company called Ultimé Réalité (whose slogan is, helpfully, the Dantean "Abandon all hope, ye who enter") provides high end thrills for wealthy adrenline junkies. Its services are centered around realizing clients worst fears - for the cathartic rush, apparently - and its latest offering has been making headlines, the "thrill" of being kidnapped.

The basic kidnapping basic starts at 900 euro, and involve taking the client by force, bounding and gagging him or her, and keeping them prisoner for four to eleven hours. Clients must of course sign a waiver beforehand, but they are not told when and how they will be taken, in order to keep them in suspense.

The company's offering does not stop at kidnapping, but puts no limits on the potential thrill-seeking scenarios."Basically, anything is possible. I identify what the customer wants and then try to put it into action," says Georges Cexus, the entrepreneur behind the idea.

More elaborate and costly offers are the manhunt packages, in which a client can choose to be either chased or to chase someone else; these can even include being chased by a helicopter. The latest services involve playing the role of a drug dealer smuggling cargo, and spending the night in a morgue. Clients can choose from the various package deals or create their own "made-to-order" service.

This seems like one of those things that someone saw in a movie and tried to recreate in real life.

Tip: Springwise

A New Kind of Interactive Textbook that Professors Can Edit

Posted: Thursday 4 Mar 2010, under category Ideas

Called "a kind of Wikipedia for textbooks" by the New York Times, textbook giant Macmillan is launching DynamicBooks, a software that allows university professors to edit and customize digital textbooks for their classes. They will be able to reorganize and delete chapters, upload material from their courses such as syllabi pictures and graphs, and even rewrite or delete specific paragraphs and illustrations.

Though customized textbooks have been around for a while, the great novelty of DynamicBooks is that it allows teachers to edit content without having to get the consent of the publishers or authors.

"Basically they will go online, log on to the authoring tool, have the content right there and make whatever changes they want," said Brian Napack, the president of Macmillan. "And we don't even look at it."

Students should be interested in these modifiable e-textbooks too, as they will be significantly cheaper than printed textbooks, retailing for around 50$, less than half the price of a printed edition. They will also be available, at a higher price, in on-demand printed editions.

The e-textbooks will also be available on the iPhone, and Macmillan is now negotiating to have them on the iPad too. This really does seem to me the future of textbooks, digital, interactive versions that students can view on mobile readers and laptops.

Tip: Iddictive

A Social Network that Lets People Pay on the Honor System

Posted: Wednesday 3 Mar 2010, under category Ideas

Play now, pay later. This is the motto for the new startup Kwedit, which is offering an innovative payment system: you make a promise that you will pay for digital content, and you get the content immediately. If you don't later make good on your promise, your "Kwedit score" will go down, making you less eligible for future kwedit, whereas a more reliable Kwedit score gives you the possiblilty to bill higher amounts of kwedit, just like with real-life credit.

The service is designed around the purchasing of digital content and in particular online games, for which much of the market is composed of teenagers, who often don't have a credit card with which to pay for things online. But they do have cash and a computer, and Kwedit wants to make it easier for them to spend their cash online. The company is partnered with 7-Eleven stores, which already sell pre-paid cards for online gaming.

Kwedit offers two payment models. The first allows users to pay cash at a 7-Eleven for what they buy online, they just make the purchase online, print out a sheet with the payment info, and take it to the store to pay. Upon payment the goods are sent to their account.

More interesting, however, is the second model, called Kwedit Promise, that allows users to recieve the goods they want immediately, on the basis of a promise to make the payment by a certain fixed date. In this case they get a Kwedit Score, which they can build up by making reliable payments and earn the right to bill higher amounts with credit promise. Since the amounts users start with at the beginning are low, there isn't much to lose if they never make the payment.

This is a pretty interesting concept, and I am curious to see how it will turn out. HOw big is the market for this sort of thing? After all, a lot of teens have pre-paid cash cards from their parents' banks, with which they can buy stuff online. One to keep an eye on.

Tip: Cool Business Ideas

An Innovative Moving and Storage Service for College Students

Posted: Tuesday 2 Mar 2010, under category Ideas

College students often don't live in their dorms or rooms all year round, they a rent place for the nine months of the school year, then go back home for the summer. This means that they have to take all their stuff with them, only to bring it back the following fall. After doing this inconvenient back and forth for four years, two Virginia Tech students, Dan Burdi and Ryan Carter, saw a business opportunity, and last year launched Campus Carriers, a startup designed specifically around the students' needs.

The company's service is threefold: first it will deliver boxes and packing to materials to a student's place of residence, then it will come pick up all the student's belongings and take them to be stored in the firm's storage facility. Then, when the new school year starts, Campus Carriers will deliver the student's belongings to his or her new address, whether it is on campus or off campus.

So far Campus Carriers only offers its services to students of Virgina Tech, but I can't imagine it will take long to move to other universities as well, anywhere in the U.S. but also perhaps in other countries with university systems similar to America's.

Virtual Mobile-based Messageboards for Your Neighborhood

Posted: Monday 1 Mar 2010, under category Ideas

This new startup dubs itself the "voice of the neighborhood," BlockChalk has set out provide communities with a digital bulletin board where people can post messages to the people around them using their mobile phones. A kind of Craigslist meets Twitter, if you will.

The design concept is based on that of a chalkboard, and the messages that users leave are called "chalks". So people can leave - on blocks, streets, cafés or wherever - their chalks communicating tips, complaints, crime alerts, lost pets or anything else, all tagged by location. There is no sign up required, and you can leave and respond to messages either publicly or privately. It's already available for iPhone, Palm Pre and Android, and is coming soon for Blackberry and Nokia. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, BlockChalk is now in 114 countries, 8838 cities and 13908 neighborhoods.

It's still too new to assess it's true value; in most places there just aren't enough users. However it seems full of potential, just think of the localized advertising opportunities, for example. I've downloaded the (free) app on my iPhone, and will be keeping an eye on it.

Tip: Springwise

Taxis to Share with Others

Posted: Friday 26 Feb 2010, under category Ideas

Since they are so expensive, I try to use taxis as little as possible, and am always happy if, when I do have to use one, I have the opportunity to share it. Unfortunately though, most of the time this isn't possible. Now however in New York City - whose yellow cabs are symbol of the city - people will soon have the opportunity of taking a taxi together with others going in the same direction.

The New York Taxi and Limousine Commission has announced plans that would have yellow cabs running along fixed routes with predetermined pick up and drop off points, kind of like a cross between a taxicab and a bus. These "shareable" cabs will be run during rush hour time, with fares starting at 3 dollars, though if you're the only passenger you'll pay a bit more.

This seems like such an obviously good idea for all concerned, people get a new, cheap way to move in the city, while traffic decreases. Let's hope other cities consider implementing similar programs. And if the city doesn't, why not someone private?

Via: Iddictive