Part II : This one on my favourite category – Pondi’s Book of Business Ideas! The reason they appear together is because they are ‘mini-ideas’ – things that address a certain need – but are at best tools than full fledged businesses.
Pondi’s Book of Business Ideas
Comicopia – Tagging/Keywording service for Comics Strips
Back when I was writing client presentations, I often observed one could make a point more interesting and often more effective by inserting a quote, or more importantly a comic strip. There are several Dilbert strips that would be just perfect for common management scenarios.
Except that there is no easy way of finding them out – at least not at a short notice anyway (which is why “a strip in time”).
So Comicopia would serve as a keywording and tagging service for comic strips and over a period of time a service for ‘Powerpoint Art’ – one could include quotes, exclusive clipart and more. And given how intent corporates would be to make a their presentations more effective, they would be more than willing to pay for such a service. [But never over use what E. Tufte calls Powerpoint Phluff: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint]
NoShippingCharges.com
What stops you from buying stuff from Amazon? In my case the only problem is the humongous shipping charge that I will have to bear. So wouldn’t it be cool if I could somehow buy stuff from Amazon, or a multitude of other retailers at no shipping charge, or at least a charge I would pay in the country of the retailer.
No Shippin’ Charges will facilitate something like that. There will not be zero shipping charges – because technically if there is a shipment – then there is a charge – and if the end buyer isn’t paying any, then someone is bearing that cost – so it isn’t sustainable. So, till that cost is borne by say some inventive advertising model, we will stick to enabling local shipping charges.
How will it do that? One whacky idea was to tap into the network of all the people travelling in & out of the US and other countries. At No Shippin’ Charge one could post a trip and a shipping address, and the buying customer could then place an order and get it shipped to that address. Upon return the traveller carries the item with him/her. Thought I must admit this idea sounds a bit too stretched and perhaps overly complicated for the traveller.
For a want of a better method, let’s hold off our horses on this one till later.
The Mint Hole : Anytime, anywhere mint dispenser
The Mint Hole is a simple mint dispenser which will annihilate bad breath in the world. Okay, maybe that’s a stretch – but it can be installed in gyms, dance studios, coffee shops and a variety of places.
It’s really simple: Drop a coin get a mint. I don’t think that needs more explanation than that.
