Neil Infield, Manager,
Business & IP Centre
« December 2007 | Main | February 2008 »
Once again Springwise have come up with a brilliant idea. This time it is greentomato eco kits which sell for a reasonable £9.99. They describe the kit as an essential starting point for people who want to live greener lifestyles but don’t know where to start.
The kit includes a range of items designed to make a quick and simple impact on your enviromental impact.
As you can see below they have strong set of principles.
At greentomato, we don’t believe in producing something unless it will have a positive net effect on the environment. That’s why each item in the kit obeys the following four basic rules:
1. Universality
Wherever you live, whatever you live in, you should be able to use every item in the kit. If you already have one of the items, DON’T THROW IT AWAY! You can still use it - to give to a friend, relative or even your neighbour. There’s no doubt we could throw away much less, and whilst we’re at it, maybe even chat a little more with our neighbours.
2. Net environmental benefit
Of course it consumes resources to make everything in the kit, but this rule ensures that the energy and waste benefits of each item is significantly greater than the energy and resource cost of manufacturing it. Not to mention the item’s influence on general awareness and behaviour…
3. Low cost and / or saving you money
We think that £9.99 is a pretty good price for all this, which is only possible because we have selected items that are good value for money. They also actually save you money - £50 per year for the average household and more than £100 if you use the items well and follow the message of living a low waste lifestyle.
4. Simple to understand and install
Fiddly things are annoying, which is why all the items in the greentomatokit are easy to understand and easy to install. If there’s anything you don’t understand, please feel free to drop us a line using the feedback form.
Mark Prisk the Shadow Minister for Business and Enterprise came to visit the Business & IP Centre on 11 December and was suitably impressed. For his visit we were able to introduce him to Dee Wright of The Hairforce, one of our ’success stories’. She made a big impression on him as can be seen on the Conservative Business Relations website.
Mark Prisk Meeting Dee Wright
I was recently contacted by Roger Nettleford who I met at the Business Startup show at Olympia in last year.
He is the founder of www.uploadideas.com an online video business start up site which allows members of the public and entrepreneurs to broadcast their business ideas or inventions using a short video.
The site is still being developed but Roger believes that there are many people who have a great idea or invention but don’t have funds for marketing. He sees the site as YouTube meets Dragons Den, because potential investors are alerted once a video or webpage of interest is uploaded to a selected subject area. He sees this site as a catalyst for business start up assistance and innovation and expects to add ‘How to’ business advisory videos in the future.
Here is yet another example of ‘civilians’ lack of understanding of the role of Intellectual Property.
Apparently Facebook users are up in arms about the loss of Srabulous from their screens. However they don’t seem to realise that Hasbro, who own the rights to the game in the US and Canada, and Mattel who own the rights elsewhere in the world, would be unhappy about someone moving into their lucrative territory.
Matt Raymond at the Library of Congress has been posting excited posts on his blog about the impact of placing 3,100 images from their collection on Flickr. Below is a summary of the activity within two days of their page going live.
• 392,000 views on the photostream
• 650,000 views of photos
• Adding in set and collection page views, there were about 1.1 million total views on our account
• All 3,100+ photos have been viewed
• 420 of the photos have comments
• 1,200 of the photos have been favorited
The British Library also has an amazing collection of images, so it would be great to see some of these appearing on Flickr as well.
I recently joined the loyalty scheme run by my local plant nursery and was rather surprised to receive a letter with the following introduction:
“Greetings, Oh Most Highly Esteemed Green Card Applicant (letter composed by Wych Cross Hype Ltd a wholly dis-owned subsidiary).
We are delighted to announce that your application for a Wych Cross Green Card has been entirely successful and your expensive looking, gloss green card is enclosed with this letter. Please try not to lose it before you have at least tried it out!
As you know, your card is to be used for scraping ice off your windscreen, wedging that wobbly coffee table leg that’s been irritating you for years, flicking paper pellets at work colleagues and impressing gullible people at parties. You will also be aware that cutting your card into little pieces for security reasons is the recommended way to make your scissors very blunt very quickly. In between times you can also use your card to collect and redeem points (and we all know what points mean!) every time you shop at Wych Cross.
We wish you many hours of happy and rewarding activity with your new Wych Cross Green Card and anticipate your next visit to us with particular pleasure.
With Warmest Felicitations,
Ray Kennedy
Managing Director
It certainly appealed to my funny-bone in this age of over-egged marketing letters.
Panaramio must represent one of the ultimate Google Earth mashups. How often when using Google Earth to ‘visit’ a place have you wanted to see what it looks like on the ground or even inside the buildings there?
For example if you zoom in on our new neighbour the Eurostar station at St Pancras all you see from above is the beautiful shed roof designed by William Barlow. However if you look at the Panaramio page you can look inside the building through photos taken by contributors to the service.
An insiders view of St Pancras International station
I was having something of a mini-clear out over the holidays and came across two rather forlorn looking portable CD players. Neither of my kids expressed any interest or even recognition of these previously prized possessions. Actually my daughter did get excited at one point, but only when I revealed a long missing CD lurking within one of the players.
All of which made me realise just how quickly we have moved on from the orginal format of the cassette-walkman to the CD-walkman to the now ubiquitous MP3 player.
Although Amazon.co.uk still has lots to choose from, evidence is found on the Sony UK website which has just two current models of player to buy, compared to their 42 ‘previous’ players.
The end of the road for the portable CD-player?
