Ever wanted to be a music impersonario

The music industry is changing, or in many cases I should say it is dying. So where is the future? Well you have to embrace online and free is out there for good. Money is to be made from concerts and true fans, but while there may be less cash coming in, musicians are going it alone. Busted shocked the pop world by stopping being a boy band and managing themselves to great success, but they were already a global success. Now however it is much easier to start. You can create a professional CD in your own home like the Bedinfields and you can even be funded through crowd sourcing. The big idea from Sellaband is to allow music fans to back bands, help promote them and take a slice of the profits. So for as little as $10 you can be on the inside of the new music industry. And because there are lots of people who believe in these bands and who want to help them succeed, there is a greater chance of them making it. It is natural selection, the bad bands don’t get the funding and the fans get more of what they want.

No one compares to top trumps

Top trumps: you had to be there to love them and I was. The game of comparing statistics to each other, the biggest, the heaviest, the smallest, the fastest. They spawned a huge selection of different versions from Star wars to FHM babes. I made a set of my own at one point and loved them. The world is moving on so far and it is no surprise that Google has another big idea. It is called squared and you build a square. This compares different things and in effect builds a set of top trumps. The big idea is that they show a picture and then different stats for each area, letting you compare what matters to you. You can change the stats, so on helicopters, I might be comparing price or how high they fly. Now this is fun to the amateur Top Trumps maker, but to me this is the best price comparison, product chooser engine ever. It is as always with Google really easy to use, it simply works. Have a play at www.google.com/squared. It is surprisingly addictive.

To google, or not to Google, that is the question

With the launch of Wolfram Alpha, there has been a lot of speculation about it being a Google killer. It is a big idea, but I dont think it has a chance as it is not in the same market as Google. Want to know about Jordan Breaking up with Peter Andre, or what Britney spears got up to with a watermelon? If you do Wolfram Alpha won’t be much help. But if you want to know the cubic volume of said watermelon or how many people are divorced and how this differs by States in the USA, then it is much more useful.
But this is not a problem, as they have not set out to be a Google killer; it has been thrust upon them. I think there is a market for niche search engines that look for specific things: Take Ice Rocket This is a specialist engine that searched blogs, twitter and social media sites. This is totally different and has its place. So Google rests safe on its laurels for another day, the real Google killer will be a big idea, but I think it will be a paradigm shift rather than a better site.

Everything goes somewhere

I thought I had an idea, a really big idea, one that could save mankind. Quite simple, where does all our luggage go when it gets lost in airports, where do the socks in my washing machine go to and what happens to the 99% of paperclips that never get used for clipping paper. If we could find this big black hole, we could sort out all our landfill problems with room for all sorts of other detritus. But now I have seen what happens to your luggage, it gets bought by possible slightly obsessed people, photographed and posted on the web. So if you have lost your luggage, then have a look here and see if you recognise it. In the meantime if you do know what has happened to all my lost socks, then please send answers on a postcard.

Don’t throw away the key

The online world has all sorts of things to make your life easier. I love email and online banking and a host of other things. We are all constantly told to be vigilant with our passwords and to ensure that no one knows them. But with paper statements being run down and a large amount of our affairs protected by a password, what happens when you finally curl your toes up. A company called The Legacy Locker have created a big idea around this which you can see here. The idea is that you have an online vault which contains all your passwords. You can also use it to store letters to loved ones and it is activated on death or incapacitation. As the web is so young and rapidly growing, it is only now that people are starting to think about the newly emerging edges like this. The only problem now is where to put your password for this site…

Piece of paper 2.0

With people rushing to buy all sorts of electrical gadgets and thingamajigs to organise their life, there are thousands of options. Blackberries link up to calendars and the iPhone has an application for just about everything. So spare a thought for the piece of paper, the analogue personal organiser, which started it all. It has now been given a facelift and been made a lot more user friendly with a bit of origami and some clean layout. Piece of paper 2.0 is here and it goes by the name of Pocket Mod. The big idea here is in the folding. An A4 piece of paper becomes a useful six page book. You can print off calendars, contacts, to do lists, Sudoku etc and then a bit of a fold, a snip with the scissors and you have a great tool. This will be very popular with all of those who like notes, but it could go further. There are tons of aps that could go on this, I for one would like to see a google maps link as I am always going places I have not been before. It is of course cheap, recyclable and very versatile. I don’t see it ever taking over as the electronic personal organisers are far too entrenched and can do so much, but it is useful and interesting addition for those who like the quirkier things in life.

Can clicks survive without bricks?

Clicks and mortar, the balance of online and real world. Chains of retail stores and the phenomena of online shopping, coupled with a global recession, means we are at real risk of loosing not just the shops we love, but also of decimating the high street. The 3/ 50 project is aiming to help save the independent shops that we love and the communities around them. The big idea is simple, look at three businesses you would miss if they went bankrupt and pop in, say hello and buy something. If half the population of the US spent $50 each month in local independent stores it would generate more than $42.6 Billion. More importantly, of $100 spent, $68 comes back into the local community, with a chain it is $43 and if it is online it is probably $0. Some villages in Devon have implemented their own currency to help keep local money local and this is another way to help keep the money flowing back home, rather than into the distance. So buy local, support your community and if there is a shop or service you would miss, support it. If you don’t, it might not be there next year.

Toys get grown up

There was always a certain creative childish charm about playing with Lego. The set that was meant to be a car becomes apart of a castle and the house becomes a space ship. The very fact that you had a selection of strange bits and never all the ones you wanted meant that you improvised, recreated and had to think on your toes. Now you can have all the Lego pieces you ever wanted online here The big idea is that you can design online and create some pretty advanced stuff. The bigger idea is that you can then order your bespoke product, so that you can design you r own toys. There will be those who complain that there was nothing like using the chassis from a broken toy car or part of another toy to take your Lego beyond the limitations of the original designers and into realms they could never have thought of. But you are being allowed to do that and make something that is slick and does not require amputating your little sister's toys. Besides, if you are not the creative type, you can order another users creation.

Musical Alchemy

Alchemy: the ancient art of turning base metals into gold. The idea that something simple can be magically turned into something that is worth significantly more. Well no one seems to have done it yet, or at least if they have they are keeping it quiet. Making something simple normally takes a lot of hard work and ThruYou is no acceptation. It must have taken hours, but it is true musical and video alchemy. A guy called Kutiman has scoured the internet for musicians and sampled them and cut them together to make some amazing music songs and videos. These totally unconnected clips come together to make something worth significantly better and more valuable than the sum of the parts and that is a big idea. He uses singers and people playing instruments and credits all the people who have unwittingly made it happen. It is magical and my favourite one is I’m New.

Values may raise and fall, past performance is no guarantee of future results

Having looked at apportioning equity before, it is a minefield. Seth Godin has a Big Idea on how to sort out this tricky problem. Dont go 50 / 50 or 70 / 30 straight off. Start with 5% each and then draw up a list of what you are going to do over the next couple of years and what % value of the company that is worth. If you dont do it, you dont get it, allowing for more flexibility and a fairer sharing of the pie. Full article here. I love the idea of this as you get what you earn. Any entrepreneur worth their salt will back themselves to out perform, so it is a great way to get things moving.

Armchair traveller

Google have launched another of their mega apps in the UK today. This is not just a Big Idea, it is a huge one. There new Google maps allows you to look at locations from street level. This has been available for a while in the US, but they have just uploaded the UK version. Whilst there will those who worry that this allows terrorists to scope out locations, they would be able to turn up with a video camera anyway in most cases. It is however amazing and heralds in a new era of armchair tourism. Want to see the sights of London, not a problem, wherever you are in the world. They have also managed to do this on a sunny day, which has to be great for tourism. Come to London, this is what it really looks like and it is always sunny, honest! So go and have a look at the revised site and pull the little orange man onto the maps. Then rotate the picture for an amazing 3D 360* view.
The annoying this is that I have seen the cars doing the mapping, but cant remember where I was exactly when it happened, so I have a fair amount of searching to do to find myself…

Confidence is feeling bulletproof

Most people have a suit, a shirt, a something that they put on for the big meeting. Whether it be a talisman or a piece of sharp tailoring, you feel bigger, walk taller and have the extra air of confidence that can make all the difference. How about this for a big idea? A bulletproof hankie, for ultimate confidence in the boardroom. A new product called ‘The Damned’ from Sruli Recht is a bulletproof handkerchief. Made from ballistic material in a tasteful lemon yellow shade, it slips into your top pocket and protects your heart. It might not protect more than a small area of your body, but how about the confidence it installs. Realistically most of us are not going to be shot rather accurately in the top pocket, but feel the confidence and of course the bragging rights.

Don’t just ski, satski

I have just got back from the slopes so this explains a bit of my thinking. Satski have a very cool new gadget. It is a sat-nav that works in ski resorts. Find out where you are, plan your routes and check your speeds. The big idea behind this is more than just a gadget. You can download the software to your phone, but the unit or have a tracker that downloads data to your computer. This is a fabulous invention as it shows how far you have gone and how fast, something that is often debated and added to with fisherman style stories of speed and enormous distances covered. You can also link up with buddies and see where they are, are they really on their way or skiing an extreme couloir, or are they already in the bar? It allows you to see how fast you went and I would not be surprised if the future versions link in with heart rate monitors etc to say how many calories you have burnt, though the heavy lunch might negate any weight loss. As a competitive person I love this and wish I could have had one to compete with my brother when we were younger, but on balance it is probably a good thing we did not.

Idea time

Timing, it really is key. No matter how big or brilliant your idea is, you still have to work on the timing. From Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder getting the pause just spot on, to launching the latest high tech gizmo before the competition have even thought of it, get it right and the results are amazing. Yeeeeee.com (I think I got all the eee's in there) have a great gallery of photos taken at just the right time click here for more.

Does a Moon pig go Moo?

Digital printing, it’s a big idea, but has taken a while to show its full potential. Moonpig cards have been doing this well for quite a while. They print one off personalised cards that you can send out with a message. This is great for people living abroad, as they can choose, customise, write and send a letter that will arrive tomorrow from the other side of the world. What makes it for me though is the quality. The stock is good and the printing spot on. I think that this is what has delayed people getting digital print out to the masses. Getting the kit to print really well is very expensive and can run into the millions. Another place doing sensational print work is Moo. They have some really cool products and I particularly like their business cards. You can have a pack of 50, with 50 different images on the back. To me digital is all about personalisation and this is letting you use it. There are still restrictions, you only get one design on the other side, but that can be got around by printing new packs with different images. You can print your own cards from scratch and I love the look of their sticker books. I am also a huge fan of Bobs Books. This was one of the first places to do one off hardback books with full colour covers. They keep developing which is great, so you can still order one or one hundred books, or try some of their new products. They do a cool flick book, which takes your video clip and prints it onto a flip book, giving an analogue viewing experience. There are lots more examples out there begging for creative solutions. We create a phenomenal amount of digital content with pictures and videos and if you cant make it yourself you can use it from open source location like Flickr. So go on, give personalisation a go, the future is here and the future is digital…

To err is human, to Arrrgghhh is Pirate

There are a lot of things on the sea bed and many a diver wishes they can discover sunken treasure or fascinating wrecks. Jason Taylor, a British artist has gone one step further and created an underwater gallery click here for more details. His big idea is that by creating a fabulous underwater gallery, people can experience a Vesuvius like exhibition. The installations of people emerge ghost like from the Panamanian water, which must be a bit of a shock if you dont know they are there. They are in shallow water, so can be viewed by snorkelers, divers and people in glass bottomed boats. They will develop over time and eventually become reefs in their own right. His site takes you through the full artistic justification of this, but for me, the more buried treasure out there for people to come across the better.

Maps and Apps

Google maps are a really big idea. For the two people out there who have not looked at them, have a look now: They revolutionised the way we look at things. Satellite views used to be the thing of spy films and secret agencies. But now, you can have a look at the earth from the air and go very close up. They are getting more powerful by the day and you can now drag on the yellow man and get a street view of some of the maps. This is mainly in US cities, but it is spreading and I have seen the cars that g round capturing images, so it can’t be too long. The great thing about Google maps is that they let you create your own and build them into your website for free. So that they become your own applications. This lets people show where hotels, track trips they have taken, tag photographs and come up with all sorts of things. One of the most bizarre of these is Ground Zero where you can select a city and a nuclear weapon and show what effect it would have. Some people might have a little too much time on their hands…

They feel fine, I feel sensational

I have come across a glorious site that is beautiful and organic to look at an in some way makes you feel better. I feel fine by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar http://www.wefeelfine.org/ is about exploring human emotions. The big idea is that they harvest sentences with emotions in them from Blogs and have done since 2005. So when I write: I feel sensational, it picks it up. And as hardly anyone uses the word sensational, hopefully I will come across it when looking at the map some time. You can search the feelings by the weather, age, sex, location and date. But most wonderful is the interface, where a colourful universe floats in front of your eyes and if you roll over a dot or square (squares have pictures as well as words), it shares someone’s emotions with you. What makes it so magical and frankly addictive is the way that on clicking it, the letters appear in a circle, swing round and form the words and then go to the top, it really has been beautifully done.
If you click on the selection of words at the bottom left, you can see the screen in different ways, madness: where the dots and squares float around, murmers, which is lines of text, montage which is images, mobs and metrics are visual representations of who is saying what. But my favourite is mounds. Here you have a graph, which reacts to your mouse over, turning the graph into mounds of jelly which bump and bend off each other.
These statistics are lovely to look at and are quite interesting. There are only three men and three women feeling sensational. They are feeling it when it is cloudy and are generally between 20 and 35. It is rare, 315768 times the normal level. Well now there is one more…

Judge a book by its author

I love reading and when I find an author I like, I tend to read everything that they have written. But there comes the moment when there is nothing new to read, I have read their total output. So what do you do next? Well a guy called Marek Gibney has put together a literature map. Click here to give it a go. More specifically, it is a self adapting, community based system, which changes to reflect the views and likes of the community. The big idea is that you put in an author you like and it shows you other authors who are similar or who it thinks you will like. The closer they are, the more likely you are to like their work and if you see someone new between two you like, then you are onto a good thing. It is not totally accurate, but is pretty quirky and I would recommend giving it a go, who knows where it might lead you...
And if you are not into reading, dont worry, he has done it for music and films as well.

If anyone has a big idea, its Seth

I have just come back from Seth Godin's London session. If anyone has a big idea, it must be Seth. He was riffing on Tribes (the subject of his latest book) and took an vast array of questions. He dispensed real help and came up with some great ideas for people and you could see them changing the way they felt about their business. Pretty much everything he believes in is a Big Idea. He even had time to post a blog today, see here:
the man does not stop...