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The Idea:

As the web and internet continue to progress, and bandwidth's increase, rich content / media, and videos become more and more popular

Services like Boxee, Hulu, Amazon Unbox, ITunes, Bell Video Store (others..) continue to grow, offering not just internet content, but now you can watch TV Shows, and movies too (even legally!)

The Problem:

TV Stations now offer their shows free of charge to users to watch. However, there is a problem. Often this content is only available to certain users in certain countries.

This is due to licensing restrictions which will not make content available outside of a certain area.

The Opportunity:

Design a fairly simple script that will detect the users location (probably by IP Address), and redirect to content applicable


You can try out my google gadget. Which currently, does not offer automatic "redirect", but can autodetect your video and use the correct player from a URL (Youtube, revver, blip.tv). Quickly and easily

Okay, so first I must admit, this is a "stolen idea". I overheard a colleague talking about it the other day and I thought I'd expand on the idea here.

Perhaps, you work in a "large office", perhaps you have a kitchen area. If you're like most places you either a) share in the kitchen work; stocking the fridge, doing the dishes,etc. or b) you have someone who is "dedicated" to doing it.

So the idea would be to become a "Kitchen Expert" offer your services to several businesses around the area to keep their fridges stocked (milk, butter, etc), keep the kitchen area clean. Etc.

This would not be a janitorial job; but more of an organizational job. You would be committed to "just in time" delivery of key items the businesses keep in their kitchen and replacing them before they run out.  With time and practice a person could probably become an expert at it, and make a lot of money doing it.

I sent this idea to a local tourist board once; but never received any reply, so maybe now someone else will find it a worthwhile business idea:

The Opportunity

In any city you live in, there will always be tourism, and "tourist traps". There will be people offering tours (the haunted one's we have here are pretty cool).

But what would the "Smart City" have for  tours?

Imagine you are visiting a city for the first time, and you wanted to learn more about it; it's culture, history etc.  First you head to your local tourist bureau, the one's with the "?".  They have maps, brochures, advertising of things to do / attractions. Lots of papers to pick up and later dump in a garbage or clutter up your car.

What if the tourist bureau offered PDA/GPS rentals equipment, or even better made up a "electronic tourist kit"

How it works

You would make up these kits (say 100 of them) and have an upfront purchase of GPS/PDA equipment (figure $200 per unit).  People would rent the kits for about $15/day (with a credit card deposit in case it gets lost or stolen)

Included in the kit would be electronics software, maps, and things to do. Several present plans that could be selected, or even customized by the user.

When the tourist chooses a particular adventure, they are directed (by GPS) to the location, while at the attraction, they can learn "behind the scenes" content from the PDA, audio/video etc that tells them more.  This could information would be a) automatically stored in the device or b) streamed to the device via bluetooth or WiFi when they reach the destination.

Discounts could even be offered "virtual coupons" from local business establishments.

As people grow even more tech savvy, eventually most of the kits would no longer require actual GPS units being replaced instead by people's cell phone/PDA's like blackberries or iPhones, but you could still rent the kits / software or even allow people to download content from the web and plan their tourist adventure.
 
 

The Idea:

Form that a user can submit, with a custom "page[userid]"@yoursite.com (eg: pagejoe@bwebcentral.com).

The User would give

Desired "handle" (eg: PageJoe)
There cell number for SMS (555-555-1212)
There cell provider (when known) (Rogers, Aliant, Bell Mobility, Sprint)

The script will scan @yoursite.com catch all address and read the "To:" field, it will then look up an appropriate resend email address and send the sms (optionally with advertisements)

Certain cell providers (like Rogers) would have to use a "Paid" service because of the funky way that this works.

Claim your @bwebcentral.com email address and try it here:

http://www.bwebcentral.com/emailfwd.php

I recently stumbled upon an interesting site created by Cheru Jackson.

It's called AlphaInventions

On the Surface, AlphaInventions has an autosurf traffic exchange look and feel.  You sign up for an account, go to the page, and it shows you other people's websites. In exchange, you can add your website and others view it.

However, on closer detail, we see that AlphaInventions has some very interesting unique functions.

First there is no "credit" system. You don't have to view other sites to have your site listed

Adding you site creates a "bump", ie: someone else gets bumped out of the loop for a period of time as you are placed into it.

The login is very unique, you can login using many different existing login schemes such as using Google Friend Connect. Which when choosen, automatically has you as a follower of the blog.

You can be added "bumped" into traffic - simply by writing a blog article like this and referenching/linking to AlphaInventions.com. (Giving it the site Google Juice!)

Bookmarks to StumbleUpon / Digg / and other social media sites are automatically generated for it.

So in summary, AlphaInventions all in one swoop, packages up a unique traffic generation system not based on the "old" model of traffic exchanges, and does not require you to setup a special account, or surf so many websites to join, and it can even tell that you've talked about it in a blog and then send you traffic.

The Opportunity:

A common feature that is missing on webmail clients it the ability to send an email at a later date. (Compose now, but don't send until next week).

This is a common feature to Microsoft Outlook, and perhaps a few other email programs, but in general is very hard to find in any email web clients.

Possible Uses:

• Send yourself a reminder in the future
• Send out a message to remind others
• You want to send something to a friend or co-worker, but you know he's away and you don't want to clog his inbox until he gets back

I'm sure you can think of more!

Beta Version:

You can a beta version of the "Send Later Concept at: (For Free)
http://www.bwebcentral.com/sendemail.php

Possible Future Enhancements:

• Rich Text Editor
• Add Recurance Pattern
• Add "keywords" that can be searched and replaced, for example [random image] for greeting cards
• Build greeting cards front end
• Add Delivery/Send Receipt requests
  
• API
  

Related Reading:

Schedule your emails from gmail/yahoo/hotmail accounts for a later date/time

What it is:

FAQ's or (Frequenty Asked Questions) are everywhere in our world today on every topic imaginable. Many of these orginally started from usenet newgroups. People would ask the same questions over and over again, and nice "volenenteers" would take the time to document these frequenlty asked questions and write a post to refer to them.

Over the years, FAQ's have become as much (or more) of a marketing tool. Easily introducting people to your product by "making up" frequently asked questions that you think people might ask.

The Oppertunity:

Whatever the reason, there are faq's everywhere on everything, but what if there existed a "centralized" troubleshooter that can help you weave through and narrow down to your particular problem and test solutions.

The Idea:

Shared FAQ system that anyone can contibute to. It uses OPML (Outline Markup Language) to provide a "Decentralized" database of questions and answers.  By simple setting up your list via OPML and publishing to a webserver, you can distribute these questions and categorized them approperiatly to users.

Webservers would run a "front end" that interfaces in various ways with the OPML. For example to provide a simple "troubleshooter" system for users.

If you want to get started you can check out my introductory idea and code at

http://code.google.com/p/opml-faq/


For an example front end check out

http://www.bwebcentral.com/super-faq


Possible Uses:

• It could be used to power things like Yahoo Answers, Expert Exchange, or Wiki Answers
• It could be used with Help systems, like the windows Print Troubleshooter
• It could be used for troubleshooting online problems
• It can help others learn about new technologies quickly.

Other suggestions, and contributions are welcome!

The Idea:

With the ongoing increase of blogging and other similar articles systems, One popular notion is to have a "Tell A Friend" email script.

This can help others share content by emailing it to their friends.

The Opportunity:

Create a simple "universal" email script that allows you to share your content with others quickly and easily.

How it Works:

Simply add this link to any post or to your blog template:

http://www.bwebcentral.com/sendfriend.php [Send to a Friend]

To Do:

To ensure this isn't used as SPAM an important feature would be to add anti spam tool such as a CAPTCHA to prevent bots from abusing the system.

This idea was inspired by:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sendtofriend

Hard you say?.. Hogwash!,  Too much time, Never !

This article was inspired by one I found while stumbling. Wesabe Entrepreneurship, specifically this post was inspired by reading The 4-Hour Workweek By: Timothy Ferriss

In today's webby world anyone can setup any online buisness in a matter of hours and for very little investment. This is not to say you'll get rich doing it, but many 'turn key' style buiness's can be setup provinding you with a passive income. Or you act as the middle man, connecting customers with other companies products while making a little money in between.

Here are a few ideas to help you get started:

1) Establish your own product and sell it online.

This could be something as simple as copies of your own e-book, a handy web application, or maybe a  custom sign/poster business. Perhaps you are crafty and can sell niche craft products that you create in your spare time.

2) Sell other niche type products made by others.

This idea has the advantage of taking your less time. Other people make the products and you just help resell them.  For example you could fairly easily setup a niche market in Sun Protective Clothing and then setup a shopping card/purchase program from a ready made E-comerce soltuion; for example Yahoo Small Business

Or you can also setup an quick T-Shirt Business; Let your customers design their own T-Shirts and have them shipped all by a 3rd party company and website.  You then direct others to this site, they do all the work, and you collect the commision!

Sound to good to be true?  It's not -> you can open your own free online T-shirt shop today! ; again don't expect to become rich overnight, but again it's a little passive income for very little investment

Key Points:

This new venture may sound exciting, but always keep carefull track of your expenses and remember there is a difference between a job and a hobby !

Just because you spend a little money and setup a website doesn't mean people will flock to you and start making purchases.  In the early days of the internet this might have been true; but today, it's not so easy.

The simple way to start out is to sell your online product to your friends and family, and suggest that they also recommend the product to their friends/family etc. This might grow quickly, or slowly, but at least it's a little $$ on the side.

Another great idea is to leverage E-Bay to sell a few of your products and then bring them back to your site for future business. Stay tuned for a future articles describing how to do this

Meanwhile you can also check out these articles to get started on bring more traffic into your business. Good Luck - Remember you can do it

What is the domain name game?

Similar to the concept of real-estate flipping. Domain names are online real estate. You can buy them cheap, let them build up value (or help them along to build up value) and then resell them sometimes for 1000 times what you orginally paid for it.

If you don't happen to have hundreds of thosands of dollars to invest in real-estate, and if you don't want to get conned by those "no money down" systems, and if you are a bit web savvy, you can easily get involved in domain name flipping.

How to get started?

Grab it whlie it's Cheap!

Keep your ear to the ground for fancy names that are in the media, online, or elsewere, look out for new "buzz words" and buy the corresponsing domain name if no one else owns it yet.

This is a lot harder then it used to be in the early nineties, many websites names already exist. But you can still find good examples, you just have to be listening closely (for example JoeThePlumber mentioned several times in a political debate)

You buy your domain names from a domain name registrar.  There are several out there, but I get all mine from www.GoDaddy.com I find them easy to manage and I have full control over the name.

Once you're on the godaddy site, you can simply lookup the domain name you have in mind, and if it's avable, Grab it !

Domain Squatters:

The domain squatter keeps track of popular domain names and waits for them to expire.  A domain name is purchased on a pre defined basis (1, 2, 3 years, etc).  The squatter sits and watches for the domain to expire, and if it does they grab it.

Once you have the domain name, you can re-direct the traffic to your own site and advertising, and/or offer to sell it back to the orginal owner for a higher profit.

Is it moral?  Maybe not;  It's kind of like when you don't pay your house taxes, and the bank/gov't has a tax estate sale.  If you're not paying your regular domain name fees you may loose your domain. (So don't forget to pay!)

Buy it and Park it

Once you've got your domain name, you may not know what to do with it. Domain Parking, let's you show a 'splash page', or 'comming soon' page, usually with advertising on it. You make $ when people click on the ads, until you've got a site up and running, or until you've resold it to another company/individual.

This can be usefull if your the 'man in the middle'.  Temporarily buying a domain name to resell to another person in the short term.

Buy it and Fix it Up

You can think of this is the "fixxer-upper".  You buy a domain name (and sometimes the entire website) from soneone. Re-design it, add your advertising and let it build traffic/value.

Thousands of people start websites everyday, but very few become 'popular', often the developers of these sites 'give up'. and sell their work.  You can buy the ownership to it, and if you have a bit of web/htlm knowledge, spice it up.

You can buy websites at places like:

http://www.v7n.com/forums/websites/

http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/

Don't be fooled, Buying and selling domain names is a big business with hundreds of thousands of dollars being moved around everyday. But it takes experiance to watch out for them and grab them, and resell them, but if you get good at it, you can make a lot of money.

So the next time you think of hear a funny new buzz word like "blog" or "thoughtlet", "mindshare". Use this simple domain search tool to see if it's available, and if so

Get it now and sell it when it's hot !!!

.com .net .org .info biz. .us .mobi .tv .ws .name .cc .de .jp .be .at .co.uk .me.uk .org.uk .co.nz .net.nz .org.nz .cn .com.cn .org.cn .net.cn .tw .com.tw .org.tw .idv.tw .jobs .eu .fm .ms .nu .tc .tk .vg

If you're looking for inspration check out Seith Godin's blog; he's an expert at coining new terms.