World wide local

Social network to connect local users

There's no denying that consumers like to talk about the brands and products that are part of their lives. That's why there are sites such as RedesignMe, Hollrr and — most recently — The Chicken. It's also why Dutch brand Weltevree just launched a social network of its own dedicated specifically to fostering conversation among its local users and suppliers.

Weltevree's products include a popular, outdoor bathtub known as the “Dutchtub” along with an oven designed for outdoor cooking. Launched just last week, the company's “World Wide Local” is a new digital platform on which users and suppliers of such products can connect with each other by sharing their local experiences and findings. For each product Weltevree sells, the map-based site indicates where in the world fellow users and suppliers have signed on. A click on any of the associated dots on the map leads users of World Wide Local to a description of the user or supplier in question along with photos. Users can also search on more general categories such as “local traditions” and “extreme conditions.” The company explains: “By creating WorldWideLocal.com, Weltevree answers questions such as: Who will buy a Weltevree product? How does the Dutchtub perform in the Norwegian snow or on a waterside in Miami? Can the Stonestove warm up my soup?”

In this era of transparency triumph, there's clearly no stopping the discussion about your brand and products. Why not be the one to help make the conversation happen?

Website: www.worldwidelocal.com
Contact: info@weltevree.nl

LOCAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN TWEETJEMEE

Tweetjemee helps amateur cooks set up shop as neighbourhood chefs

Aimed at amateur cooks who dream of starting their own restaurant, a Dutch site called Tweetjemee helps people sell home-cooked meals and desserts to others who live nearby.

After signing up with Tweetjemee, the Buurtchefs (neighbourhood chefs) upload pictures and descriptions of the meals they're offering for sale. They list when the food will available, their preferred pick-up times and the item's price. Customers select a meal in their neighbourhood, make payment to Tweetjemee and pick up the food at the agreed time. Payments are transferred to the chefs monthly, minus a 30% listing fee for Tweetjemee. 10% of that cut is donated toThe Hunger Project, a global non-profit organization committed to ending world hunger.

The notion of selling home-cooked meals seems to be catching on — last year we covered BookofCooks, the US-based online marketplace for home-cooked meals, and earlier this month we wrote about Super Marmite, a French network that enables cooks with too much food to sell their extra servings. While food safety might be a concern, we like the concept of neighbourhood chefs offering busy or kitchen-averse consumers an alternative to professionally prepared meals. And, of course, making some money on the side. (Related: Selling is the new saving.)

Website: www.tweetjemee.nl
Contact: info@tweetjemee.nl

URBAN GARDENING NEW URBAN BUSINESS

With the rise of urban gardening comes a need for suitable plants, pots and accessories. Interior designer Mark van der Geest recognized a gap in the market and recently opened Urban Green in Amsterdam. While regular garden centers have plenty to offer those with 'real' gardens, but not much for those of us limited to tiny plots and shady balconies, Urban Green is entirely focused on the challenges of city gardening.

The store sells greenery that thrives in containers, and plenty of shade-loving plants, since building density means that urban gardens get less sun than their suburban counterparts. Also on offer are foldable and stackable chairs and tables to help maximize space. For roof decks, Urban Green offers lightweight containers like the ones we've featured, and it also partners with companies that install green roofs and vertical gardens.

In addition to its tailormade offerings, the store's Amsterdam location also saves consumers from having to trek out to big garden centers on the outskirts of the city. Van der Geest hopes he'll be able to encourage people to make their cities greener and ideally grow their own food on balconies and rooftops. Urban Green aims to open 15 stores in other Dutch cities over the next five years. We think it's an innovative, on-trend retail concept that should do well around the world. (Related: Five new business ideas for urban gardening — Grocer launches rooftop garden for hyperlocal produce — Triscuit-sponsored site taps urban gardening trend — Urban beekeeping kit for honey lovers — Urban fruit-picking project aims to minimize waste.)

Website: www.urban-green.nl
Contact: info@urban-green.nl

SHARING YOUR SECRETS

Patents are at the heart of countless technologies, and that can make life difficult for smaller startups, which are less likely than big companies to be patent-holders themselves. Aiming to create opportunity, innovation and new businesses in southern Sweden, the Mobile Heights Business Center is a partnership between local industry, academia and the public sector that offers approved participants access to a bank of unexplored patents, business ideas and solutions requested by industry.

Anyone can apply for membership with MHBC, which requires an interview and test to prove the applicant's entrepreneurial drive. Once approved, members are presented with a wide variety of as-yet-untapped patents and other business ideas provided by participating members of the telecom industry, including TeliaSonera, Ericsson and The Astonishing Tribe. In "Crash Lab" sessions led by professional business advisors, members can discuss any ideas they may have as a result; once a week, meanwhile, representatives from industry join in to listen and offer advice. Next, entrepreneurs develop a business plan with support from professional legal, HR, PR, marketing and business advisors. When they're ready, they can present that plan at an “Investment Day” open to active investors. Spin-off companies are expected to show a positive cash flow within two years.

MHBC is a pilot project administered by Teknopol AB with funding from various local municipalities and EU regional development funds. A model to emulate in other parts of the world? (Related: Incubator for socially focused ideas —Microfinance meets mentoring.)

Website: www.mhbc.se
Contact: info@mhbc.se

NEIGHBORHOOD INNOVATION

Localisation is a key buzzword for businesses promoting products and services, but advertisers aren't the only ones innovating at the local level. There's an exciting range of new enterprises targeting communities and helping neighbours connect. Here are five recent spottings with a neighbourhood focus:

1. STREETBANK — Streetbank in the UK aims to help neighbours get to know each other, simply by being nice. Users indicate something they'd be willing to lend, help with or give away. Having done that, they can see what others are offering in their area, or they can make a request for something specific. The result: people get to meet, share something, and hopefully become friends.

2. WIJ BOUWEN EEN WIJK — Wij Bouwen Een Wijk ("We're building a neighbourhood") isn't a company: it's a community effort to design and oversee the construction of every aspect of the neighbourhood in which project members will eventually live. Participants with the most innovative ideas can even get a street named after them!

3. DEHOOD — DeHood is a social network application that focuses entirely on location: everything and everyone that users see is in their immediate surroundings. To encourage a sense of community, users are encouraged to report what's going on nearby, from traffic accidents to get-togethers. Shoppers can share deals that they find in local stores, and promotions featured at chainstores are aggregated and passed on to users.

4. GASTOWN BLOG — The Gastown district in Vancouver has a lively website listing local events and promotions. It was formed in partnership between local government and businesses, but now features active participation from the wider community. Earlier this year The Gastown Blog attached QR codes to various historic buildings in Gastown, enabling passersby to instantly call up detailed information about the buildings.

5. CABSENSE — Featuring a smart use of the publicly available data gathered from New York City taxis' GPS devices, CabSense is an iPhone app showing locations where users are most likely to find a cab in their area. CabSense's algorithm uses the GPS statistics to calculate a probability score for successfully hailing a cab at any given street corner, at the current time (or at a time specified by the user).

Spotters: Jane Durney, Kevin de Caluwé, Cecilia Biemann, Kevin W.

CROWD CLOUT AVAAZ

Crowd clout can be used by consumers to achieve goals as mundane as cheaper prices or as profound as social change. Aiming squarely at the latter end of the spectrum, Avaaz is a global online advocacy community that “brings people-powered politics to global decision-making.”

Named for the word meaning "voice" in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages, Avaaz has actually been working since 2007 on a simple democratic mission: organize citizens everywhere to help close the gap “between the world that exists and the world most people want.”Toward that end, it uses online and offline advocacy to empower its members to take action on pressing issues of international concern, from global poverty to the crises in the Middle East to climate change. In the past three years, Avaaz has grown to include 5.5 million members from every country on Earth, becoming what it says is the largest global web movement in history; currently, it operates in 14 languages. Achievements to date include more than 20 million actions taken online and off, including messages sent, phone calls and petition signatures, with more than 70 million friends told; raising more than USD 10 million online, including millions in funding and high-tech support for human rights and democracy advocates in Burma, Zimbabwe, Tibet, Iran and Haiti; and organizing nearly 10,000 rallies, flashmobs, vigils, marches and other online events for the climate change movement. Just recently, Avaaz used a petition with more than 2 million signatures, 500,000 online actions and tens of thousands of phone calls to score a major anti-corruption initiative in Brazil.

All of which goes to show—on perhaps a larger scale than ever before—the virtually limitless power of the crowds to get what they want.

Website: www.avaaz.org
Contact: www.avaaz.org/en/contact/

UNIVERSITY OF THE INDISCHE BUURT

Open education platform for short university courses

We've already seen a variety of open education initiatives—including, recently, Betterfly and the University of the People—but we couldn't resist sharing news of one more. Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short, university-level courses.

Aiming to enable “learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything,” P2PU creates small groups of motivated learners and supports the design and facilitation of free courses. Currently, the project is in a pilot phase, and offers scheduled courses that run for six weeks and cover university-level topics. Each course package—organized by a volunteer—contains the syllabus, study materials and a schedule; learning takes place in small groups of between eight and 14 students. Peers in each course assess each other's work, and online certificates are granted upon completion of a course; P2PU is working towards gaining format credit as well. Ultimately, the goal is to become more of a platform so anyone can use P2PU to organize, design and offer courses. In the meantime, signup for the next round of courses will begin in September.

P2PU is supported in part by the Hewlett Foundation, the Shuttleworth Foundation and the University of California at Irvine. Social entrepreneurs: another one to be inspired by! (Related: Platform lets anyone create and monetize an online school — Five new business ideas focused on education & learning.)

Website: www.p2pu.org
Contact: www.p2pu.org/contact-us

PEER TO PEER GARDENING

A full 40 percent of North Americans do not have their own yard space; those who do, meanwhile, often leave it underused. Aiming to match the haves with the have-nots anywhere there's a similar inequity, Sharing Backyardspartners with local community organizations to create land-sharing programs in diverse regions around the world.

Similar in many ways to UK-based Landshare, Sharing Backyards is a project of LifeCycles, a Canadian nonprofit dedicated to cultivating awareness and initiating action around food, health and urban sustainability in the Greater Victoria, B.C., community. To help maximize land use in communities far and wide, Sharing Backyards actively seeks out local partners and gives them administration of their own, local Sharing Backyards Program. That includes not just promotional materials but also a forum for interaction with other local partners. Consumers, then, begin by browsing the free site's list of programs already in existence. To find or share land in their area, they can scan an interactive local map for current listings and use the program's internal messaging system to make a connection. Sharing Backyards is working on a downloadable contract to spell out agreements between landowners and gardeners.

With programs up and running in more than 30 communities in North America and New Zealand, Sharing Backyards is seeking volunteers as well as advertisers and sponsors. Gardening-related businesses around the globe: who will be first in your community to stake this highly targeted claim...? (Related: Online gardening service sends seeds when it's time to plant — Gardens for rent by the season, with vegetables pre-planted — Five new business ideas for urban gardening.)

Website: www.sharingbackyards.com
Contact: info@sharingbackyards.com

NEW ECONOMY NEW RECIPROCITY

“Buy one, give one” initiatives are increasingly common forms of corporate generosity, but it wasn't until recently that we began seeing them involving children. Much the way Happy Blankie lets recipients of its animal blankets help decide where the donated ones get sent, so Texas-based clothing maker Whitten Grey aims to let the girls who wear its dresses participate in donating similar ones to girls in far-off lands. Through Whitten Grey's Project Little Grey Dress, buyers of any eco-friendly dress from the company receive a unique code along with their purchase. When they enter that code online, they can then choose what country they'd like to donate a dress to—currently, the choices are Liberia, Guatemala, Malawi and Zimbabwe. After choosing the colour of the dress they'd like to send, girls can then enter a message they'd like to include for the girl who receives it. Generosity has become increasingly important to the Generation G masses, so it stands to reason they'd want their children to learn that virtue too. Purveyors of other kids' products, large and small: time to bring some charity-minded capabilities to your own pint-sized patrons...? (Related: Buy a onesie, donate one to a baby in need.) Website: www.whittengrey.com/give/ Contact: give@whittengrey.com

URBAN FRUIT PICKING NEW FORM OF SOCIAL COHESION

It's right about this time of year that those with fruit trees and gardens in the Northern Hemisphere tend to get overwhelmed by homegrown abundance. We've already featured Giapo Gelato's effort to claim some of that locally grown produce for use in its ice cream, and recently one of our spotters alerted us to Not Far from the Tree, an even more ambitious effort in Toronto.

Not Far from the Tree operates a residential fruit-picking program that aims to prevent locally grown fruit from going to waste. Toward that end, it sends teams of volunteers to harvest the fruit on trees whose owners are not inclined to do so themselves. Of the resulting bounty, one-third goes to the owner, another third goes to the volunteers for their labour and the final third is distributed via pedal power to charities and community organizations in the neighbourhood. The project harvested more than 3,000 pounds of residential fruit back in 2008, followed by more than 8,000 pounds last year; so far, close to 2,000 pounds of cherries, mulberries and plums have been picked this year. Coming this winter from the nonprofit group is a like-minded pilot project to tap residential maple trees and then boil down the sap into maple syrup.

With benefits for landowners and urban dwellers alike, Not Far from the Tree seems to have found one of those rare concepts without any visible downside. One to emulate in the residential gardens in your neck of the woods...? (Related: Grocer launches rooftop garden for hyperlocal produce — More peer-to-peer garden sharing.)

Website: www.notfarfromthetree.org
Contact: info@notfarfromthetree.org

NEIGHBORHOOD INNOVATION

Localisation is a key buzzword for businesses promoting products and services, but advertisers aren't the only ones innovating at the local level. There's an exciting range of new enterprises targeting communities and helping neighbours connect. Here are five recent spottings with a neighbourhood focus:

1. STREETBANK — Streetbank in the UK aims to help neighbours get to know each other, simply by being nice. Users indicate something they'd be willing to lend, help with or give away. Having done that, they can see what others are offering in their area, or they can make a request for something specific. The result: people get to meet, share something, and hopefully become friends.

2. WIJ BOUWEN EEN WIJK — Wij Bouwen Een Wijk ("We're building a neighbourhood") isn't a company: it's a community effort to design and oversee the construction of every aspect of the neighbourhood in which project members will eventually live. Participants with the most innovative ideas can even get a street named after them!

3. DEHOOD — DeHood is a social network application that focuses entirely on location: everything and everyone that users see is in their immediate surroundings. To encourage a sense of community, users are encouraged to report what's going on nearby, from traffic accidents to get-togethers. Shoppers can share deals that they find in local stores, and promotions featured at chainstores are aggregated and passed on to users.

4. GASTOWN BLOG — The Gastown district in Vancouver has a lively website listing local events and promotions. It was formed in partnership between local government and businesses, but now features active participation from the wider community. Earlier this year The Gastown Blog attached QR codes to various historic buildings in Gastown, enabling passersby to instantly call up detailed information about the buildings.

5. CABSENSE — Featuring a smart use of the publicly available data gathered from New York City taxis' GPS devices, CabSense is an iPhone app showing locations where users are most likely to find a cab in their area. CabSense's algorithm uses the GPS statistics to calculate a probability score for successfully hailing a cab at any given street corner, at the current time (or at a time specified by the user).

Spotters: Jane Durney, Kevin de Caluwé, Cecilia Biemann, Kevin W.

SHARING YOUR SECRETS

Patents are at the heart of countless technologies, and that can make life difficult for smaller startups, which are less likely than big companies to be patent-holders themselves. Aiming to create opportunity, innovation and new businesses in southern Sweden, the Mobile Heights Business Center is a partnership between local industry, academia and the public sector that offers approved participants access to a bank of unexplored patents, business ideas and solutions requested by industry.

Anyone can apply for membership with MHBC, which requires an interview and test to prove the applicant's entrepreneurial drive. Once approved, members are presented with a wide variety of as-yet-untapped patents and other business ideas provided by participating members of the telecom industry, including TeliaSonera, Ericsson and The Astonishing Tribe. In "Crash Lab" sessions led by professional business advisors, members can discuss any ideas they may have as a result; once a week, meanwhile, representatives from industry join in to listen and offer advice. Next, entrepreneurs develop a business plan with support from professional legal, HR, PR, marketing and business advisors. When they're ready, they can present that plan at an “Investment Day” open to active investors. Spin-off companies are expected to show a positive cash flow within two years.

MHBC is a pilot project administered by Teknopol AB with funding from various local municipalities and EU regional development funds. A model to emulate in other parts of the world? (Related: Incubator for socially focused ideas —Microfinance meets mentoring.)

Website: www.mhbc.se
Contact: info@mhbc.se

BUMP INTO EACH OTHER IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

We've seen a variety of businesses launched to help travellers connect during the course of their journey — KLM and Air France's Bluenity, for example — but relatively little offering similar capabilities for daily commuters. Now, however, there's Bumped.in, an online community for people on the go.

Users of Bumped.in begin by signing up with the free service and creating a profile or signing in through Facebook Connect. They can then enter any upcoming travel plans — whether it's the daily commute or a longer trip — and Bumped.in will automatically tell them which other users are travelling in close proximity. From there, users can browse the profiles of those fellow travellers, send messages and connect in person; they can also share tips, photos and recommendations about everything from new routes to new restaurants. California-based Bumped.in explains: “Every time we travel, we cross paths with people who could potentially enrich our lives. But oftentimes, we're missing an outlet that allows us to connect, network and interact.” The site is designed to offer just that; in fact, “why not start a book club on the subway?” it suggests.

Ad-supported Bumped.in supports real-time transit alerts for many rail systems as well, including New York City's MTA, Chicago's CTA, Boston's MBTA and Canada's VIA Rail. Meanwhile, a mobile app for Bumped.in is coming soon, as is a developer API. One to help bring to other parts of the world? (Related: Trip-planning site helps find others to travel the world with — Connecting airline travellers for a shared cab — Londoners share lifts to Luton airport —Enhanced networking for business travellers — Sympvertising and secrets for business travellers.)

Website: www.bumped.in
Contact: support@bumped.in

CROWDSOURCE LOCAL RESOURCES TO FIND NEW SOLUTIONS

Crowdsourcing site actively manages the design process

Now that crowdsourcing has entered the mainstream as an approach for getting work done, quality is the new focus. Last year we saw Edge Amsterdam's answer to that concern in the form of an invitation-only crowd; now,Veeel is taking a different tack by closely managing the process from beginning to end.

Also based in Amsterdam, Veeel works with a pool of some 1,000 freelance designers to offer product development services for a variety of brands and corporations. Designers are classified into four categories, ranging from junior to specialist. And rather than simply offering a platform enabling clients to tap those crowds, the company itself plays a key role in the process. It explains: “We work together with our clients during all project phases. We present every step of progress during the whole process and implement input and know-how of internal production and marketing departments, making the product innovation a joint effort. Veeel selects the best experts and specialists for the benefit of the project and by doing so, a creative, efficient process is guaranteed, including the best result in the end.”

Guaranteed results tend to come as music to most clients' ears, and Philips, Unilever and PWC are all among those that have already benefited. (Related: Crowdsourced dream cars inspired by destinations — Brainstorming service uses Twitter to crowdsource ideas overnight — Crowdsourcing of graphic design goes local.)

Website: www.veeel.com
Contact: mail@veeel.com

CROWSOURCE WITH STARTUPS

Crowdsourced feedback offered to young startups

We recently featured Austrian feedbackers.biz, a consultancy that aims to provide quick and professional analysis of new business ideas. Taking a crowdsourced approach to the same problem of finding truly useful, objective advice,StartUpLift allows young businesses to reward members for their feedback.

Companies looking for feedback begin by listing their details on the Washington, DC based site. They then highlight particular areas for comment and can assign specific tasks for completion. The option is also available to offer cash to users in return for their contributions, in which case the top submissions are selected as awardees. Once all awards have been distributed, each startup remains permanently on the site, allowing the accumulation of ongoing feedback.

The advice generated by the StartUpLift community will be served up in the public eye, and it remains to be seen whether it can generate genuine value to new businesses hungry for astute analysis. However, with the right community in place, this could be a model to emulate... (Related: Consultants offer $99 analysis of new business ideas — Review a website, get a free review in return.)

Website: www.startuplift.com
Contact: www.startuplift.com/contact/

RECYCLING IN THE CROWD

Marketplace for upcycled, recycled and reused goods

The march of the upcycling initiatives continues! Hard on the heels of our stories about Diana Eng's “fortune cookie” purses and Rerip'ssurfboard-recycling program comes word of Yiuco, an online marketplace that focuses exclusively on products created through upcycling, recycling and reuse.

Greek Yiuco only allows items to be listed if they are upcycled, recycled or reused, allowing eco-minded minipreneurs to create an individual storefront and list the goods they'd like to sell. Examples currently listed on the site include wearable rings featuring individual keys from a computer keyboard, for example, as well as a pillow crafted from upcycled materials. Shoppers can search the site by product category as well as by whether goods involve primarily upcycling, recycling or reuse. Creating a store on Yiuco is free, and there are no transaction or listing fees until spring 2011. Thereafter, Yiuco will charge vendors EUR 0.10 per listed item every three months as well as a 3.5 percent transaction fee on each sale.

Besides the obvious lustre of sustainability, of course, makers of upcycled and recycled products can also enjoy the benefits of free or inexpensive materials and an embedded story to be shared with consumers. No end in sight to the opportunities here; minipreneurs around the globe — time to get crafting! (Related: T-shirts saved with handstitched lettering & sold to new owners — Festival jackets & bags made from abandoned tents — Five businesses that turn trash into appealing new products.)

Website: www.yiuco.com
Contact: hello@yiuco.com