People working above
via uptherefilm.com
Seriously cool.
Seriously cool.
7. Remote farming for consumers
According to Wikipedia, farm simulation game FarmVille has become the most popular game application on Facebook with 73.8 million active users in January 2010. Offering consumers a way to remotely control a patch of land that will actually provide them with an edible harvest is a new Italian start-up: Le Verdure Del Mio Orto, which lets anyone build an organic garden right from their web browser. As the produce grows, it's picked and delivered to the customer's door within 24 hours. Weekly deliveries are part of the package.
Springwise recently posted a list of emerging business ideas for the new year. Coming in at number seven is the seemingly insane idea above. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I mean, this takes gaming to a whole new level. At what point does a game cease to be a game when the "payoff" is real food? And I can't help but wonder how this might evolve... could you actually be given robotic control over machinery that works the land?
Another idea that caught my attention was this:
The past year or two saw a huge increase in innovative, upscale mobile food purveyors working from trucks and selling everything from premium ice-cream to Korean BBQ tacos. Requiring an even lower investment, the next wave could be small-scale culinary subscription services, which allow fledgling entrepreneurs to get a foothold in the food business, and create a steady income and a loyal client base for future business activities.
One of the companies doing this is Manhattan's MilkMade, membership-based ice cream company. For $50 ever three months, they'll help you get fat. It's like the inverse of a gym membership.
Items Shipped to New York State
Effective June 1, 2008, Amazon.com LLC will begin collecting sales tax on items shipped to destinations within the State of New York as New York has enacted a new law requiring out-of-state sellers to collect and remit sales tax based on advertising. Amazon has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of this provision. However, as required by the law, we must still begin collecting New York sales tax beginning on that date.Please note that if you place an order prior to June 1, 2008, your Order Total may not include an estimate of New York sales taxes, but those taxes may still be charged if your order is readied for shipment on or after that date.
It never really affected me until I moved to New York, but now I'm taxed on all orders I place with Amazon. This really sucks. I recently purchased an Amazon Prime membership so I could go back to buying everyday items from Amazon and get the two-day shipping for "free". One of the great things about Amazon is the free shipping and no sales tax. If you are buying something like a computer or TV, that's an instant savings of a few hundred dollars. Now that savings is not so much.
The New York Supreme Court approved the state's Internet tax, but Amazon is currently seeking an appeal from the Appellate Division. Other states have been talking about doing the same thing. I really hope this gets reversed. I can't even imagine what would happen to e-commerce if these sorts of taxes start expanding to other states.
There's a small coffee shop and bakery near me called Made Fresh Daily. They've got great coffee, pastries, and free wifi – everything that makes a good coffee shop. But I noticed that they seem very stressed at busy times. They frequently have two people moving back and forth from the kitchen to the register, and trying to attend to people in the store. I overheard one of the women running the register say to an inquisitive patron that they were looking for more help to run the register.
And then I started wondering why they even needed a register at all.
What if every patron was able to place their order online, from within the store, by connecting to the access point? For one thing, it would instantly reduce the rate of customer dissatisfaction (as a result of receiving the wrong order) to zero. Human errors like this seem to be a common problem during particularly busy hours. But what if every patron was forced to place their order through a web browser? What if it was a wifi only café? What if you had no register, and instead reclaimed that space and made it available for extra seating?
If you used the wifi connection as a gateway to placing an order you could solve another problem that anyone offering free wifi has to deal with – leaches. Lots of people will often take up a seat and use the Internet connection without buying anything. But in this case you could simple force people to place an order before you grant them Internet access. Problem solved.
Why does nothing like this seem to exist here in New York? This would be the perfect place for such a thing considering just how expensive space is. It would also allow you to sell a cheaper cup of coffee than the person next to you, since that person next to you is still paying staff to run the register. And even during the morning rush, you'd never have a line.
Someone should invent this.
