Ideas for the world, FREE!
DIY
Hate apps for ad content? OnSwipe may be for you
Apr 15th
With tablets and touch devices like iPhones and Androids becoming increasingly ubiquitous in today’s society, publishers and companies have a few new hurdles in advertising to folks glued to their touchscreens. To overcome those hurdles, there’s OnSwipe, a platform that makes it easy for publishers of all sizes to make their content and advertising a beautiful experience on touch enabled devices via the browser.
The OnSwipe platform works on any device with a browser and allows content to be touch-optimized, so a tablet user viewing an ad can flip through the content and recommend it to their contacts. Ads and content can also fill the entire tablet or touchscreen, providing more room for brand messaging and creativity. The best part, OnSwipe is a publishing option that doesn’t include Apple, in case going through Apple isn’t something you are interested it?
Don’t believe that tablets become more than just the latest fad? Then check out OnSwipe’s infographic on how the tablets compare amongst each other. If you are a believer, then check out sign up for beta testing.
DealPinch shares daily deals in a pinch
Apr 11th
Only the deals you want in just one email
An idea born out of Sydney StartupCamp IV, DealPinch addresses the burn out of all those group buying sites. Instead of receiving eight, nine, ten emails per day, bring that number down to one with DealPinch.
Lucy McFadden and her co-founder, Jonathan Clarke, discussed that very frustration during the startup camp in October 2010. Back then, McFadden was signed up for eight different group buying sites and receiving eight emails a day. After making a few phone calls, McFadden found that she wasn’t the only one suffering from email overload.
“DealPinch is an aggregator of group buying deals,” McFadden said. “We currently aggregate from 19 sites and allow users to sign up for deal categories.”
Deal categories range from adventure to hair & beauty, from dining & drinking to automotive. McFadden said that hair & beauty and dining & drinking are two of the most popular categories, and that sports has strong interest from users as well.
“It’s things people wouldn’t think about trying [without the deal],” McFadden said.
So far, news of DealPinch has only spread by word of mouth, but has seen their traffic and subscriber numbers growing from month to month. Such growth is remarkable, considering that McFadden is currently a masters student at the University of Sydney, studying strategic management and psychology. This means that DealPinch isn’t her full time job, at least not yet.
“My studies are a nice complement,” McFadden said. “Right now we’re just finding the time to do what we want to do.”
User-generated improvements
McFadden said that DealPinch has received a lot of feedback from users on how to improve the service. One of these improvements is the time of day that users are most available to look at their daily deals and to take advantage of them if interested.
“Due to the demand of the workday, most don’t have the time to look at these emails,” McFadden said. “Two o’clock was the time users suggested, and someone rarely misses out on a deal.”
Users were also frustrated with the difficulty of figuring out where a deal was taking place (is it an online deal, or is it in Bondi Junction or North Sydney?). DealPinch addressed this by putting the location right up front.
“Our focus is to keep developing and innovating our service at the speed with which the group buying market is evolving,” McFadden said. “We have some cool new features in development that were looking forward to sharing with our subscribers in the next few months.”
Some of these cool new features include a comments section for users to provide feedback on the deals themselves, as well as the folks at DealPinch providing their own evaluation and analysis of these deals.
Have you met Pinchy, the DealPinch mascot?
The idea to have Pincy the racoon as a mascot came from a funny story of a racoon who would steal things from people’s backyards. McFadden said that such a racoon represented the idea of “stealing your deal” well.
DealPinch currently operates in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide, Auckland and Wellington, with plans to expand more cities in New Zealand and eventually, overseas.
“It’s been a really fun path so far, ” McFadden said. “We bootstrapped it and we’re really excited to be a part of this market.”
![AR[2]](http://www.idea.ideabing.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/AR2-100x100.jpg "AR[2]")
DIY: How To Build The Iron Man Augmented Reality Kit
Aug 9th
Iron Man the Movie uses Augmented Reality (AR) as a part of the Jarvis vision system and demonstrates it pretty well. The system segregates the view into various objects it can recognize and overlays information on it. This is quite a futuristic view of what AR could do. This is how we could hypothetically achieve it.
The Infinite House
Aug 7th
Now that we have been talking about open buildings, making a tiny house fit 3 bedrooms and a clothes drying rack, we thought an advert to apply these principles of space would round the week off quite well.
Hornbach, a German supplier of building supplies has released an advert that tells us about engineering, creativity and a sense of space. That a tiny home can be expanded to fit people and hearts is a rather amazing way of putting 3 stories together while promoting the brand that Hornback stands for. The house is infinite and love is too. Enjoy the commercial after the break.
Clothes Dryers Never Looked So Concealed
Aug 7th
Levis’ Care to air challenge has brought about some interesting pieces of ideas together to dry clothes. We always knew dryers took up way too much energy to do a simple thing – dry clothes. This entry by Caleb Hill, an industrial design student brings together art and the art of drying clothes.
Concealed behind a painting that says “Is What It Seems” is a clothes drying rack. Smart work eh? Sure fits into this 300 sq.ft3-bedroom house quite easily. Images after the break.
Infographic: How To Win Rock Paper Scissors Every Single Time
Aug 3rd
There are formulas to do everything but how do you win a mind game? Rock Paper Scissors for example. This infographic sets the rules out to beat your opponent’s mind – quite easily. Infographic after the break.
Extreme DIY: Steam Powered Battery Charger
Jul 27th
We are not surprised. When people can run nuclear fusion reactors at home, there sure can exist some old school tech lurking somewhere in the corner. We have stumbled upon a steam powered battery charger. Before you start cutting yourself up with a butcher’s knife, read up all the low tech involved here.
The steam engine used is a 1903 C&BC 6 HP steam engine. Apparently the builder wanted freedom from fossil fuels and hence the choice of motor. This engine when combined with a custom built coil charges up a 48V battery bank. Enough for those blackout days eh? Hit up the source link after the break for full details.
DIY: More Nuclear Fusion Reactors
Jun 30th
More DIY Nuclear fusion reactors coming to the fore, this time built by a high school student. Thiago Olson built the nuclear fusion reactor out of parts purchased from a hardware store and ebay in 2006. Olson achieved nuclear fusion in his DIY reactor which fused atoms at some 200 mil degrees. No, the reactor does not power his house yet. Image of the reactor after the break.
