| Finding Sunken Golf Balls Via Camera Posted: 29 Apr 2011 12:00 PM PDT 
Eric Schwartz was 8 years old when he began to wonder why golf ball retrievers did not come with underwater cameras. He was golfing with his grandfather that day, and he told young Eric to write that idea down. It has been many years, and according to The Palm Beach Post he is making that idea a reality. First, there was the golf ball. Then came the golf ball retriever, a long-handled device for fishing the ball out of a water hazard. Now there is the golf ball retriever with a camera. It’s one of those “why didn’t I think of that” ideas that come naturally to Eric Schwartz. That’s the famous 1 percent of inspiration. After he got the idea, Schwartz got into the 99 percent perspiration part that bedevils all inventors. The retriever camera is close to the point where Schwartz, now 28, will hire designers to build a prototype. Then he can see if the golf market is ready for his idea. But Schwartz is no one-idea wonder. He has already designed a battery-operated baby bottle heating system that can be used anywhere and will heat the milk to a drinkable temperature in three to five minutes. Most portable bottle heaters take closer to 15 minutes, time for a baby on the go to get mighty fussy. The prototype is made, and Schwartz will go to a big baby-products expo in September to show it to investors and product buyers. That’s fortunate timing, too, since Schwartz and his wife Elyse are expecting twins in September.
Photo by stephen klein 
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| Men In Tupperware Posted: 29 Apr 2011 11:04 AM PDT 
Peter Wooldridge's two sons enjoy the benefits of their father's job, but baulk at the idea of one day following in his footsteps. You see, Wooldridge Senior is a Tupperware salesman and can well appreciate his boys' aversion to joining the family business. "They've grown up with Dad selling tupperware," the Adelaide man says with a laugh. "They're fine with it, but it's not a job for everyone. Read the rest. 
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| Big Business In iPhone Accessories Posted: 29 Apr 2011 11:00 AM PDT 
For a company as innovative as Apple, you would think their iPhone, iPad, or iPod devices would use some color in their cables. They may not, but Laurens Laudowicz saw an opportunity to make a little money selling colorful cords that device owners could use. Laudowicz launched his project and posted it on Kickstarter for the world to fund. The cables, which are called Juicies, come in 12 colors, ranging from red to purple, reports KHON 2. “Those are going to be made from recycled plastic so we actually going to be using the plastic that comes from your bottles etc that you see at home that’s going to go in here,” says Laudowcz. And the cord itself is made from rubber which is biodegradable. “That’s going to be the worlds first time for a manufacturer to make sustainably sourced cables,” says Laudowcz. The colored power cords were inspired by his lifelong passion to live green and the everyday frustrations of mixing up the wrong charging cords belonging to other devices. “And so we ended up taking a sharpie and writing on the little plastic chord ipad and there was this you know thought one of these things would help,” says Laudowcz.
Photo from Juicies 
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| Today in Entrepreneurial History: April 29 Posted: 29 Apr 2011 10:25 AM PDT |
| Surviving Entrepreneurship While Pregnant Posted: 29 Apr 2011 10:00 AM PDT 
If you thought being a mom-entrepreneur wasn’t hard enough, you should try being a pregnant entrepreneur. Darla DeMorrow has published a book outlining advice and tips for the mom or mom-to-be that is trying to run a business while fitting in everything else in between. She tackles the topics that many moms do not consider when they first get started. "The moment I became pregnant, I realized I had made a terrible miscalculation," DeMorrow recalls. "Although my husband and I were thrilled to be expecting, I had no guidebook to help me with the unique challenges of running my sole proprietor business before, during, and after the new addition arrived. Every day I had more questions about how to grow a business and a baby at the same time, but very few people to consult." DeMorrow is far from alone. According to the Small Business Administration, there are an estimated ten million female entrepreneurs in America. The number of small women-owned businesses continues to grow at twice the rate of all U.S. firms. Pregnant Entrepreneurs have different challenges from their corporate counterparts. There is no HR team with set guidelines or safety protections. There is usually no disability or income replacement. And it can be daunting to credibly market for new business when you can't see your feet. That's why DeMorrow decided to write a book to help other women through this demanding transition. The Pregnant Entrepreneur is the first how-to guide for handling pregnancy's physical, emotional and financial baby bumps while starting or running your own business.
Logo from The Pregnant Entrepreneur 
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| Prompted To Say Goodbye Posted: 29 Apr 2011 09:00 AM PDT 
Perhaps this is a message best read via teleprompter. ABC News reports that the inventor of the teleprompter, Hubert J. ‘Hub’ Schlafly Jr., died last week at the age of 91. His device not only helped change the way news reporters read the news or actors acted, it is even used to help the president read some of his speeches. Schlafly revolutionized the political and television landscape by allowing public speakers to face the camera and appear as though they were speaking from memory. The original device created by Schlafly was made up of a motorized scroll of paper inside half a suitcase. The idea was inspired by a Broadway actor named Fred Barton in the 1940s. “I said it was a piece of cake,” Schlafly recalled to the Advocate of Stamford in a 2008 story on his reaction to Barton’s idea. The device was first used on the CBS soap opera “The First Hundred Years” in 1950.
Photo by Gustav Holmström 
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| A Bookstore That Only Sells One Book Posted: 29 Apr 2011 08:32 AM PDT ![Photo by [F]oxymoron](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vpp0c8Uoc3aSa7gl0LBi9brCHv4MmmfVSTqSHx7rV_YBMuA1SZFYoPCqOQkn5pi2TvynKzku-PRtM6RPsTRkSDhIeOXEfTByT5iBN5sT-F_aWzL5XN_D0D4R_h8NrkBETzLQ=s0-d)
At a small bookstore in New York City, if you’ve seen one book, you’ve seen them all, because the shop only sells one book, Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days With the Phoenix Mars Mission. The author rented the small retail space to promote his book for a few weeks. The NY Times has more: The book is Mr. Kessler's account of NASA's 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander mission, reported during 90 days inside mission control, in Tucson, alongside 130 leading scientists and engineers. Publishers Weekly calls the book a "slightly offbeat firsthand account of scientific determination and stubborn intellect" that "delivers a fascinating journey of discovery peppered with humor." The store is part marketing ploy, to be sure (Mr. Kessler is a creative director at an advertising agency), but also part meditation on the meaning of the book in an age of e-readers and a bankrupt Borders. "This makes books feel like an art installation," he said. "We should care about them." Mr. Kessler said he was inspired by restaurants like the Meatball Shop on the Lower East Side. "I was thinking about people that just sell one thing really well," he said. Religions, he reasoned, ply a single book. Why can't a bookstore? He calls himself the Monobookist. Photo by [F]oxymoron. 
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