| Ever Wish You Had a Nurse in the Family? Posted: 20 Jul 2011 01:44 PM PDT 
PhillyBurbs: When her mother and mother-in-law both experienced serious health problems, Vikki Dargenio looked for a medical professional who could help them through the complex and often confusing maze of specialists, doctor appointments and treatment options. When she couldn't find anyone locally who provided the service outside of a healthcare setting, Dargenio ended up giving up her full-time nursing career to use her medical experience and expertise to care for her family members. In the process, the Lower Makefield woman says she found a largely untapped niche in health care services.
Enter her new business, A Nurse in the Family, which provides patient transportation, advocacy and medical guidance services to older adults and their families. Photo by Some rights reserved by santheo. 
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| Hawaiian Chariot: Wheelchair Motorbikes Posted: 20 Jul 2011 12:49 PM PDT 
A Hawaiian man, whose love for motorcycles was temporarily halted after an accident in 1982 left him a quadriplegic and no longer able to ride his bikes. In the years since, he’s remained a motorhead and continued to tinker and tweak various vehicles, including a scooter made from a mo-ped. But according to the Honolulu Advertiser, “All of his efforts — and his passion for the road — are now being channeled into his new business, Hawaiian Chariot Wheelchair Motorbikes LLC, which builds and sells customized three-wheeled vehicles — all street legal. Daniel Ward will unveil his first models from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday at Rehabilitation Center of the Pacific.” According to his website, if you travel to Hawaii and test drive a Hawaiian Chariot wheelchair motorcar and decide to purchase one, they will reimburse you fully for your airfare and hotel accommodations. A PDF of his brochure is here. Dealer inquiries are welcome. Contact Daniel at (808) 371-5741 or via email at wardd008@hawaii.rr.com. 
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| 5 Daily Deal Resale Sites Posted: 20 Jul 2011 12:10 PM PDT 
What recourse do you have if you purchase a coupon from Groupon or LivingSocial only to run out of time before it expires? Used to be that you had no choice but the consider the money wasted. According to the Today, it was only a matter of time before someone saw a business opportunity in that sinking feeling. Turns out that the feeling must have been pretty common because there are at least five different sites that allow you to resell your coupons: 
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| IBM’s Watson Computer to Do Sales and Customer Support Posted: 20 Jul 2011 11:38 AM PDT 
Watson was the IBM supercomputer that played against Ken Jennings on Jeopardy last year. IBM has just announced that the next application for Watson is in sales and customer support. ExtremeTech has the story: Think about it: how many times have you asked a salesperson a question about a product, only to have a blank smile or glib response fired back? Even good salespeople can be stumped by tricky and application-specific questions. In both cases, a slow or weak response will result in the salesperson losing the sale. Now imagine if IBM Watson was there to help. A question answering machine like Watson could be applied to almost every level of commerce. You could have a Watson on the floor at Best Buy, or the support departments of large companies could keep a pet Watson for answering trickier questions. Telemarketers, which are famously bad at handling off-script questions, could be saved by Watson. In a beautiful, self-fulfilling prophetic twist, the first application of Watson in a sales and support role will be internally at IBM, to help IBM sell other Watsons to other companies. A video of IMB’s Watson absolutely devastating the humans on Jeopardy after the jump. 
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| Lobster Stories Posted: 20 Jul 2011 11:31 AM PDT 
Fast Company: This summer, you’ll want to consider adding your smartphone to the plastic bib, nutcracker, and melted butter for your lobster dinner. If an initiative from EcoTrust Canada called ThisFish takes off, you’ll be able to scan tags on the coveted crustaceans (and a growing menu of other seafood as well) to learn more about your meal’s route from boat to table. By tagging individual fish, shellfish, and crustaceans, ThisFish aims to connect retailers and consumers with fishermen who sustainably harvest the seas’ dwindling bounty. See a fish in the case or a lobster in the tank, look up its tag online, and get the story of a fishing family from the maritime provinces or the wild inshore fisheries of British Columbia. Or skip it and dine in ignorance—but risk purchasing seafood strip-mined from the oceans in the industrial fishing practices that are driving the last few commercially viable species to extinction. I have a feeling that someday this technology will take off for more of food. Imagine if you sat down for a steak dinner, and while browsing the menu were able to read about the quality of life the different steers experienced. Would you pay more for a steak for the one that was lived on a green mountain slope, with access to a cold mountain stream, with hundreds of others versus the one who’d spent all of his time indoors? Some people definitely would. 
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| Niche Biz: Digital Textbook Rentals Posted: 20 Jul 2011 09:30 AM PDT 
If you want to make some money, tap into something a starving college student will pay for. That is exactly what Amazon is doing with their recent digital textbook rental launch. Students who cannot afford to buy their textbooks can now rent the digital version for a set price with a minimum rental period of 30 days, reports The Kansas City Star. Amazon.com Inc. on Monday said it launched a program in which college students can rent digital copies of “tens of thousands of textbooks” at a fraction of the cost of buying them. The online retailer said the rental fees could be as much as 80 percent lower than the purchase price. Students can rent a textbook for as few as 30 days or up to 360 days, with fees based on how long the book is rented, Amazon said. Rentals can be read on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, as well as Macs and PCs that have the Kindle app. They can also be read on smartphones and tablet computers running the Apple iOS, Microsoft Windows Phone 7 and Google Android operating systems. Once the rental period is up for a textbook, students can choose to purchase books or rent them again for a period of as little as one extra day, Amazon said. Among publishers offering rentals through Amazon are John Wiley & Sons Inc., Elsevier and Taylor & Francis Group Ltd.Amazon.com Inc. on Monday said it launched a program in which college students can rent digital copies of “tens of thousands of textbooks” at a fraction of the cost of buying them. The online retailer said the rental fees could be as much as 80 percent lower than the purchase price. Students can rent a textbook for as few as 30 days or up to 360 days, with fees based on how long the book is rented, Amazon said.
Photo by wohnai 
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| Credit And Social Media Combine? Posted: 20 Jul 2011 08:00 AM PDT 
Social media, Facebook in particular, is a growing medium. People are still discovering the various possibilities with the service, and businesses are finding new ways to connect with customers with its help. American Express and Facebook are combining in a unique way. According to USA Today, AmEx has recently announced a long list of initiatives to bring in more fans and customers by working closely with the social media giant. Among the new programs: Card holders who link their account through a special app on AmEx’s Facebook page will receive discounts and special offers based on their listed interests and “Likes,” as well as the interests and “Likes” of their Facebook friends. “We want to be relevant to the Facebook experience,” says AmEx Vice Chairman Ed Gilligan, as well as expose its services to the social-media behemoth’s 750 million users. “For those who aren’t card members, this may be a reason why they should become a member,” he says, adding that this type of customer recruitment “is much more (effective) than sending a direct-mail piece to a home.” About 100 businesses, including 20th Century Fox, Whole Foods Market, Outback Steakhouse and Celebrity Cruises, have signed on to be a part of the new AmEx program.
Photo by Andres Rueda 
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| Moms Know Moms Best Posted: 20 Jul 2011 07:30 AM PDT 
A question big companies often ask themselves: How do we reach the mom market? It may come as no surprise that it is a hard market to reach if you don’t really know what this select group of women want. However, if you are the woman behind Mom Central, you’re ready to let them know. Stacy DeBroff was shocked at how disconnected so many companies were from the market they were trying to reach. So, she did something about it, reports Inc. In response, DeBroff took Mom Central, a website she launched in 2007 to give parenting advice and tips, and transformed it into a social media agency focused on Moms. Utilizing what DeBroff calls “relationship marketing,” Mom Central connects brands with influential mom-bloggers, twitter personalities, and other influencers to launch word-of-mouth buzz about a product. DeBroff says these “mom-influencers” reach the core of the busy mom audience with their passion for brands. “If moms are deciding on what kind of pacifier to use, they'd much rather hear from an articulate person who is experienced than hearing the brand tell them why the product is the best,” DeBroff explains. After a formal launch of the consulting services in April 2008, DeBroff said brands were immediately drawn to reaching moms in this new way, and the company now works with more than 200 national brands from their office in Newton, Massachusetts, to create targeted social media marketing strategies catering to the mom demographic.
Logo from Mom Central Consulting 
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