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We have already seen Shoe Dating on our virtual pages — a service matching women to potential partners who share their taste in shoes and are willing to pay part of the bill for the footwear. Taking this concept to the extreme, Miss Travel is offering a service enabling “attractive” people to get their travel dreams paid for by moneyed users who will accompany them on their trip.
With the slogan ‘Who needs money, beautiful people travel free!’, the site pairs up men with money and women with looks as a new twist on online dating. Founded by Brandon Wade, who has previously launched SeekingMillionaire.com and WhatsYourPrice.com, Miss Travel acts as a platform for “generous” travel-lovers who are looking for company on their trips and who are willing to donate their frequent flyer points to enable those less wealthy to join them. Users of either gender can sign up as an Attractive Traveler or Generous Traveler — although the site generally assumes that women will make up the former and men the latter. Attractive Travelers can use all of the site’s features for free, while Generous Travelers must pay when they want to communicate with another user. Daters can fill out their information on their profiles, as well as details about their traveling plans or wishes. The concept invites users to chat about destinations as a conversation starter, before they decide on a trip together. While the focus is on romantic relationships, the site can also be used by those looking for friendly company. The video below explains the service:
The company are keen to stress that this service is not for escorts, and is trying to position itself as a genuine dating/friendship service. Although controversial, Miss Travel fills a niche in a busy market and may yet succeed as it targets the wealthy. However, is there room for yet another dating site?
Website: www.misstravel.com
Contact: press@misstravel.com
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Robotic vacuum cleaners which clean the home with minimal human interaction seem impressive enough and we have even seen the technology transferred to lawn mowers with Sweden’s Husqvarna device. Japanese appliance manufacturer Sharp, however, believes that there are still improvements to be made on the indoor variety and is set to launch the COCOROBO, which is the first robot of its kind to have a personality, as well as the ability to respond to homeowners’ spoken prompts.
Due onto the Japanese market in early June, the COCOROBO is an automatic household vacuum cleaner in the vein of the existing iRobot Roomba. In order to distinguish the device, Sharp has opted for a number of extra features – some functional and some quirky. The cleaner has a timer operation and can be automatically set to cover the entire room or concentrate on a small part (down to a one-meter diameter circle), much like its Roomba counterpart. However, it also comes with a Plasmacluster Ion Generator, which de-humidifies rooms by spraying a high concentration of ions into the atmosphere above it.
Using speech recognition technology developed by RayTron, the COCOROBO reacts to spoken commands and is also able to respond in three languages – English, Chinese and Japanese – with one of 36 pre-loaded greetings and comments such as “I understand”. The idea is that the device becomes more like a pet than a piece of machinery, changing its behavior depending on the quality of interaction with its owner. In the developers’ own words: “If you use COCOROBO every day, or speak to it every day, it gets in a good mood.” On top of this, the high-end version of the robot cleaner is equipped with a 1.3-megapixel motion camera and wireless internet connection. When the user is out of the house, they can connect to the device through their smartphone and control COCOROBO to check on the state of their home. The COCOROBO will be available in two versions – the RX-V100, which will have full features and will be priced at JPY 130,000, and the RX-V80, a basic version without a camera, priced around JPY 90,000. DigInfo has posted the below video, which shows the device in action:
COCOROBO comes with some tailored technology that sets it apart from its competitors, but it will remain to be seen if consumers want the potential hassle of having to check their vacuum cleaner is happy. Could new, more human, technologies be integrated into your product in a similar way?
Website: www.sharp.co.jp/cocorobo
Contact: www.cs.sharp.co.jp/inq_form/form?formid=smail001
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This post is sponsored by Skype. It’s time to say more and stay human. It’s time for Skype.
Job hunting can be a daunting prospect – with the modern job market offering a variety of careers that can leave prospective applicants bewildered by the diverse choice on offer. In the past we’ve come across systems that simplify the process for employers, with sites such as Unrabble, and now we’ve come across something similar to help those looking for work. Apply App.ly makes job seeking less daunting by narrowing down the choice and matching candidates with vacancies, not only through previous professional experience, but also by personality type.
Currently only advertising jobs in east coast US, the website takes a job seeker’s LinkedIn profile and Myers-Briggs Personality test score — a psychometric test taken by the majority of freshmen in US colleges — and combines this information to search for suitable positions that suit their character as well as their professional expertise. Users can also copy and paste their resume straight from a word document. Those who don’t know their Myers-Briggs Personality type can take the test at a discounted rate of USD 29.95 through a link on the ApplyApp.ly website.
Employers can advertise job vacancies by paying a subscription fee — USD 99 for one month, USD 249 for three months, USD 399 for six months, or USD 599 for one year. The company believes that the incentive for employers to post job ads on the board lies in the well-matched candidates they can identify using Semantic Intelligence technology, which analyses the content of job descriptions, not just job titles. The job-matching software Apply App.ly provides can also be linked up with existing company databases so that current employees can also be directed to job openings that might suit them.
The site works on the premise that the best kind of job is one that matches not only a person’s skill base, but also their temperament. As people spend increasing amounts of their time at work it seems only natural to search for a job taking personality type into account. What other industries could benefit from initiatives with a similar approach, providing personalized services that adapt to personality types?
Website: www.applyapp.ly
Contact: support@applyapp.ly
Spotted by: Katie Farrell
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Telepresence robots have already appeared on our virtual pages on several occasions before, but typically they’ve focused on commercial and industrial purposes. The Hugvie, on the other hand, is an uncharacteristically soft, cuddly creation that’s designed to give consumers a more complex feeling of interaction with those they speak to by phone.
The brainchild of Japan’s Osaka University and Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), the Hugvie is designed with a minimalistic, child-sized human form that could be associated with either gender. Featuring a pocket into which the user’s cell phone can be inserted, the huggable device includes also a microcontroller and vibrators that are designed to match the characteristics of the caller’s voice, according to a report on DigInfo. The vibrators pulse at the same rate as an average human heartbeat with the aim of making the robot more human and tactile-friendly, and the vibrations can become harder or faster depending on the tone of the caller’s voice. The video below demonstrates the Hugvie in action:
The Hugvie is now available for JPY 3,990 from Vstone. Mobile-minded retailers around the globe — an idea to get in on?
Website: www.geminoid.jp/projects/CREST/hugvie.html
Contact: hil-contact@atr.jp
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Some 10,000 people in the US alone need bone marrow transplants each year, yet fewer than half receive them. Aiming to minimize the barriers that prevent healthy individuals from registering as potential donors, New York-based pharmaceuticals firm Help Remedies has come up with a solution: Include registry kits inside its packages of bandages, so consumers can simply swab a small sample of blood from a cut that’s already made before bandaging it up.
Launched in February, Help’s new bandage brand is entitled, “Help, I’ve cut myself and I want to save a life.” Accordingly, boxes of the bandages each include a specially designed registry kit with sterile swabs and a postage-paid envelope. When the user is cut, he or she can simply swab some blood from it, drop the swab in the envelope and mail it to bone marrow donation center DKMS to begin the donor registration process. Each package of 16 bandages is priced at USD 4. The video below explains the premise in more detail:
It seems a fairly safe bet that most people would like to help those in need of transplants, but are ultimately deterred by what can seem a complicated registration process. By incorporating registration into the mundane process of applying a bandage, Help’s approach could make a real difference. How could your brand bundle two activities together for a similarly gratifying result?
Website: www.helpineedhelp.com/#/marrow
Contact: help@helpineedhelp.com
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