Something strange happened this week. In most parts of the UK, it briefly stopped raining, the clouds broke and we had, what used to be known as , “a few nice days.” But times change. What I thought was a bit of good weather, was nothing of the sort. It was apparently, according to the government, a potentially hazardous weather event, deserving of a Level Two Alert. Continue reading
I believe there’s a saying about a camel being a horse designed by committee. If you want proof of that (and reassurance that data will never replace human beings in the creative process), then you need look no further than The House of Clicks.
‘The House of Clicks’ is Sweden’s collective dream home. It was created by analysing 86,000 listings and over 200 million clicks on the countries premier househunting site Hemnet. It’s what’s known as ‘big data’, and what big data created (to my eye at least) looks like a storage container with some windows. See what you think:
This shows pretty conclusively that you can’t find out what people want (They don’t really want this do they?) by simply averaging out what they individually ask for. You can’t please everyone with a single product and ‘The House of Clicks’ is surely worthwhile if it reminds us of nothing more than that.
If you have internet access, you could sell your services as a research assistant. You really don’t need any expertise. You can begin by offering your services on sites like Fiverr, Elance and Odesk. You can also contact some of the thousands of blog writers online and offer your services.
Over time, you will build up one or more areas of genuine expertise, and the work becomes little more than copy and paste of what you’ Sve already done.
Although things are improving, there are still a lot of unemployed people in the UK. And there are even more who are employed, but not making enough money. This is a big problem, and as we know, where there is a problem, there’s also an opportunity.
For the price of a hotel meeting room, you could invite anyone interested in employment networking to turn up and charge them a small fee at the door. You’ll need to provide some refreshments and a few snacks, but this would be covered by entrance fees. Meetings could involve guest speakers, personal presentation workshops and cv writing advice sessions.
This is one of those ideas that would cost very little to try out.
I saw this idea in the US and wondered if it might work in the increasingly traffic-clogged UK.
Beacon is a service operating 15-20 flights a day between New York and Boston. For a monthly subscription of $2,000, customers can take as many flights as they like between the two cities. The company have plans to extend the service to include holiday destinations Nantucket and The Hamptons. The owners have previously operated a similar service connecting Californian locations. They don’t own any planes, but rather, partner with other companies. Like any subscription based business of this type, the success will depend on some customers not using the service too regularly.
So would a subscription service linking London with Manchester, Edinburgh or a holiday destination like Cornwall find a market?