In Sao Paulo, Brazil, any citizen can issue a ‘parking ticket’ to someone parked illegally in a disabled bay. The local council has introduced tickets designed to look like fines. The tickets can be printed and issued by anyone and placed on any car wrongly parked in a disabled space.

Traffic wardens already have the authority to fine anyone found parked illegally in a disabled space, but this campaign enables all residents to lend a helping hand. There is no fine associated with the ticket. Instead they simply spread awareness of the issue.

This isn’t a business or money making enterprise in its current form, but it raises a couple of interesting questions:

1. Are there other areas of public policing that could be shared by community minded citizens, to the benefit of everyone?

2. Could there be a business in co-ordinating this sort of public spirited activity?

Swedish band, John Moose, have come up with something pretty unique for their new album – it’s music that you’re only allowed to play in the woods!

The story goes that the band feel that the woods are the ideal environment for listening to their music and so their album is only available via a mobile app. The app uses the devices GPS to establish whether the user is in the woods.

The band say  they’re hoping that the free app will encourage fans and journalists to seek out the peace and serenity of nature for a unique listening experience. Fittingly, the album contains songs about escapism, isolation and the human connection with nature.

I don’t know about that, but as a device for getting the name John Moose out to a lot of people who have never heard of them (including you) it seems to have worked rather well. Is there some way you could restrict the use of your product in some way, and create some free publicity in the process?

www.johnmoosemusic.com

Phind is a new smartphone app which enables users to search where they are simply by taking a photograph. Using image recognition technology, it draws on online images that relate to the user’s picture, and provides them with not only the place name, but an abundance of other relevant information. The app will give the searcher the name and history of the place, facts about the location and user reviews and tips. Users can also search for nearby restaurants, accessing menus and contact details within the app.

If  this model works, perhaps there are other ways to tap into the millions of photographs online,  to aid search in some way. Maybe you could take a photograph of a car you like for example,  and an app could be developed to pull up all the identical cars for sale in the area? It’s a bit beyond my technical know-how, something like that, but perhaps something for the tech minded to think about.

www.phind.it

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:

http://hemnethemmet.se/

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.