You just got a spiffy new job as a customer service rep at online shoe retail giant, Zappos. During training you quickly realize that the company is fanatic about exceeding customer expectations. You find out that your word is gold, when you tell a customer their shoes will arrive in four days they’ll get them in one. Maybe that’s not the gold that interests you. That’s where the company’s fanaticism really takes an interesting turn.

They offer you an ‘opportunity cost’ hypothetical straight out of your high school economics book. If you are dedicated they invite you to stay on as a hard working, problem solving individual. No scripts, ultimate authority, just make the customer happy. Or take $1,000 cash and walk out the door.

Bill Taylor at Harvard Business Publishing explains why: “If you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)”

They define themselves as a customer service company, “that happens to sell shoes.” It’s hard to fulfill that mission if it’s workforce isn’t completely committed. It will be interesting to see if they’ll up the ante. What happens at $5,000? $10,000? One thing is clear, this innovative company is sure to negate its largest cost: negative customer experience.

A German company recently filed patents for scented text messages. Immediately after, mobile media giants began sniffing around. They claim that in less than two years from now you’ll be sending up to 100 different prefabricated scents via an added accessory the size of an SD-card: the scent chip.

Imagine sending a pumpkin-SMS on Thanksgiving to relatives, ocean smells to friends when on vacation, or that romantic raunchy stench you’re enjoying in the gas station’s bathroom.

If you’re anything like me, you may think that the idea of accurately projecting smells may seem a little fishy. For years networks and would-be innovators have toyed with the concept of anchoring scents to TV. Yet it never quite stuck. Convisual says it has been developing the project for over eight years and plans to release the chips only when they become both affordable and effective.

The sense of smell is one of the first human perceptions that develops in the womb. You better believe advertisers understand that primal urge. Convisual understands too. A built-in function gives you the option to reject messages based on the sender. Make no mistake, whether they are advertisers or telecom giants, companies are feral. And they’re waiting to waft their way into your wallet.

When you post a picture of yourself on the internet you usually want it to reflect how good looking and awesome you are. Posting an image on a social networking site may not yield a second thought. Yet a bad picture on an online resume or dating site could really blow your chances for a dream career and a hot mate.

So who do you run to? Friends might think you’re shallow for asking or end up giving you approval on photos that just don’t work. Luckily for you a new application called FaceStat sums you up based on just one picture. Attributes include age, gender, ethnicity, weight, relationship status, wealth, intelligence, intoxicated, trustworthiness, humor and attractiveness.

The company, Dolores Labs, relies on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to collect data from dozens of strangers just waiting to judge you. You get one photo analysis per day. Pictures can be uploaded from your hard drive or pulled from FaceBook, and results take a few hours.

It’s an interesting social project. But then again, anything beginning and ending with you usually is. I thought so when I submitted a picture of what I thought was my chiseled abs, stunning features and million dollar smile. Turns out I’m not very trustworthy.

Ready for the freshest cup of coffee you’ve ever had? Roasting Plant Coffee Company in New York wants to serve it to you, with a tea spoon of ingenuity. They have created a modern robotic system called Javabot with the intention of creating the freshest, most flavorful cup of coffee available.

Walking into their store feels like stepping through a portal to the future. There are pneumatic tubes overhead transporting several variates of coffee beans to and fro. Grinding gears, a roasting station and brewing machines all whiz and whirl. Just as you begin to adjust to the all the visual and auditory stimulus, you are bombarded with the rich smells from this way and that.

If you’re delighted with all the myriad choices Starbucks offers, you are bound to be in heaven within the confines of this engineering marvel. They have blends that can range upwards of eight beans, you specify the roasting process, and determine the temperature levels at which the coffee is processed. No idea which coffee is best suited to your tastes? The machine will make minute adjustments on your behalf and have 3 samples for you to choose from.

Javabot’s turnover and potential profit must have a few investors licking their chops. It’s a company aimed to produce a highly-customized product at a consistent quality, all in about 30 seconds. You walk in, place your order, and less than a minute later you have the perfect cup of Joe in hand and ready to soldier on into another day of stimulant assisted living.

Their first store in New York is a prototype. But I have a feeling once more people experience the machine they’ll be coming back in droves, with franchise checks in hands.

It sits there, that harmless new kit at your corner drugstore, the paternity test will set you back $30. You buy it, swab some samples from yourself, your kid and your significant other. Maybe you bought it because you needed a random health screening or a way to settle a legal dispute? So you follow the instructions and send it out in the mail along with additional lab fees. A short while later you receive a definitive answer as to who little Johnny’s real dad is.

The reason so many fathers will be speechless when they receive the results is because they’ll then look down at the child they’ve loved and raised.  Realization will slowly sink in that his child is not biologically his own. A staggering 1 in every 25 tests proves that these men who have given their lives to their family have been cuckolded.

Identigene is the company responsible for manufacturing and placing the product on the shelves. The original fees paid to receive the results do not include legal documentation, such as divorce, custody, child support, inheritance, or other legal cases.

On a side note, I always found it interesting that in ancient times (notably with the pharaohs of Egypt)  the kings would usually have to marry their sister. That way the family knows that at minimum 50% of the bloodline is still in tact. That was to hedge against some other handsome suitor slipping one pass the goalie on the kings watch.

I guess human behavior hasn’t changed much. At least now we’ll have an affordable means to apply these simple scientific concepts. It will radically change the way we think about childbirth and paternity in modern sociology.

College students build one of the most advanced forms of artificial intelligence and what do they do with it? Have it rank how hot girls are. Typical, right?

An Israeli team of computer scientists have designed a system that can actually make aesthetic judgments. It started with a research group that was formed on campus. Thirty people were told to rate girl’s faces on a scale from 1-7. The pictures were then scanned and mapped mathematically.

Results of that scan revealed that out of all of the girls rated there was a pattern for facial features we humanoids consider “hot.” Those features consisted of things like averages, symmetry, color proportions and smoothness.

Our judgments about what a good looking girl looks like is based on sentiment and abstract considerations.  Needless to say, this is a pretty big step for a computer. It learned to identify beauty by observing human perceptions. That was based on processing some data instead of using a prescribed set of parameters.  After it ran it’s due course the computer came up with answers that were shockingly similar to the research study.

They say that the machine is still having some trouble with men. If you ask me, a guys attractiveness has always been as simple as one variable: income. Good thing those computer scientists are in for some big bucks after this invention.

So, you’re so sick of advertising you could puke. You’re sitting in a café, look up and see an ad on the back of someone’s laptop. Two things may be running through your head. “Why didn’t I think of that” and “I wonder if they’ll pay me too.”

Well, if you’re a student in Germany you may just be able to turn your notebook into a shameless billboard. Company Smaboo (combination of “smart” and “notebook”) will shell out up to €150 in a few months for the unused space on the back of your computer.

The concept is simple. You turn people who would already buy the product into a walking billboard. This new type of targeted marketing is referred to as “embedded branding.” It’s an innovative advertising technique that is being developed by the startup.

Don’t worry, you’re not going to be bombarded with even more unwanted advertising yet. At the moment it’s limited to universities.  But don’t be surprised if a similar concept catches on. It’s guerrilla tactics at it’s finest and it might just have you spilling your latte before you know it.

Thanks to Connie T. for the recommendation.

Can you believe that a company filed for a patent on a living species? The J. Craig Venter Institute created the first form of synthetic or “artificial life,” a bacterium named Mycoplasma laboratorium and filed in the US to own all rights to the life-form.

The bacteria could be released in the upper atmosphere, absorbing carbon dioxide in the battle against global warming. The process could also be used to create cures for life threatening illnesses. You can use your imagination as to the big bucks that would be behind one of those applications.

Yet problems arise when you try to apply patent law that was created during the industrial era. A patent can be filed when something novel or new is introduced to a product or invention. That’s fine and dandy when you have a device like the cordless telephone, but doesn’t apply so well with nuances like man-made microorganisms.

A company could very well file for patents for a range of lifeforms, successfully blocking innovations by future scientists. Imagine, every time someone wants to use one of these bacteria in a lab they’d have to obtain the proper permission. Anything that resulted as a breakthrough could be construed to be owned by the original patent holder.

With the halt to innovation aside, there are also broad moral implications. Today it’s ownership of a bacterial strain, tomorrow it could be a more complex organism. The snowball effect could be shocking. That’s why something needs to be done now to bring these laws into modernity, before it’s too late.

Image via electricsheep.org

From time to time I mention this blog when I’m out among friends. So naturally, I went to make a business card to pass out so they’ll remember what to type into their browser after our drunken conversations. But just how do you get an innovative message across in a business card?

After searching far and wide, I found a few unique designs that were noteworthy. Yet one stuck out as being the most memorable. Designer Jamie Wieck created an innovative card that will really grow on the people you hand them to. Literally.

It’s essentially a small seed pack filled with alfalfa sprouts. You dip it in water and a few days later, viola!, it’s a small plant. As it’s sitting there in water you can be sure that the people I handed them out to will remember to type in the URL that’s printed on it.

That just goes to show you, simplicity with a dash of creativity can push even the oldest of traditions up out of the daisies.

Organic light being used to change images and text with paper-thin technology is coming on us fast. Ever dream of changing the wallpaper in your house on a whim to any color or pattern? What about having one piece of paper that constantly updates to any book or newspaper with the convenience of being able to fold it up and put it in your pocket?

Organic light-emitting diode’s (OLED) are made by organic compounds being trapped between a plastic polymer. The flat rows and columns are placed on a flat surface by a “printing” process. The results are a matrix of pixels that can turn diffrent colors on a very thin material that uses significantly less power than other light sources.

OLED’s have been around for a while. In fact, you can buy a Sony TV that was released in 2007 made up of the technology. To give you an idea of price point, the 11′ version goes for $1,700. The big headline isn’t that the technology exists, it’s how its being formatted and how that format will be of interest to your daily life.

GE recently unveiled the first demonstration of “roll-to-roll” processed OLEDs. Manufactured in this way, they could be made for a very low cost and are so thin they can be used as newspaper or even wall paper.

After four years the GE Research Team has a working prototype that they are eager to place on the production line. They affirm that there is a lot of work ahead, but the goal is to get us all grooving and shaking with paper thin devices as soon as is possible.