Nothing in common? Perfect

Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.

Goodbye! How are you?

It’s the last Idealog Weekly for the year, time to get the Christmas balls out …

Nothing in common? Perfect

So you and your mates have a lot of laughs, but do you come up with stellar ideas? You do? Okay. But ideas you can use? Yes? Oh. Well, here’s another way to get innovative: fill your office with people who have nothing in common and let them battle their way to brilliance. Hey, it works for Julie Christie. It works for Frans Johansson too, author of The Medici Effect, a best-selling business book about the power of organised diversity. Read about how to set up your own carefully chosen random selection—you can’t lose. If you end up with an office of conflict without creativity, you can always whip out the handycam and pitch the show to Julie.

Dazed and bemused

Every year at about this time the good people at The New York Times Magazine get rolling drunk, roll back to work and roll a big fat one. Then they crowd round the editor’s desk and go Google gaga. Okay, in the interests of avoiding a defamation suit there is a small possibility that this scenario does not actually happen. But after you read the mag’s Seventh Annual Year in Ideas you’ll agree it’s a very small possibility. Community Urinalysis … Fish Flavoured Fish … Weapon Proof School Gear—if these aren’t the best ideas in the world, they’re the best WTF? ideas in the world, and at the end of the proverbial, what’s the difference?

PS: A list of comprehensive craziness has gotta have some kiwifruit flavour in there somewhere—and this study on vegan sexuality by a researcher at the University of Canterbury fits the bill nicely.

Soothing vibrations

Here’s one for the serious mobile phone addicts. Sorry it’s not a cure—once you’ve reached headset level your condition can only be managed. But the Bluetooth Vibrating Bracelet will help you manage it nicely. It will even allow you to place your phone away from your person, secure in the knowledge that if you travel more than five metres from your beloved, your wrist will vibrate ever so comfortingly to remind you to NEVER LEAVE ME. The attractive bracelet will also alert you to incoming calls while your phone is tucked away, allowing your wife to think you’re giving her your undivided attention, despite the fact that you’re clearly gay.

Hey dad cn u pls text me that mp3 and those pix and 5 hundy? Cheers

Dodging your kid’s begging calls just got harder with mobile phone money transfers. But the uses aren’t all tequila-related. Instead of giving to charity, you’ll soon be able to give to the person the charity is giving to. The mobile remittance system has already taken off in Kenya, where poor relatives of city workers are taking their phones into petrol stations to redeem their texts. Gotta be easier to stuff through the wires than a goat in any case. (Of course there’s a homegrown version too, but don’t let the kids know.)

Taxing the taxi

These days, semi-retirement is as much as anyone’s prepared to commit to. Keep your hand in, they say—or, if you’re Michael Schumacher, keep your foot on. The accelerator, that is. Of a German taxi, that was. The former Formula One driver and his family were running late for a flight the other day and decided he could do a better job of reaching the tarmac than the cabbie. Unsurprisingly, the cab driver agreed with him and shoved over. The Schumachers made the flight with no trouble from the police. I take this as a sign. I believe I am now not only cosmically allowed to Twink out all the inappropriate apostrophes on menus and billboards, I am obliged to add them at will. Can’t stand in the way of destiny.

Subscribe and win

To celebrate a great year for New Zealand innovation and as a founding sponsor of Idealog, Baldwins is offering Idealog readers the chance to win one of two Methven Maia® beauty showers.

Baldwins works with many creative companies like Methven and Idealog to develop, manage and protect their intellectual property.

To be in the draw, simply subscribe to Baldwins’ informative newsletter. It’s that easy. Winners will be advised via email in January 2008.

Beauty on the inside

If you’re having trouble Christmas shopping because you’re lucky enough to have hooked up with the “person who has everything”, you just got even luckier. We’ve found the one thing in the world they’re guaranteed not to have—yet. Gold pooh. Yep, they might have gold jewellery, gold taps, maybe even a golden bejewelled toilet seat, but bet their emissions don’t shine. Well now, thanks to one little Gold Pill, a US$425 dent on your lover’s Platinum Visa, and you, they can. Yes really.

Christmas lessons

Even if you’ve stored up all your annual leave, it still probably won’t be enough to match what those little buggers, otherwise known as your children, get. Enter Parnell Trust, the not-for-profit, charitable organisation, charitably providing you with educational daycare this Christmas. Tykes from five to 14 can choose to participate in Five Up, Rock On, Business for Kids, Science or Engineering and Technology. Sure they may be in therapy later on ranting about how you made them get an education in their school holidays, but this very education will ensure you won’t be the one paying for the couch time. Phone 09 379 2095 for more info.

If you’re in Auckland this weekend with one more pre-NYE party left in your belly, fill ’er up at The New Freedom’s free gig at Aotea Square. Sunday, 12.30pm.

Last and least with a little bit of yeast

The last Heineken keg goes to the reader with the best suggestion why we deserve a beer. Mike Ramsay knows what he likes and when he likes it:

“I really think you deserve a beer for managing to occasionally fire out your Thursday email on a Thursday. In fact, if you could actually lodge this last one on the Thursday you’d totally deserve it. Not that I have a problem with it coming on a Friday, that’s better really, no-one wants to work on a Friday and it’s more suited to Friday reading—a bit of fact, a bit of whimsy (there’s a word you don’t hear every day) and a bit of random writing that borders on incomprehensible and leads me to believe you’re leading the creative dreamlife—pissed by 2 every day.

“In fact, you should change it to a Friday. You should crack it right now and make sure that last email does not reach anyone’s inboxes until Friday.”

Sorry Mike, Friday is Christmas party day. If any words are written they will be short, obscene or a picture of a fairy.

Merry Christmas, my friends.

  Gena Tuffery
  Senior writer

Quote of the week

“There’s a good feeling between developers, designers, government and entrepreneurial startups. It’s about geography and community.”

—Mike Brown on why Webstock works so well in Wellington

More at Idealog online

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