Selling point - POS with a difference

Vaughan Rowsell’s goal is pretty simple: to bring retail into the 21st century. His creation, Vend, is an online point-of-sale app built for social networks and geo-location. Cheap, scalable and tying in with existing hardware, it sounds like a dream solution. It’s time check-out technology got a makeover—and who better to do the job than a Kiwi company with the world at its feet? The market for virtual payments is ripe for the taking. Think Amazon, PayPal, Google and Visa, for example, companies with massive user databases waiting to be tapped; it’s only a matter of time. But as Rowsell tells Idealog, the real race will be between Apple and Facebook—and he’s ready for them.

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Gear up for GEW

What better way to kick off the week than by hearing and speaking to Sam Morgan, Entrepreneur of the Year Tim Alpe and the founder of Jucy Rentals? Monday marks the first of more than 40,000 Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) events taking place around the world; this particular launch will be at Wintec House on the main Hamilton campus from 5.30pm. The topic of the panel discussion is “thinking about business models”, and if you’re keen you’ll need to RSVP to alexandria.sorensen@med.govt.nz as soon as possible.

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More art and design than you can shake a stick at

Yet another pop-up store has reared its head, this time at a converted warehouse on Newmarket’s Carlton Gore Rd. In conjunction with Unitec, MoAD (Ministry of Art & Design), a collective run by printmaker Aroha Lewin and ceramicist Zekiah Heath, is launching New Zealand’s first ever Art + Design Week. From November 13-21, a showcase of local artists and designers will be served up on a proverbial silver platter, with the public encouraged not only to browse and shop but take part in a calendar of scheduled events, including artist floor talks and a Pecha Kucha night on November 18. Make sure you pop along—it’s bound to be the first of many.

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Winning entry

We Ideologues do love a good limerick, and in the case of Ken Grace, his poetic flair has won him a Peugeot 308 cc convertible to drive around an entire weekend, along with 100 bottles of Teza limited edition Feijoa & Limeblossom iced tea to sip on. Nice one!

The winning composition, featuring not one but two words which rhymed with “feijoa”:

Said the erotic Tennessee grower
“There’s sarmthin’ about the feijoa.
After a day in the dell
Me an’ Lizzie, ma gal
Make love in the foah by foah.

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Leaves and toast

If there’s one thing we know and love OK Go for, it’s their music videos. Here’s their latest, Last Leaf; comprised entirely of photographs with 15 still shots per second. Oh yes, and toast. Lots and lots of toast.

The power of narration

There’s nothing more annoying than missing out on a great event thanks to clashing schedules. But there’s no chance of that happening at the Reinvention Summit. Take part live or in your own time—all sessions are recorded and archived—in your suit or in your pyjamas, on the train or in bed. They’ve gathered a tribe of experts to discuss storytelling for personal, social and business objectives. Speakers include several Ted.com contributors including Nancy Duarte, who has written several books on storytelling and building presentations, and sustainability pioneer John Elkington. Find out more about the programme and how to register online.

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Shooting for the top

Media Design School students are doing us proud overseas, having been named finalists at the Independent Games Festival Awards (IGF) China. Dead Steel, a futuristic alien shooter PC game, was the final-year project of a team of seven students in the Graduate Diploma of Game Development. Tutor Jon Booth compared the IGF Awards to the “Sundance of the indie games industry” and had this to say of their work: “They spent six weeks in pre-production, followed by 19 weeks of full production. They were self-directed the entire time, apart from their lab hours and the end result was fun, polished and professional.” Have a go at the game and see what you think.

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Give as good as you look

Say hello to the-collection.co.nz— a niche auction site where the fashion-conscious and charity-minded can give and shop 365 days of the year. Creator Claire Stapleton says it’s “the good-looking, stylish and caring older sister in a world of boyish auction sites.” (Indeed, it’s a beauteous site: you’ll never feel embarrassed or cheap while browsing it).

What sets it apart from other auction sites is that the seller gives a percentage of their choosing to a charity - New Zealand Aids Foundation, Autism New Zealand, Arthritis New Zealand, Amnesty International, Child Cancer Foundation, KidsCan StandTall Charitable Trust, SPCA New Zealand, WWF-New Zealand or The Asthma Foundation.  There’ s no listing or registration fee, only a success fee if a sale is made. So if you’re clearing out your wardrobe to make way for new summer pieces, do it for a good cause (they’ll even pick up items, just email contact@the-collection.co.nz).

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A hard cell

How would you feel about sleeping behind bars? Turns out there are plenty of prisons which have been converted into hotels (NileGuide lists some here under the witty title Incarcer-Vacations). For a holiday with a twist, you really can’t go past that. And it’s actually quite a pragmatic solution; these are, after all, buildings constructed to house large numbers, and it’s one way to preserve classic architecture.

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When millimetres matter

Proof that some people have too much time on their hands: this tiny catapult was designed to hurl mini three-millimetre pies at bees and other bugs. Insect cruelty, perhaps, but is it really much worse than being flattened by a shoe?

Staged scribbles

What do you do with kids’ drawings? Display them on the fridge? Or store them in the basement never to be seen again? Korean photographer Yeondoo Jung turns them into reality, arranging and restaging real people and real props to be shot in high definition. The results are quite extraordinary.

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Quote of the week

Up until today, the level of innovation in a retail system is making the Eftpos machine go beep when you load a sale on the register.

—Vaughan Rowsell saw plenty of scope for improvement, and stepped up to the challenge