Welcome to the Daily Bacon

Welcome to Idealog’s Daily Bacon—a free, daily slice of tasty news about Kiwi business innovation. We know you love our weekly newsletter, and no one can resist bacon. So we’re hoping you’ll love the Daily Bacon. The newsletter coincides with the launch of our new website and the fancy new-look magazine.

If you find the jump from weekly to daily too much, feel free to unsubscribe; follow the link below. Otherwise enjoy!

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Charlie's cashes up

Quintessential kiwi entrepreneur swallows the quintessential foreign takeover?  Not so, says Charlie’s frontman Stefan Lepionka, who earlier this week agreed to a cash sale of almost $130 million to Japanese brew giant Asahi.  Lepionka recently told NZ Marketing magazine he wouldn’t be taking his “honest” brand’s operations offshore, and while he now says a takeover was “inevitable”, he’s been quick to reassure the deal won’t result in any redundancies or closures in New Zealand. The deal has the backing of serial entrepreneur Rod Drury, who says the sale should be celebrated. Selling up and moving onto the next venture is part of the natural entrepreneurial life cycle, he says, and we should be watching with anticipation to see what the Charlie’s boys will do next with the capital they raise.

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Red tape slashed for inventors

Inventors can look forward to a faster, cheaper and more streamlined trans-Tasman patent process in the very near future, which legislators say could save thousands of dollars. Commerce minister Simon Power and Australia’s innovation minister Senator Kim Carr have agreed to introduce a single-application process and examination, reducing not just costs, but time-wasting duplications.

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(Virtual) capes for Christchurch

The sale of virtual goods is contributing to the Christchurch earthquake relief effort for the first time in New Zealand, with social gaming company SmallWorlds raising $38,000 for the International Red Cross. Thousands of players forked over the equivalent of US$4.95 for a limited-edition cape for their characters to wear in support of Canterbury, as well as organising their own charity events, memorials and messages of support.

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Slow and steady post-quake recovery - NZIER

The numbers don’t lie, and “modest growth”, according to figures in the NZIER’s Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion released this morning, has been the hallmark of the last three months. The survey, which has been used to monitor the economy since 1961, shows steady economic activity in the June 2011 quarter with a marked recovery in the local Canterbury economy.

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LanzaTech strikes up Indian partnership

It seems barely a month goes by without Kiwi cleantech firm LanzaTech announcing it’s made another massive stride in the commercialisation of its technology. And when John Key made a recent visit to India, the company used the opportunity to announce that it’s in discussions with two Indian partners about collaborating to accelerate the deployment of the company’s proprietary gas fermentation technology to produce fuel ethanol from industrial off-gases.

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Wellington ticket company introduces Facebook integration

You can either fight Facebook, or you can embrace it. And Wellington-based Dash Tickets has opted for the latter, becoming the first New Zealand ticketing company to launch Facebook integration for all its customers. Nick Schembri reckons it’s well ahead of the curve, with rivals loath to innovate (“Some of our competitors are still on DOS”).

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Infographic of the week

It’s the Valley vs the Alley: New York has spawned the likes of Vimeo, Foursquare and many more. Is it overtaking San Francisco as the epicentre of startups?

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