Business Opportunities Weblog

Ray Comfort:

If you are finding this economy tough, here’s a way to create some income. Go around your neighborhood and offer cash for old toys (every family has a pile). Keep your offers low. Clean and fix the toys and have a yard sale with a big hand-painted sign saying “Swap your old toy for a new one—for just one dollar.” Bigger or better toys would cost two dollars or more. This could save people big money at Christmas and birthdays. If it works, find a small empty store—tell the owner that you want it for a month to see if a new business will work. Offer him a very low rent saying that if it works, you will take it for longer. Use your hand-painted sign. Keep your costs very low. Call it “Toy Swap.”

 

Eggsellent Venture

Posted: 20 Feb 2013 05:17 AM PST


Reporter-News:

On a warm Wednesday morning, David Dantzler pulls out a couple of pages of meticulously written charts that detail just how many eggs his 36 chickens have produced.

For about nine months now, David, 13, has commanded the clucking crowd, selling their eggs as part of his own in-home business.

Later, as he reaches in to extract one of the brown-speckled bundles from beneath one of his flock in the gloom of the family’s chicken house, where the birds are tucked in safely at night, he displays his still-warm prize proudly.

So far, he hasn’t become rich. Expenses — about $50 a month — often eat into his profits. The family also keeps about two dozen of the eggs a week for themselves.

But even if his venture hasn’t turned to pure gold (at $3 a dozen), he said he’s having fun working with, and learning about, the animals under his care.

And the 13-year-old has had to learn plenty of grown-up lessons about running a small business — supply and demand, the effects of the seasonal demand and production, and just how much a hungry brood of hens can eat.

Photo by Reporter-News.

 

The Smell of White

Posted: 20 Feb 2013 05:17 AM PST



Nature:

Neither pleasant nor foul-smelling, and in no way overwhelming: this is how researchers sum up the smell they are calling “olfactory white”.

The smell was uncovered during experiments that mixed aroma molecules from across the scent spectrum. Even if two mixtures had no components in common, they tended towards having a similar scent as more aromas were added. By the time they contained about 30 components, most mixtures smelled alike1, and could mask other distinctive smells.

The researchers say that the resulting smell, which is unlikely to occur naturally, has parallels with both white light and ‘white noise’. These are produced by combining the wavelengths of the visible spectrum and different sound frequencies, respectively.

Given that our noses contain hundreds of different odor receptors, the phenomenon is counterintuitive, says Noam Sobel, an neuroscientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, who led the work, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “One might imagine that the more odors are added, the more ‘special’ the odor would become,” he says, “Yet what we show is the opposite.”

Photo by Nejron Photo/ShutterStock.

 

Invention Transforms Babies Into Gym Weight

Posted: 20 Feb 2013 05:17 AM PST



NEWS.com.au:

Any new mother will tell you that parenting is a workout, but a world-first baby sling designed in Australia takes the concept to a whole new level.

The Smiling Sling, invented by Sydney mum and personal trainer Nikolinka Krstanoska-Blazeska, features elasticised bands that transform a baby into a living, breathing gym weight.

Using the baby like a dumbbell, barbell or medicine ball, parents don the sling and do bicep curls, lateral raises and a host of other exercises.

Ms Krstanoska-Blazeska said babies loved the movement and parents enjoyed the bonding time.

“I have spent so much time with mums at the gym and I was always holding the bubbas,” she said. “I thought: there must be a way to do the exercise and hold the baby safely, and that’s how we came up with the design.”

Ms Krstanoska-Blazeska was recently granted a worldwide patent and is preparing to market the sling globally.

 

Niche Biz: Instrument Repair

Posted: 20 Feb 2013 05:16 AM PST



Marketplace.org:

Kai Ryssdal: Lord knows New Orleans has been through enough in the seven years since Hurricane Katrina hit. The city’s always had its spirit, though. And music — the brass band, specifically– is a huge part of that.

Woe be to those, however, whose instruments need repair. Because believe it or not, New Orleans doesn’t have a whole lot of people who fix broken horns, as Keith O’Brien reports.

Keith O’Brien: On a recent afternoon at Edna Karr High School, across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter, students were getting tuned up on their baritones and trumpets. The horns today were working, for the most part. But the instruments at Edna Karr, and other public high schools in New Orleans, are often old, dented, and used, says Edna Karr’s band director, Christopher Herrerro.

Christopher Herrerro: Last year we had instances where instruments just fell apart. Baritone horns would just break in half just because of use. And we had to piece them together with duct tape until we had a repair man to fix them, which is unfortunate.

Especially unfortunate because, in New Orleans, repair men, almost inexplicably, are hard to find. Or at least they were until recently. Stafford Agee is best known as the trombonist for the Grammy Award-winning Rebirth Brass Band. But six months ago, he picked up a different instrument: a soddering torch. And some other tools as well.