Business Ideas Loved in 2011

Lets go back to 2011 and see what kind of business that we loved back then. These are 45 of them:

– Career Coach

– Personal Social Media Consultant

– Memory Organizer

– Invasive Species Pest Management

– Tablet Apps Development

– Online Video Production

– Specialty Foods Provider

– Online Privacy Management

– PR for Socially Responsible Business

– Personal Concierge

– Senior Care Services

– Resale Retail

– Home Day Care

– Yard Work

– Computer Maintenance

– Cleaning Service

– Energy Efficiency Consultant

– Recycler

– Pet Sitter

– Organizer

– Virtual Assistant

– Remote Bookkeeper

– Translator

– Cost Cutter

– Social Media Consultant

– Copywriter

– Health Insurance Consultant

– Home Renovation

– Tree Care

– Taxi Service

– Local Farming

– Commuting Service

– Residential Environmental-Assessment Service

– Small-Biz Social Media

– Interior Design

– Educational Consultant

– Kids Consignment Shop

– Local Internet Marketing Consultant

– App Designer

– Green Consultant

– Off-Hours Child Care

– Ecommerce Warehouse/Shipping

– Business Security Consultant

– Party Business

– Tablet Repair

Those are the 45 business ideas. If being asked which business i am interested in, i would choose Home Day Care, Interior Design, and Party Business. Which one is yours?

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Trendstop: Fashion and Trend Forecasting

Trendstop is a website that predicts fashion and lifestyle trends from season to season. The agency is based in London. Trendstop was founded in 2002 by ex-Central St Martins fashion graduate, Jaana Jätyri.

 

Once you become a member of trendstop, you will get many informations about trends, especially fashion trends. You can access our latest trend analysis, forecasts, galleries, and seasonal key items for men’s and women’s fashion & lifestyle. Trendstop has been chosen by the world’s leading brands, manufacturers and retailers, including L’Oreal, Hugo Boss, Li & Fung, Landmark Group and the Arcadia Group. All those brands choose Trendstop for their expertise in accurately predicting fashion and lifestyle trends, and for their ability to help those brands easily see how trends can be translated into their own design and creations.

What else can i say, this is really a great website!

JWT Intelligence — One-Stop Trend and Lifestyle Guide

JWT Intelligence is just another one-stop trend guide for your lifestyle. Learning and following trends seems interesting to know more about them. Many latest trend reports are reported and reviewed here. Not only the latest trends they are reviewing, but also cultural shift from time to time. These reports are packed in an e-book that you can download for free!

They are also publishing annual forecast of trends at the beginning of the year from 2011 till 2013. There’s no need to doubt these reviews because they’re the result of quantitative, qualitative, and desk research that’s conducted by JWT Intelligence throughout the year. And this annual issue isn’t free. But I think that 171-page e-magazines are worth to buy.

Visit the website, download the articles. For me, they really make good trend reports.

TopRank – Online Marketing Blog

As written on the blog, toprank is a digital marketing agency founded by Lee Odden and Susan Misukanis that helps companies increase sales, brand visibility online and develop better customer engagement. This blog has started in December 2003.  

 

This blog contain many information about marketing. Toprank have helped a B2C fabric retailer increase web site traffic through search engine optimization by over 200% with 80% of coming from search engines. They also have helped an online games retailer increase web site traffic to over 300,000 visitors per month through social media marketing and search engine optimization.

Based on that achievement, they have been ranked as #1 Content Marketing Blog.

Kepompong Gendut

Pada hari kamis beberapa minggu yang lalu kami mengunjungi sebuah production house di Jalan Bali no. 7 Bandung. Production house tersebut bernama Kepompong Gendut. Disana kami bertemu dengan Sammaria Simanjuntak, salah satu pendiri Kepompong Gendut, yang adalah lulusan arsitektur ITB. Film yang diproduksi oleh Kepompong Gendut merupakan film independen yang telah banyak menarik perhatian para penikmat film di Indonesia.

 

Karya pertama Sammaria Simanjuntak yang dapat dikatakan berhasil adalah cin(T)a. Film ini bercerita tentang Annisa dan Cina yang saling jatuh cinta namun ter sangkut perbedaan agama.

 

Setelah berhasil dengan karya pertamanya, pada tahun 2011 akhirnya Sammaria mendirikan Kepompong Gendut dan mulai menggarap film panjang pertamanya yang berjudul Demi Ucok. Film ini merupakan film yang didanai oleh banyak orang. Kepompong Gendut mengumpulkan uang dari banyak orang yang kemudian ditukar dengan bingkisan dari film Demi Ucok. Selain itu, nama setiap penyumbang uang akan muncul di poster dan di film Demi Ucok. Ide yang sangat menarik dalam mengumpulkan uang.

 

Film Demi Ucok bercerita tentang seorang ibu yang divonis hidup tinggal satu tahun lagi dan berusaha mencarikan pasangan hidup untuk anaknya yang bernama Glo. Cerita tersebut berhasil mengantarkan film ini menjadi nominasi dalam Festival Film Indonesia 2012.

Selain film panjang, Kepompong Gendut juga menggarap beberapa film pendek seperti 7 Deadly Kisses dan Emit. Sekarang Kepompong Gendut juga tengah menggarap film baru. Semoga film baru ini dapat mengalahkan kesuksesan film pertamanya, Demi Ucok.

Teater Epik: Taraksa

Taraksa merupakan pementasan teater yang dibawakan oleh Teater Epik. Acara tersebut diadakan pada tanggal 26 dan 27 Februari 2013 di Teater Tertutup Dago Tea House Bandung.

 

Ini merupakan pertama kalinya saya menonton pertunjukan teater. Ternyata pertunjukan teater, khususnya Taraksa, tidak membuat saya bosan sama sekali. Pemainnya sangat berbakat dan memerankan peranan masing-masing dengan sangat baik. Sebelum pertunjukan dimulai, para pemeran berkeliaran di luar teater untuk menyambut para penonton yang datang. Pada awalnya, saya mengira mereka hanya berdandan untuk memeriahkan pertunjukan, ternyata mereka adalah para pemeran dalam teater Taraksa.

 

Tepat seperti yang saya bayangkan, pertunjukan teater ini memang sangat minim dialog. Penuturan cerita dilakukan melalui gerak tubuh, suara musik, juga settingan atau dekorasi. Sebelum memasuki tempat pementasan, setiap penonton dibekali sebuah buklet tentang pementasan yang akan berlangsung. Sebagai orang yang baru pertama kali menonton pertunjukan teater, Taraksa telah berhasil memberi impresi yang baik bagi saya sehingga membuat saya tertarik untuk menonton pertunjukan-pertunjukan teater lainnya.

creativeopera.com — 80+ Must-Read Design Blogs to Enhance Your Creativity and Your Career

Creative Opera is a blog made by Manda Szewczyk to inspire new designers or anyone who has a passion for design. Manda herself have worked in the design industry for over 12 years. She wants to give new designers usefull information, creative inspiration, career and professional advice, and also lively discussion. One of her article that interest me is “80+ Must-Read Design Blogs to Enhance Your Creativity and Your Career”.  This article shows you 80 blogs that can help you improve your design capability. What is really good about this article is that Manda has categorized each of those 80 blogs into one of ten main categories. The categories are:

All-in-one –> blogs that have a little of everything and are a one-stop-shop for anything and everything design-related

Inspiration –> blogs that can be a constant source of inspiration with showcases and galleries galore

Tutorial –> blogs to learn something

Web development/code –> blogs that focus on web design and the programming side of designs

Freelance –> blogs that are full of advices and resources

Logos and typography –> blogs that feature logo design posts and/or focus on typography

Advice and discussion –> blogs that dig deep with relevant posts, professional advice, thoughtful answers to timely questions, and much user discussion

Freebies and giveaways –> blogs that are packed with free brushes, icons, patterns, and more

Blogging –> blogs about blogging and blog design

Micro-blogs/links –> blogs that gather and post design-related links from across the web

Overall, this article is really helpful especially when you running out of ideas!

BRIGHTSPOT MARKET 2013 “A Curated Market of All Things Cool”

For the ninth time, finally Brightspot Market is back! This brand new Brightspot Market that took place at Grand Indonesia Shopping Mall, 14^th-16^th February 2013, was indeed bigger, hotter, more crowded and jam-packed with people.

There are more than 125 tenants enlivened this event. Those tenants were divided into two groups; culinary and fashion. Who are they, the fashion tenants? They weren’t only the local brands, but also international brands! Some of the brands aren’t new to the fashion market – or should I say seems familiar to me – and some of them are the brands that sounds new to me. Just make sure to keep an eye out for each tenant, they’re all offering their own uniqueness. The brands were grouped based on their product similarity, so that you could more easily found what you’re looking for. These are some of the brands:

One more thing that I love from this event is that Brightspot Market wasn’t only offering products but also entertainment. There’re also DJs and live music to keep you chilled while mobbed by those shopping frenzy.

 

Participation of the local brands keeps increasing as the Brightspot Market flows each year. This event also helps to increase the people’s awareness of those brands especially the locals. 

Creative Something

Creative something is one of many websites that share lots of creative inspirations and ideas. This blog was made by Tanner Christensen, a creative expert, entrepreneur, and online marketer from Salt Lake City, Utah. He started this website 4 years ago, on January 1^st 2008. This website has tagline; Creative ideas and inspiration.

I really like the contents of this website. It can inspire you to be more creative. It also reminds you not to waste your ideas. You have to take your ideas and run with it. When you have an idea, big or small, and are not sure where to start on it, break it down into smaller steps and seek help whenever you feel stuck.

Besides those inspiring and useful contents, I don’t really like the appeareance of this website. The colors used there are just black, grey, and white. Those are boring colors for me. If the appeareance of the web are not good enough, people would not be interested to read those good articles. Then, this website has no “home” button. So you don’t know how to get back after exploring the web.

My opinion, if you really want to share your creative ideas and want to inspire people, you have to make it interestingn first. So that people will be interested to what you will share. This website has cool inspiring articles but can’t serve it well to the readers. Maybe he can put some pictures to make the article looks more interesting.

How to Enhance Creativity in School Children

“Creativity is as important as literacy” ― Ken Robinson

Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others. This is the reason why creativity is now taught to children even if they can not read or write yet. Every children is given a box of crayons in kindergarten. This is one of many tools to improve their creativity. Creativity in children can also be improved by using some games such as word games, visual thinking games, or drawing games.

Word games

 

Word games are a great way to encourage creative thinking because it allows children to make connections and establish relationships between different words. Examples of word games are scrabbles, typdom, crosswords. Another good word game to stimulate children’s creativity is “connect”. This game is played by naming a word associated with the word given by previous student.

Visual thinking games

Games that employ the use of visual thinking are great because they encourage visualization and the use of imagination—two important aspects of thinking creatively. This games can be played by showing the children an abstract image and ask them what the image looks like to them. Every answer is the right answer.

Drawing games

Certain types of drawing games can help students build on existing concepts, knowledge, and ideas; another key aspect of creativity. You can give them pieces of paper with circle drawn on them, then the circles will be a base for them to create a drawing. Or, the simplest thing to do is make some dots on papers which can be a picture if the dots are connected. So you just tell them to connect those dots.

Besides all those games, you can enhance their creativity through the way you teach and interact with your students. You can ask them questions that can make them use their imaginations, or you can simply let them pick the topic for today’s lesson. Fortunately, as a teacher, you have an opportunity to help students develop something that will enhance all aspects of their life.