Added 19 June, 2013
As part of an ongoing effort to keep New Yorkers connected, the city is creating Street Charge, an initiative to provides free solar mobile charging stations in locations across all five boroughs where the public can charge their phones, tablets and other mobile devices. Between now and the end of summer, AT...
Added 17 June, 2013
For avid whiskey lovers, few events are more eagerly anticipated than WhiskyFest, an enormous tasting that touches down in several American cities throughout the year. But when sponsors of the New York festival suddenly moved it last year from Tuesday to Friday and Saturday, many regulars were unable to attend. An alternative arrived suddenly in...
Added 15 June, 2013
Transparency and sustainability trends collide as supermarket prints its reports on grocery receipts
A company's sustainability report can be truly sustainable itself, as proved by Auchan, one of the largest supermarket chains in Europe, which is printing its "Self Scan Reports" right on customers receipts. The move dovetails with the company's tagline: "Auchan - the responsible discounters" and upholds their long-term commitment to offer...
Added 14 June, 2013
Apps are now emerging that let people "touch" and "kiss" from far away, so it's right on trend that Huggies and Ogilvy & Mather Argentina made a belt for men that allows them to feel their unborn baby's kicks. The belt is synced up with the real-time movements of the baby in the mother's belly, apparently through some kind of wireless sorcery...
Added 14 June, 2013
Hot on the heels of the Osaka canal swimming pool in Japan comes NYC-based + POOL, a Kickstarter project that started with a simple goal: instead of trying to clean the entire river, what if you started by just cleaning a small piece of it? And what if you could change how New Yorkers see their rivers, just by giving them a chance to swim in it...
Added 11 June, 2013
As US and European economies cool, Asian buyers are driving luxury retail markets these days. Literally: Rolls-Royce just opened its first showroom in a luxury shopping mall in Bangkok, Thailand. Southeast Asia has recently seen an explosion in luxury car sales. In the new Rolls-Royce storefront, customers can specify and customize virtually every...
Added 11 June, 2013
In a fight back against a rising tide of boil-in-a-bag meals and other gastronomic horrors, France is considering a law change that would limit use of the word "restaurant" to establishments that use fresh ingredients prepared on the premises. In a proposal being formally presented today, the National Assembly is being asked to consider a measure...
Added 10 June, 2013
The growing trend in New Zealand to remove fluoride from local water supplies is causing alarm among health officials. Most recently, Hamilton, the country's fourth-largest city, voted 7-1 to remove it from their drinking water. The second-largest, Christchurch, has already done so. Other areas to have voted to reduce or eliminate fluoridation...
Added 8 June, 2013
Apps and platforms that offer more mature audiences sophisticated, secure interpretations of self-destructing communication are multiplying. Wickr is a free app lets users determine who can read a message, when they can read it, and the length of time (up to six days) before it self-destructs. Efemr is an app that “destroys” tweets in an amount of...
Added 6 June, 2013
Jane Austen College in England has joined a number of other primary and secondary schools around the country and announced it will be a homework-free zone to give pupils more family time. Instead, pupils will be expected to do all their work during school time, which will be extended until 5pm every day. The move is part of a growing trend to ban...