The Espresso: Edition 105
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Monday August 15 2011

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Letter From the Editor - Edition 105

Homeless

Boardrooms, office cubicles, meeting rooms and boring hotel conference rooms stifle creativity. This is one of the reasons why The Ideas Vault at EQ in Sydney has been so successful. Eight sided, great coffee, functional, full of colour, relaxed, the perfect cocktail of ingredients to unlock great ideas. If you are not in a corporation or a business but instead work by yourself what are the options? Isobella Jade, a model who has been living out of a suitcase in New York, is pitching a memoir called Almost 5' 4" about her struggle as an aspiring height-challenged model in New York. Her creative playground? The Apple store on Prince Street in Soho, New York. Isobella has written her entire memoir, over 250 pages, while standing in heels in front of an iMac 17-inch computer at the Apple store in Soho. Why? Well, living out of a suitcase she doesn't own a computer or have access to an internet connection. The Apple store found out about her writing due to her regular appearances and have asked her to do a reading for their customers. People love a great story and this is sure to attract a lot of attention and hence a contribution to The Espresso by one of our readers. So we explored this a little further and found a cool website called Loose Cubes. Loose Cubes makes it fun and easy to find a great place to work if you are a creative nomad. With 40% of the Australian workforce being part-time or casual and the entrepreneurial spirit having never been greater in the world, finding a cool space for you to spend time to create is essential. Coffee shops, cool libraries, creative spaces adorn most cities but how do we find them? Loose Cubes is a cool site for aspiring creatives and lists the best spots to hang out and create. We are going to see more and more of this as we all try to turn up the quiet and turn down the noise.  

Retail

A Shopping Trolley that Works!

We have all had that moment when you try and get your supermarket shopping trolley to go in a straight line. Nothing complicated, just go in a straight line. But invariably it's wonky or defective in some way. Truly there must be a cemetery for broken down shopping trolleys somewhere in Australia with thousands of the things! In Los Angeles artist Ramon Coronado has begun a project to turn shopping carts and into artful statements with them. He took the broken iconic shopping carts from Los Angeles shopping districts and created furniture that kids could use in the urban Los Angeles areas. Currently there are not a lot of recreational areas for kids growing up in the dense metropolitan areas like Los Angeles and Coronado has created a 12 week initiative where he and some friends are crafting shopping carts into park furniture of varying shapes and sizes all designed for kids. The Espresso loves it when people take a common problem and make good. 

Music

The Kaiser Tribe

Indie rockers the  Kaiser Chiefs are jumping on the crowd sourcing trend to promote their new album. The Kaiser Chiefs are inviting fans to not only be a part of but also profit from their new album The Future is Medieval . The idea is that you can go into the band's website, select ten out of the twenty songs that the band have already recorded for release, design your own cover, pay seven pounds and fifty pence and the album is yours. Your own cover and your choice of the 20 songs for around seven quid. Then if you want to try your hand at making some cash you can then make up your own album page at Album HQ on the bands website, load up your album cover and your selection of songs and if somebody else buys it you get a pound for every copy sold. There is no doubt that music, book publishing, magazines and a whole lot of other areas that have been traditionally locked up by the big players are now in the hands of the artist and the punter. 

Hotels

Another App for that

And there is. W Hotels debuted their iPhone app which enables you to book a room, order room service, send a message through the app to request anything and view their special offers. The free iPhone app which became available through iTunes recently even detects your location and displays hotels that are within 20- 25 kilometres from where you are. You can post information to your twitter, facebook and foursquare account and even check out special offer at your local WHotel . Once you are in your room you can order room service 24/7 which is charged to your room and the iNeed tab allows you to request towels, bedding, bath products or anything else that you may have forgotten to bring to the hotel. There is even a 'treat yourself (or someone else)' button for pre-ordering things like chocolate covered strawberries and sparkling wine. To get you into the mood for your stay the app also streams music, curated by W Hotel's music director that gives you an option either to listen to the music then and there or purchase it through iTunes. Its a pretty cool app and I'm sure there will be lots more of this floating around. 

Travel

The E-Library 

The Espresso has reported on airport facilities that continue to innovate to entertain passengers while they wait. Anyone who travels a lot will know you do a lot of waiting. The latest finding is E-Library based in Taiwan at the TaoyuanInternational Airport  . They put 400 eBook titles in their collection that are available in a number of laungages in ePub or video formats. You can read them while you are at the airport but they can't be taken away or downloaded onto your own device. With 17 million passengers a year all waiting for delayed flights this sounds like a great idea and we are all for it. There are currently 30 devices on which customers can read on eBook's which makes it a very good facility for those who are travelling. I can imagine mums and dads travelling through Taiwan currently jumping up and down for joy to give their children something to do whilst all those flights are delayed. 

Environment

Toy Trucks

The Espresso has spoken before about the innovation at UPS . After all they were the first trucking company to eliminate left-hand turns for their delivery trucks using GPS systems to allow them to just turn right to deliver packages. Now they have started to develop a plastic prototype truck that has better fuel efficiency and less environmental impact using replaceable body panels. They are using ABS plastic instead of sheet metal shedding a thousand pounds of weight  in their trucks which allows them to use a smaller diesel engine achieving up to 40% better fuel efficiency. Naturally all this leads to a better environmental footprint with less paint being required for their trucks and energy to produce a bigger truck. The new plastic body panels also have much bigger savings in maintenance  as they don't need to be painted and can be easily replaced from old trucks. Although still in beta testing they certainly are, once again, leading the way in innovation. Well done UPS!
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The Espresso is a weekly free newspaper designed specifically for those who want to look at things differently.

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Gary scours the world to find interesting tips, tools and news to give you a new or different perspective on the world around you.