Advertising website with contextual news

At least the sphered logo stopped spinning.

February 16, 2006 | Tags: day to day | 1 Comment

Building a Brand: Freitag bags

Freitag are bags made of 100 % recycled materials: used truck tarpaulins for the panels, used car seat belts for the straps and bike inner tubes for the trim. Very low-tech, already-used style but really cool looking bags.

Freitag built it’s brand on top of some interesting concepts:
- The company opens much of it’s information online through they comprehensive website where they explain the process of manufacturing of the bags.
- By clearly positioning the brand on top of eco-friendly (recycling) and socially responsible (adults workers on know locations) concepts, Freitag gathers public support and trust.
- It’s a great hard-wearing product.
- By making each product unique it keeps its value even after more and more people buy bags.
- By providing a tool for people to build their own personalized bag from a variety of used truck tarpaulins it creates an personalized brand experience that captivates users.

More than the product they sell the experience and because of that they are able to charge a premium (which I paid for a new bag for my Powerbook).

February 15, 2006 | Tags: design | 1 Comment

Bike parking

Clever bicycles parking by Adrien Rovero.
Six bicycles instead of one car. (via Swissmiss)

Parking space and critical urban planning proposal.

February 14, 2006 | Tags: design | 1 Comment

Bern and Zentrum Paul Klee photos

She has published some photos from the day we spent in Bern, Switzerland (slideshow). These include the trip to the beautiful Zentrum Paul Klee. A few samples:

Will add the other Swiss photos soon.

February 14, 2006 | Tags: day to day | 2 Comments

Yahoo! UI Library: good for developers and users

When a company like Yahoo decides to open their User Interface Library the Web developers get much more than just simple code. And users have much to gain too.

For developers: it serves has a guidance in developing new applications. Code that’s used in several Yahoo Web applications and that has been proven to work. and it’s helps them build and grow from the original library by also providing a Design Pattern Library and BSD licence.

For users: design patterns are an great way to improve on usability problems. Yahoo has many Usability specialists While I have no guarantee that this patterns have been through their eyes I believe that since they are used in the portal (you can see those patterns in use) they must be valid. Moreover, many more people will use and test them in real case scenarios.

I hope the User Interface and Design Pattern libraries to work together with the community and not just be Yahoo-driven.

For now I’m going to try it.

February 14, 2006 | Tags: day to day, usability | Leave a Comment

Self Portrait Tuesday

For the February challenge of the Self Portrait Tuesday (or just because I like the photo).

More Self Portrait Tuesday photos on SAPO Fotos and Flickr.

February 14, 2006 | Tags: day to day | Leave a Comment

Five Weird Habits

Tiago tagged me on this Five Weird Habits thing that’s been all over blogosphere.

I usually don’t like this things. But this one (and all other of this type) are socially very interesting. Blogs are already a very personal thing. But these games (or any other games that suggests playing) take them to an even more personal level. People know each other’s weird habits and grow their emotional connection creating a even bigger sense of thrust by the humanization of the person behind the Webpage. Very interesting effect.

So here are Five (of my) Weird Habits:
1) Living without watching TV. I have one but it’s not connected.
2) Must be the one who organizes the car trunk before traveling.
3) Nail biting.
4) Drinking cold express coffee.
5) Not using a wallet. I always carry a few cards and money in my pockets.

As stated by the rules, I must tag five people that I think might want to try this: Hugo Silva, Ana Pires, Maria João (yes you :)), Ivo Gomes and Cláudio Gamboa.

Another point taked from this exercise. Deep instrospection happens very rarely and it’s hard to do.

February 14, 2006 | Tags: day to day | 3 Comments

Useless Tagline Generator

You know you’re using a bad logo design software when it has a built-in Tagline Generator (why in the world would need this?!) that suggests you to use the tagline:

Busier than a 5$ hooker

This reminds me of the Web Economy Bullshit Generator and the recent Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator™. Great fun, no use.

February 13, 2006 | Tags: day to day | Leave a Comment

PeixeFresco.com.pt: fresh fish delivered to your home

A new idea grabs my initial attention when it seems to have at least a 1) a market, 2) a differentiation appeal and 3) potential to make money. This are the some of the reasons that made me like Peixe Fresco’s business idea.

Peixe Fresco is a service where people can order fresh fish online until every Thursday 5pm. Then the company will buy the fish directly from the port and deliver it at your home on the next day - Friday or Saturday.

It seems to have a market because Portuguese are very keen on fresh fish and at the same time many of them don’t have time (or don’t want to - like me) to go to a the supermarket (or local market) just to buy fish.

It’s different in the way that I have no knowledge of a service that delivers fresh goods to your place overnight. Of course you can use Continente too but that takes me to the next point.

It has a potential to make money because it gives people convenience at cheaper prices. According to the articles I read on Dia D and Ed (no link?) Peixe Fresco gets the fish from ports and then sets the price below supermarkets. Still not very clear how. But they claim to do it.

A note to the fact that they say they’ve used AdWords to advertise the business although on a search on google for peixe fresco I can’t find anything.

My thoughts and suggestions on the business:
- Well generated buzz after appearing on Dia D and Ed.
- Ugly standard template-based osCommerce installation but it’s a good idea to make a market test.
- Bruno pointed out he had no information on health issues like transportation.
- Include de media articles (Dia D and Ed) on the company homepage.
- Create thrust by providing every health information possible.
- Be clear about pricing policy. Show prices upfront stating everywhere if it’s per Kg or unit (it’s not clear on the squid for example).
- Think Europe (now!) and World (later). For northern-European fresh grilled fish is a meal associated with sun tourism in places like the Algarve and south of Spain. Assuming that fast and health secure service could be provided I believe many homes would pay a premium to have south-European quality fresh fish delivered at their home.
- Keep up the good work. Portugal needs more ideas like these implemented.

I’m health conscious enough to not try the service until it explains more about the health transportation issues (although I trust many things I shouldn’t - think restaurants). I hope they do that soon cause I’ll be waiting to try the convenient service.

February 13, 2006 | Tags: business | 6 Comments

Nano-projectors and keyless keyboards will change mobile living

With mini projectors like this one (or this one) reaching sizes of 10 x 10 cm, we might get nano-projectors on the market soon. Just like we got nano-cameras for notebooks and mobiles.

Screen and keyboard size are two of the major contraints in notebook design. With nano projectors and keyless keyboards the width of the machine will no longer be determined by the size of it’s screen.

I can imagine office spaces being designed for use with nano projectors and keyless projection keyboards.

Update: What about an iPod Video Projector?

February 10, 2006 | Tags: tech | 2 Comments

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My name is André Ribeirinho, I'm an entrepreneur who lives in Portugal
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Adegga is a social wine discovery service. The idea is to take the complexity out of wine and allow people to discover wines based other people's choices.

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