Australian provider of mobile ticketing solutions bCODE recently launched the newest in their product line: bCODE-Drinks, an online portal that enables consumers to purchase drinks for friends and colleagues through encoded text messages. bCODE encoding is based on standard phone text messaging and is supported by 99 percent of all mobile devices, including PDAs.

How it works? A generous buyer logs onto bcodedrinks.com or a venue's own website, selects a bar and a drink, enters the recipient's mobile phone number and pays for the drink online. The recipient receives a message, takes their mobile phone to the bar and holds the sms drink voucher under a scanning device. The voucher is verified and the drink can be grabbed at the bar.

The service's website lets users choose different themes and graphics to jazz up a voucher with an animated, personalised message. They can write a message and upload their own images, which can be projected on a venue's big screen. "For retailers, applications like bCODE-Drinks demonstrate how they can convert a web visitor into a store customer using the mobile phone. It's like pay-per-click advertising, but it goes from online to offline into the physical world," said Michael Mak, CEO of bCODE.

A limitation is that the service is a tad on the expensive side – both for the consumer and the bar, which has to install special scanning equipment. This isn't the first time an idea like this has cropped up: check out our previous spotting Buy me a beer. Whether a gimmick or a true convergence of beer and bytes, the concept is definitely a novel way to buy someone a drink and embarrass the hell out of them with a message on their local's big screen ;-)

Website: www.bcodedrinks.com
Contact: sales@bcode.com

A year ago, we wrote about YorZ, a community designed to help people refer candidates for jobs and make money in the process. The American company has now been joined by a British start-up that aims to do the same thing. Zubka, which launched recently, is hoping to shake up the British and European recruiting markets by creating a platform for hirers to tap into the social networks of active referrers.

Research conducted on behalf of Zubka estimates the value of the employee referral market in the UK at GBP 7.6 billion, based on the number of successful referrals per year. The company's founders aim to help out everyone involved in recruiting: referrers get a financial bonus, job hunters gain new leads for interesting jobs, and employers are able to recruit members of staff in less time and with fewer costs than through traditional channels. All by sharing information and contacts.

A referrer's reward depends on the starting salary of the person referred, but is normally between 6 and 8 per cent, according to Zubka. Successfully placing someone in a job with a basic salary of GBP 60,000 would therefore reap the referrer a tidy sum of around GBP 4,000. Joining Zubka is free for both referrers and hirers. Organisations with vacancies to fill can advertise jobs for referrers to browse through for as little as GBP 10 for a four week posting.

Recruiters are always looking for new channels that will help them find the right person for a job, so rewarding people for rooting through their valuable networks makes complete sense. More local versions to follow?

Website: www.zubka.com
Contact: www.zubka.com/contact.php

Educational, cultural and fun, the Scholar Ship presents a new model for international education. The Scholar Ship is a semester-long academic program aboard a dedicated passenger ship that will traverse the globe on an itinerary that brings the world to its students. Although not entirely novel – similar initiatives SEA and Semester At Sea started decades ago - this is an appealing new version of the concept, with a particularly strong focus on multi-culturalism.

A carefully developed itinerary aims to provide 600-700 students with a truly global perspective. The inaugural September-December 2007 journey will begin in Piraeus, Greece and take in five continents before ending in Kobe, Japan. (The January-April semester will travel in the opposite direction.) Costs for a semester, including tuition, living costs and voyage, are USD 19,950 for a standard cabin.

Scholar Ship is partnering with Royal Caribbean and the United Nations University and is backed by a consortium of universities in Australia, China, Morocco, Mexico and Ghana. Talks are underway with US and UK universities. Academic credits will be awarded by Macquarie University in Sydney. Engaging multinational employers from the get-go, the organisation's charter members include HSBC, IBM, InterContinental Hotels, KPMG and Microsoft.

“The Scholar Ship’s academic program is designed to nurture the next generation of leaders by equipping them with the international network and multi-cultural outlook that are highly valued by employers today,” says the president of the Scholar Ship, Dr Joseph Olander. From an entrepreneurial point of view, the Scholar Ship presents a clever model that will enable educators to partner with existing cruise ship players.

Website: www.thescholarship.com
Contact: study@thescholarship.com

Taking try-before-you-buy to new heights is New Zealand Ruatuna, which lets potential customers stay overnight in one of the company's straw built homes. Customers can book a night’s accommodation to get a real feel for the type of house and whether they truly like the design. It’s a far cry from traditional sterile display homes or choosing houses off a plan. Potential buyers can overnight with their entire family: kids, cats, dogs included!

The concept enables consumers to make a more informed purchase decision based on what they know they like in a home, rather than what they think they might like. There’s no doubt that there is a lot of emotional stress involved when purchasing something as major as a house and the try-before-you-buy idea seeks to lessen consumers' pre-purchase tension.

Of course, these are no ordinary homes, since they're made of straw. Which is why Ruatuna makes even more sense. It was built by Sustainable Structures (designer company) and Straw Built Homes (construction firm), who dreamt up the concept after being asked over and over again what it was like to live in a straw house. So they designed and built one specifically to let people experience straw houses up close. The concept is proving very popular, says director Evan Crawford.

Great example of innovative tryvertising. Where else can potential buyers 'try out' a home before deciding to buy one? They can test-drive a car – why not a test-live a home? It will be interesting to see if this catches on with traditional home developers and extends to other big-purchase industries, especially those introducing new (or revived) technologies. If you have a good example, please let us know by leaving a comment!

Website: www.ruatuna.com
Email: info@ruatuna.com

Kicking off in Rotterdam's Off_Corso on October 14th is the Sustainable Dance Club. The kick-off party will feature biological beer on tap and fair-trade clothing brand Kuyichi helping clubbers customize their clothes. The end concept will go much further. Enviu, an environmental NGO for young people, is working together with architectural firm Döll to create a truly sustainable nightclub. The club they envision will feature energy-generating dance floors (excellent way to extract kilowatts from energetic clubbers), toilets that flush with rain water, walls that change colour as a reaction to temperature changes, a rooftop garden and other elements that combine to create a sustainable clubbing environment.

Working with the Technical University of Delft and the Development Board of Rotterdam, Enviu and Döll aim to build a club that will be fun and profitable, yet will have a low impact on the environment, while raising awareness for social and environmental issues. Some 80 Enviu volunteers (young professionals and students) have developed the concept over the last 8 months. We'll give you an update as soon as those energy-generating dance floors are ready for copying to urban hotspots across the world ;-)

Website: www.sustainabledanceclub.com
Video presentation: www.sustainabledanceclub.com/index.php?t=projectd&p=4

Contact: info@sustainabledanceclub.com