Amsterdam seems to be Europe's testing ground for no-frills chic, pod-like hotels. Last year, we wrote about Qbic, a hotel that uses bedroom-plus-bathroom cubes that can be easily installed and removed, allowing for short-term use of vacant real estate. In June 2008, we covered CitizenM, which focuses on high design at low prices, featuring prefab rooms that can be stacked up to build a hotel. And today, British Yotel opened a location at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.

We've featured Yotel before. Founded by YO! Sushi's Simon Woodruffe, the hotel's rooms are--as described on tripadvisor.com by a guest--"just like a space-age train cabin". Small but not cramped, premium rooms feature a comfortable, handmade bed that slides down to full size, a bathroom with a 'monsoon' shower, and a small desk. Standard rooms overlap, creating upper and lower berths in separate rooms, each fitting a wide single bed and a bathroom in just 7 square meters. Both room types include free internet access and plenty of power sockets.

Yotel opened locations at Gatwick and Heathrow airports last year, both in the airports' publicly accessible areas. At Schiphol, Yotel is based airside, accessible only to travellers flying through the airport--many of whom will no doubt welcome a private sanctuary where they can have a shower, take a nap and get some work done without leaving the terminal. Rooms at all three locations are sold per night or for a minimum of four hours during the day. At Heathrow, the hotel is nearing 200% occupancy rate, with rooms being used day and night. In addition to more airport locations--preferably in hubs like Frankfurt or Hong Kong that welcome large numbers of transfer passengers--Yotel also aims to open locations in city centres.

Website: www.yotel.com
Contact: www.yotel.com/contact.aspx

Since moving its not-for-profit venture online in 1995, New York-based Green Map System has made online maps of sustainable initiatives accessible to keen greens everywhere. Its selection of hand-picked mapmakers in 50 countries are responsible for the site's 450+ maps, facilitating global sustainability from a grassroots level. Ethical stores, green spaces and recycling sites are just some of the sites the maps help people discover.

The project's impact will hit a whole new level with the introduction of Open Green Map: a community site that makes the project accessible to all, letting users add new locations as well as exploring the recommendations of others. Participants can bring entries to life with Flickr photos or YouTube videos to support their text descriptions. The site has also boosted its usefulness with the development of applications for mobile devices. Users can now upload content the moment they discover it, and log in to find the nearest fair-trade coffee shop or ethical fashion store whilst out and about.

Combining the expansion of the mobile internet and the desire to live green, Open Green Maps uses technology to connect communities in the real world. As well as making it much easier for users to track down world-changing initiatives in their own neighbourhoods, the site might help foreign ecopreneurs discover new ideas to introduce to their home markets. As the tagline goes, 'Think global, map local'. (Related: The big city guide to going green.)

Website: www.opengreenmap.org
Contact: www.greenmap.org/greenhouse/en/contact

Spotted by: Emma Crameri

Even as consumers spend more and more time online, they continue to crave the comfort of the printed page. MagCloud, a new self-publishing magazine service from HP Labs, is making the most of these conflicting desires by enabling anyone who can create a PDF to publish a magazine.

How it works? Users can upload a PDF of their magazine for free, creating their own profit margins by calculating the difference between their cover price and MagCloud's charge of USD 0.20 per page, plus shipping. The concept builds on the success of companies that offer a simple, online method for consumers to self-publish books (such as Blurb, which we've covered in the past), and on the understanding that members of Generation C are eager to share their creative output, and expect to be paid for their efforts. Whether they're professional or pro-am journalists, photographers, designers or entrepreneurs, MagCloud provides them with a no-risk business and communication opportunity, and the ability to tap into infinite niche audiences that don't yet have a mag to call their own.

While the site is in beta, publisher accounts are by invitation only. Shipping is currently restricted to the US, but the business is working hard to open up its service to Europe and then the rest of the world. One to partner with? (Related: Online magazines for the masses.)

Website: www.magcloud.com
Contact: www.magcloud.com/home/contact

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

Music fans can now participate in the music industry as never before, whether by funding and promoting their favourite bands or creating and selling custom mixes--to name just a few of the opportunities we've already written about. Now, however, a North Carolina company is giving consumers a way to buy what it calls the ultimate fan collectible: the songs themselves.

Aiming to connect songwriters and fans in a new way, SongVest has developed a platform for live and online auctions of songwriters' rights that lets consumers buy as much as 100 percent of the rights to a given song--including the associated royalty streams. Songwriters determine the terms of each auction, including what percentage of each song they'd like to auction, the reserve price and the auction length. None of the copyright gets released, ensuring that the writers still retain control of usage. But as partial or full owners of the songwriters' rights, buyers are entitled to earn royalties on their songs, and SongVest acts as a clearinghouse (for a fee of between 10 and 20 percent) to manage those payments. Buyers also get a personalized plaque denoting their status as song co-owners along with a one-of-a-kind, RIAA-certified gold or platinum album award, handwritten lyrics and other collectible items. SongVest sellers pay a commission of between 10 and 15 percent when their song sells, while buyers pay a commission of between 15 and 25 percent, depending on the final bid price. The company's first major auction is due to begin 4 October 2008, including songs made famous by Aerosmith, Ringo Starr, Cher, Ozzy Osbourne, Bon Jovi, Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill and The Monkees.

Besides appealing to consumers' gravanity and giving them some status stories to share, SongVest's concept promises to create a new revenue stream for recording artists and--potentially--provide a model that could be used to help ensure the sustainability of the other arts as well, or even for other types of intellectual property. One to watch!

Website: www.songvest.com
Contact: info@songvest.com

Spotted by: Jan-Olof A.

As part of a new brand-awareness campaign to promote its corporate spirit, Yahoo recently equipped a fleet of GPS-enabled bicycles with camera phones and sent them out onto the streets of major cities around the US.

Launched earlier this month, the Start Wearing Purple campaign focuses on innovative ways to celebrate the eccentric side of life, as embodied in Yahoo's official colour. For the "Purple Pedals" portion of the campaign, Yahoo took a fleet of 20 custom-pained Electra Townie 8 bicycles and rigged each one with solar panels and a camera-equipped mobile phone mounted on the handlebars in waterproof housing. Each "yBike," as Yahoo calls them, was also given its own, dedicated Flickr account. The cameras were then rigged to take photos every 60 seconds while the bike is moving, and to immediately upload and geotag them on Flickr.

Yahoo handed out 14 of the bikes to photographer-cyclists including Amit Gupta of Photojojo and Gina Trapani of Lifehacker, who curate their images as they go. The result is a photo gallery of life on the American roads in cities including New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Bethel, Vermont. Four of the bikes will be passed from rider to rider, and one will be given away through a contest. Those interested need only visit the Start Wearing Purple site on 1 October 2008 and tell Yahoo why they deserve a yBike; the one deemed most worthy will be the proud new owner of one of the small but innovative fleet. (For those who don't win, however, Lifehacker recently posted instructions on making your own.)

In addition to giving Yahoo fresh visibility in the offline world--consumers do still spend some time there, after all--the Purple Pedals effort is also a nice example of what our sister site trendwatching.com would call a 'digital lifestyle lubricant', making it easier than ever to share offline experiences online. It's all part of the Off=On trend, which you can learn more about in trendwatching.com's September briefing. Be inspired!

Website: startwearingpurple.yahoo.com
Contact: ycorpblog.com/about/write-to-us

Spotted by: Bjarke Svendsen