Misery loves company, as the saying goes, but so, too—one could argue—do creative ideas. It should come as no great surprise, then, to see growing numbers of laid-off professionals coming together at newly launched LaidOffCamps to network, brainstorm and find inspiration for the next phase of their careers.

Founded in January, LaidOffCamp organizes free, ad-hoc gatherings of unemployed and nontraditionally employed people—including freelancers and entrepreneurs—who want to share ideas and learn from each other. Sessions at LaidOffCamp meetings address topics such as living on an extreme budget, building a personal brand, how to be a freelance consultant and more. The camps are based on the Bar Camp model in which all attendees participate, and there are no prescheduled presentations. All planning and coordination is done through the LaidOffCamp wiki. The first day-long LaidOffCamp took place earlier this month in donated space in San Francisco, and was reportedly packed to bursting with attendees and potential employers alike. Many more LaidOffCamps are planned, beginning next month in Los Angeles.

Necessity is the mother of invention, to use another oft-repeated saying. It may be rough going these days, but it's also a time of opportunity, both for innovators and for sponsors. Apply free love and/or sympvertising today, and reap the rewards for years to come! (Related: FedEx offers free resume printing.)

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

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

Technology has already been used for some time now to help consumers keep track of wellness factors from diet to sexual activity, but a new application from California-based Health Analytic Services takes a comprehensive approach that aims to help users track virtually everything that has an effect on their health.

TheCarrot.com is a free, anonymous service that provides easy-to-use tools with a calendar format to help users track a wide variety of health-related topics. Trackers are available for more obvious factors like exercise, diet and medicines as well as less obvious ones like job satisfaction, mood, sleep and TV watching—all together, the list currently includes nearly 30 aspects of health that can be tracked online (users are also invited to request new ones). Users decide how often and how much detail to enter on each area they're tracking, and they can record it in multiple ways—numerically, textually or with photographs. Using theCarrot.com they can record their exercise by time, score, distance, or rate of perceived exertion, for example; they can also use a cell phone to snap photos of their workout, the sandwich they ate for lunch, or their expanding pregnant belly. All that information can then be used to set goals or identify areas for improvement, and users can create single- or cross-category reports to share with their doctor, nutritionist, fitness trainer or others. Ultimately, theCarrot.com aims to reveal how different aspects of health interrelate, such as how exercise affects sleep or diet affects mood, providing a big-picture window on wellness.

Douglas Trauner, CEO and founder of Health Analytic Services, explains: “Users of TheCarrot.com typically start with a single goal—for example—managing their weight. As users take advantage of the trend reporting and learn more about themselves, they begin to incorporate additional trackers to see how things like sleep and job satisfaction have a profound affect on their ability to manage their weight.”

TheCarrot.com was named “Best New Application” at the Health 2.0 Conference last fall. Currently, however, it supports only US-based users; one to localize to a language and culture near you?

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

Spotted by: Kate Donlon

The downside of a great hotel is that it makes it too easy for a traveller to stay inside and miss out on experiencing the local culture. The Austrian city of Linz is tackling that issue by scattering unique individual hotel lodgings throughout the city’s metropolitan area, in effect turning the entire city into a one large hotel—a Pixelhotel.

The Pixelhotel project is one of the city’s attempts, as 2009 European Capital of Culture, to lure tourists to Linz by using creative and sustainable approaches to architecture. The locations chosen for redesign are unorthodox, from a cabinetmaker’s workshop and a ship to an art gallery. Each unique unit has its own specific aesthetic to make it a one-of-a-kind hotel experience. Lacking regular hotel infrastructure, the units provide minimal amenities only, as a way of encouraging tourists to go out and explore Linz. Prices range from EUR 87 for a single room to EUR 147 for a double.

Linz’s mini hotel ‘pixels’ aren't quite pop-up hotels, but their flexible approach to accommodation shares that same spirit of surprise and creativity. Other innovative cities and businesses—time to consider transforming a few unused spaces? (Related: Free accommodation for visiting creatives — Swiss bomb shelter becomes 'zero star' hotel.)

Website: www.pixelhotel.at
Contact: office@pixelhotel.at

Spotted by: Martina Meng and Tais Reis

In these budget-minded times, companies aplenty have begun offering cash or trade-ins in exchange for unwanted electronics, gift cards and gold. Now, from none other than Amazon, comes a program to offer gift cards in exchange for second-hand video games.

To be eligible, games must be in good condition and include the original manual, cover art and case. Amazon's Video Game Trade-In site lists a wide variety of games it will accept, along with their trade-in values. For Wii, for example, "Marvel Ultimate Alliance" is valued at USD 6, "Winter Sports the Ultimate Challenge" brings in USD 6.50 and "Super Paper Mario" is valued at USD 15.50. On Xbox 360, on the other hand, "Call of Duty: World at War" brings in USD 24.25. For shipments valued at USD 10 or more, Amazon even gives consumers a way to ship them for free. Upon receipt, Amazon deposits an Amazon.com Gift Card into the consumer's account. The games, meanwhile, are ultimately purchased by a third-party merchant. While trade-in prices might not be as high as a seller can get on eBay, there's no denying that Amazon's service is the more convenient option.

Until economic conditions begin to improve, consumers will continue to seek out recession-busting strategies to make their hard-won dollars, euros and yen go further. Help them do that, and you just may be able to do some recession-busting yourself! ;-)

Website: www.amazon.com/Video-Games-Trade-In/b/ref=amb_link_83819451_2?ie=UTF8&node=979418011
Contact: www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html

Spotted by: Bjorn Verbrugghe

Roller coasters and ferris wheels are all very well as entertainment for some groups of consumers, but for others, there's nothing quite like the experience of operating heavy machinery. That, at least, is the premise behind Männerspielplatz, an amusement park for men that lets them get in touch with their inner construction worker.

For EUR 219, visitors to Männerspielplatz can shed their office trappings and get seriously dirty while playing with excavators, wheel loaders, Caterpillars, quads, Jeeps and more. The park, which is situated in an old factory site just outside Kassel, Germany, offers 18 stations for visitors to enjoy to their heart's content. Challenges include using a Komatsu Hanomag excavator to move huge stones; leveling the ground with a bulldozer; off-road riding on a Quad Unimog; and participating in an archery course. Participants must be at least 18 years old. A Class B license is required, and admission is limited to minimize waiting times.

By gratifying a lifelong fantasy that seems fairly universal among boys and men, Männerspielplatz provides an experience that could be taken directly from the pages of Pine and Gilmore's Experience Economy. It's also ripe for emulation in other parts of the world—one to bring to "Tim 'the Tool Man' Taylor" fans at a construction site near you...? (Related: Amusement park puts kids to work — Paying to break stuff at Sarah's Smash Shack — A man's kitchen.)

Website: www.maennerspielplatz.de
Contact: www.maennerspielplatz.de/kontakt.php

Spotted by: Wired via Judy McRae