We recently covered a program at Oakland Mall that offers startups low-cost and short-term leasing to help them to set up shop. This summer, KiosKiosk will bring a similar idea to the streets of London by offering a small kiosk space to startups selling ceramics, art, fashion and other creative products. At no cost to its temporary tenants.

Creative organisations, businesses or individuals ready to trade simply send in their details and explain why they're a good candidate to fill the space. KiosKiosk's founders note that, although the number of people enrolling in design courses in the UK increases each year, it's difficult for creative businesses to find affordable retail space in locations with enough foot traffic to attract potential buyers. The initiative is backed by the London Sustainable Development Commission, working to promote creative independent shops instead of more dime-a-dozen souvenir stalls. The first KiosKiosk—an eyecatching design by Geraldine and Wayne Hemingway—will be set up outside London’s City Hall all summer, with plans to roll out the concept in other parts of the city and country at a later stage.

As well as encouraging startups and up-and-coming designers, the kiosk is a low-cost way for London to showcase the abundance of local creativity to visitors from around the world.

Website: www.kioskiosk.co.uk
Contact: www.kioskiosk.co.uk/html/contact-us.html

Spotted by: intelligentnaivety.com via Raymond Kollau

P.S. On a side note: back in 2004, our sister-site trendwatching.com coined the phrase pop-up retail, and one of the examples used was Delta's pop-up store in New York. Five and a half years later, Southwest Airlines is opening a pop-up lounge in Bryant Park, as reported by nytimes.com. Southwest is starting service at LaGuardia, and the "Southwest Porch" will be serving sandwiches themed to the cities they'll be flying to. Some trends just never grow old ;-)

When it comes to monitoring the workings of democracy, there's no such thing as too much information. Helping involved citizens stay well-informed, LegiStalker filters US legislative news 24 hours a day.

Created as an entry for the Apps for America contest, LegiStalker allows users to search for legislators by name or location, and view live streams of their votes, Twitter posts, YouTube videos, favourite words and more. The website's database is updated every 20 seconds using Yahoo Search, GovTrack.us and other services. Plans are in place for additional features like voting histories and grouping politicians mentioned in the same news articles.

As LegiStalker says: “an accountable government requires an informed citizenry.” One to duplicate for dedicated citizens in other nations? (Related: Tweets from parliament seats — Crowds make parliament videos searchable.)

Website: www.legistalker.org
Contact: legistalker@forumone.com

Spotted by: Judy McRae

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

We've seen several web-based initiatives aimed at engaging the politically alienated, including theyworkforyou.com's video tagging. Now, tapping into Twitter—the communication platform du jour—Tweetminster has created a 'place where real life and politics tweet'. The website and public service provides real-time updates of life in British politics.

Tweetminster lets users track their favourite MPs, read politicians' and lobbyists' speeches as they're spoken, and find out the hottest topics of political debate from various MPs' blogs. Launched late last year, Tweetminster currently has a roster of 18 MPs from all over Britain, 60% of whom are members of the Labour party. Each politician has a personal page that displays their followers and lists their most recent 140-character missives, as well as a tagcloud of the words they use most often. There's also a section for prospective parliamentary candidates, letting them introduce themselves and their campaigns to the internet community.

UnLtdWorld, an online platform for social entrepreneurs, teamed up with Thin Martian, a creative digital agency, to move the concept from brainwave to launch state in 48 hours. (UnLtdWorld and Thin Martian also collaborated on a Shoreditch tricycle race we wrote about.) Inspiration came in part after stumbling upon Tweet Congress, an American site that chronicles the twittering activities of congressmen and congresswomen. Both sites aim to make politicians and political culture more accessible, thereby encouraging greater participation in debate.

Services such as Twitter are making it easier for consumers to establish an immediate, real-time dialogue with previously distant entities. And they provide organisations with yet another opportunity to turn transparency tyranny into transparency triumph.

Website: www.tweetminster.com
Contact: @albertonardelli — @killdozer — @goldenchild128 — @misja

Spotted by: Alice Pilias

Theyworkforyou.com, the site that helps the British public keep tabs on their politicians, has just made the government's goings-on even more transparent and accessible. Its full archive of video clips of debates in the House of Commons can now be searched, thanks to a new initiative to link parliament transcripts with video footage.

The website created a timestamping application in June 2008 to match up each clip--recorded from BBC Parliament, the British equivalent of C-SPAN--to the correct transcript. Even though all of the timestamping needed to be done manually without a budget, two months after launch all 42,018 video clips were fully searchable. The non-profit site managed this by involving the general public, creating a small incentive by naming its top taggers, one of whom is responsible for over 8,000 entries. It also encouraged participation by making it incredibly easy for anyone to pitch in: all users need to do to get started is to click the 'Give me a random speech that needs timestamping' link. They're then shown a video, and just need to press the 'now' button when they hear the words displayed below the player. The Houses of Parliament are currently in their Summer Recess, but when they get back to work in October, Theyworkforyou.com will be able to match up videos and transcripts as soon as they become available.

By relying on the simple system of text search, finding important parts of debates in seemingly endless sequences of video suddenly becomes much less daunting. The project's aim is to make it easy for citizens to watch relevant footage, and to remind politicians of the promises they've made. While Google and other tech behemoths work on making video searchable, the fact that this low-tech project was completed so quickly demonstrates the power of harnessing the crowds, and how ready and willing those crowds are to help create a greater degree of transparency. Politicians, beware: there's no place to hide ;-)

Website: www.theyworkforyou.com/video
Contact: team@theyworkforyou.com

Spotted by: Simon Blair