With food prices soaring across the globe, consumers are understandably concerned. To help ensure that retailers don’t pass on more of the price increases than is strictly necessary, Italy's Department for Agriculture, Food & Forestry is offering transparency by text message. Its SMS Consumatori service tracks prices for over 80 types of fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy products, fish, etc and lets consumers access them when they’re out shopping.

To use the service, shoppers send a text message to 47947, typing the name of the product they want a price for. (The system recognizes both singular and plural nouns, as well as variations.) They instantly receive a reply listing both a wholesale price and average retail prices in the North, Centre and South. If a product has various varieties, the service sends separate messages for each of the most popular ones. For example: text "pear", and SMS Consumatori will return three separate messages, for Kaiser, Conference and Abate pears.

Taking a thorough approach to getting its prices right, SMS Consumatori sources information from 2,200 different stores, ranging from butchers, market stalls and greengrocers to 'ipermercati' and discount stores, and covers all of Italy. Prices are updated from Tuesday to Saturday. The project's website also shows price development over time, and where the highest and lowest prices for each product were found. Shoppers can even fill a virtual shopping cart and see what its average cost would be; registered users can save their shopping baskets for a personal view on historical data.

The service is free, but to keep costs and traffic down, consumers can request a maximum of 5 prices per day and 30 per month. Since it doesn't look like global food prices will drop anytime soon, this is one to set up elsewhere if you're in government or telecom/mobile. For more on how to prosper (or fail) in a fully-informed marketplace, check out trendwatching.com's briefing on transparency tyranny.

Website: www.smsconsumatori.it

Spotted by: Giulia Cuccolini

South-Korean product designer Hanyoung Lee has come up with a safety device that could make traffic lights obsolete, or at least improve their effectiveness. His so-called Virtual Wall is designed for busy city streets. Instead of showing a red light when it’s time for pedestrians to cross the street, Lee’s Wall projects a curtain-like, two-dimensional image of giant people crossing the street. The real pedestrians walk behind their virtual counterparts.

Lee’s design—which hasn’t made it off the drawing board yet—works thanks to a stack of laser projectors installed in poles on opposites sides of the street. Digital renderings of the Wall can be found on Yanko Design, and while there’s no word on an actual prototype, the device would likely cost more than traditional traffic lights. Thus, any city thinking of commissioning a Virtual Wall might consider flashing advertising messages over the heads of the virtual pedestrians in order to help offset the system’s cost. Another potential issue might be how to activate the Wall so as not to startle motorists approaching an intersection.

We generally don’t feature concepts that haven’t yet made it to market, but this one seems to present a host of business opportunities, as well as great PR potential for the first cities that implement it. Besides halting traffic at intersections, the projected images could be used to direct crowds at large events or form temporary virtual fences to warn motorists that road construction crews are working nearby. And how about smart deer crossing walls, that can both detect and project oncoming deer?

Website: www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2008/04/21/cant-cross-a-virtual-wall
Contact: hanyoungs@gmail.com

Spotted by: Harry van Praag

The internet, which has succeeded in democratizing so many other parts of life, has now set its sights on one of society’s most stalwart professions: democratic lawmakers. A recently launched Australian political party called Senator On-Line promises to let its members vote on every bill that comes before the nation’s parliament. The party’s representative then votes in accordance with the majority. Talk about direct democracy!

Anyone enraged by the power of special interest groups, back-room deal making and partisan bickering will be struck by the compelling alternative Senator On-Line presents. The party has no political agenda or platform, remains independent of lobbying groups and vows to help its members decide how to vote on issues with impartial online information detailing the pros and cons of any particular stance. Some might argue that such an extreme form of direct democracy could easily take on a dark side. What’s to prevent party members from voting against needed taxes, for example? Similarly, could they vote to strip away the rights of minority groups?

An FAQ on the party’s website attempts to answer these questions. To prevent a malevolent majority from taking over the country, Senator On-Line will only field candidates in Australia’s Senate (upper house), whose powers are limited to approving and rejecting bills. Under Australia’s parliamentary system, it’s the lower house, the House of Representatives, that proposes and debates bills.

Still, web-based democracy is an untested idea. And like all social communities or networks, Senator On-Line and its imitators will likely evolve in unexpected ways. Special interest groups might shift their efforts from lobbying legislators to reaching out directly to grass roots party members, who—for good or ill—may be more susceptible to their message. Candidates and their parties have traditionally provided a check when their rivals make false statements. With a web-based democracy, that role would likely fall more urgently on the press and on watchdog groups.

On the other hand, the gridlock that exists in many of the world’s legislative bodies remains in dire need of new thinking. And as the web continues to grow in importance, political parties are bound to rely on it more and more. No direct business opportunities connected to this concept (for now), but the model should be of interest to anyone tracking the workings of online crowds and communities. And anyone who'd like to start their online party ;-)

Website: www.senatoronline.org.au
Contact: www.senatoronline.org.au/contact

One day you pass that quaint row of shops in your neighbourhood only to discover it’s being demolished to make way for a parking lot. If only you’d known about the tear-down plans well enough in advance you could have lodged a protest. That’s where PlanningAlerts.com comes in. The UK startup functions as a targeted search engine, digitally scouring local government agencies’ online records for news of construction projects destined to affect the lives of local residents. Residents can sign up, enter a postal code and receive alerts by email. Result: if there’s a public meeting scheduled to discuss zoning changes in a nearby subdivision, users receive word of the meeting’s time and place. So far, the non-profit venture has sent out 21,686 alerts for 156 local authorities.

Of course, this information is already made public—as required by law—in a local newspaper’s official notices section. Likewise, truly determined neighbourhood advocates can find news of planning and zoning commission meetings and city council agendas posted online. However, like another service we recently profiled—Cleanscores, which posts restaurant health inspection reports online—PlanningAlerts.com unlocks the information, making it easier for people to stay informed. Especially by adding social features like comments and discussion boards that would make it easy for neighbourhood residents to coordinate action.

PlanningAlerts.com is currently in beta, covering only portions of the UK, but it doesn’t lack potential. The site’s super-local focus serves a role traditionally taken up by community newspapers and illustrates how the most mundane and obscure information can hold huge importance to those affected by it—something that publishers like Gannett are picking up on, and that many other established newspapers should take to heart.

Website: www.planningalerts.com
Contact: team@planningalerts.com

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

There are plenty of government-run websites aimed at collecting feedback and generating involvement among residents of a particular city or town, but we hadn’t seen many aimed directly at local youth until we came across Derby KidzTalk. Operated by Derby Homes, a non-profit property management organization established by the Derby City Council, the site is geared toward kids between 9 and 16 living in Derby, offering them local information and ways to express concerns and get involved.

The site was originally motivated by a government requirement that Derby Homes involve users in the development of its services. "We are expected to include everyone—young and old, representing the broad spectrum of ethnicity—and this site helps us talk to young people who don't really like coming to formal meetings that adults feel more comfortable with," explains Mark Crown, tenant involvement manager for Derby Homes.

But Derby KidzTalk quickly took off beyond Derby Homes' expectations, reaching 80 registered users and 3,000 hits per month soon after its launch earlier this year. "KidzTalk is bigger than we anticipated for what was a step in the dark," Crown explains. The company is now scrambling to create a marketing plan and approaching other social landlords about the possibility of sharing and co-funding the site. It's also considering selling the format to other organizations. Our advice? Add 2.0 functionalities as featured in our posts on Love Lewisham, Amsterdam’s Google Maps mashup and Neighbourhood Fix-It. Take a playful approach to civic awareness by creating scavenger hunts with an online component: find a broken streetlight, report a pothole, etc.

Website: www.derbykidztalk.co.uk
Contact: getinvolved@derbyhomes.org
Spotted by: Amy Leung