Last summer we wrote about FreeHand Advertising and its initiative to give free, ad-supported notepaper to college students, and now ABS Notebooks is going a step further and handing out whole notebooks instead.

The Shadow Notebook is a five-subject notebook that gets cobranded with participating colleges and universities across the US and distributed by the school at the start of each semester. The university's logo appears on the cover, and pages of school-related maps and information get included within. Thirteen four-colour, full-page advertisements, meanwhile, act as subject dividers in each notebook, giving advertisers the means to engage students while they are a captive audience in the learning environment. Students, naturally, carry the notebooks with them throughout the day over the course of the semester, which from the advertiser's perspective amounts to 96 impressions over a four-month period, ABS says. So far, about 700,000 notebooks have been distributed to college students at campuses nationwide.

College students spend some USD 198 billion per year, according to Harris Interactive, so it's no wonder advertisers are going to new lengths to reach them. We've now seen free photocopies, free printing, free notepaper, free phone calls and now free notebooks—it all goes to show, there's no such thing as too much free love!

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

Our brains resemble our muscles in one key respect: don’t exercise them, and they're likely to lose strength. Conversely, many experts now believe that brains stimulated in a healthy manner can better resist debilitating mental conditions such as Alzheimer’s. Which begs the question: how to keep brains in top shape?

The solution offered by vibrantBrains, a San Francisco start-up, is to create a workout centre for the brain, patterned after a health club. Instead of exercising muscle groups via a series of circuit-training machines, vibrantBrains members hone their mental skills using a variety of computer software programs and other tools, for a monthly membership fee of USD 60. vibrantBrain’s health-club-for-the-mind approach should appeal to the millions of baby boomers who’ve spent their adult lives regularly visiting gyms. As they approach retirement age, they’ll want to maintain their mental agility, too, as attested by sales of Nintendo’s Brain Age, which sold 10 million copies, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

No doubt we’ll see plenty of additional products and services aimed at enhancing baby boomers’ brain power, joining a long list of companies already selling everything from vitamins to training seminars. Still, vibrantBrain’s model is unique. And from a business standpoint, it has a couple of profit-enhancing advantages over the traditional gyms that it’s based on. Space requirements are minimal compared to health clubs, and entrepreneurs won’t have to lease or buy an expensive array of exercise machines.

If the mental health club idea catches on, the real competition eventually may come from traditional health clubs, which could add brain-exercise routines as easily as they’ve added yoga and martial arts instruction. However, even if that happens, there should be plenty of opportunities for start-ups to differentiate themselves—from rehabilitative clinics for the elderly to centers focused on mental and physical exercises for kids.

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

Spotted by: Wendy Hoffman

We've already written about the use of playground equipment as a means of pumping fresh water for African villages, and now a British student at Coventry University has come up with a way to use see-saws to generate power.

Daniel Sheridan, a student in consumer product design, won three separate awards amounting to GBP 5,500 earlier this year for his see-saw design, which can create enough electricity to power a classroom by capturing the energy generated when children play on it. It would take just five to 10 minutes of play on the see-saw to light a classroom for a few hours, BBC News reported, though the energy gets transferred to an electrical storage unit via underground cable, so it would be up to the school to decide how the power is used. Sheridan was inspired by a volunteer project he worked on in Kenya last summer that included building a school. "The current need for electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa is staggering," he explains. "Without power, development is extremely difficult. The potential market for this product is huge and the design could be of benefit to numerous communities in Africa and beyond."

Sheridan's plan includes recruiting the local community to build part of the device and also install it, thereby creating involvement and reducing logistical costs. Late last month he reportedly left for a village near Jinja, Uganda, to test and finalize the prototype using locally derived parts. Alternative energy entrepreneurs: what are you waiting for? This one's for you! ;-) (Related: Playing for water and Hippo water roller.)

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

Spotted by: RK

Back in 2006 we wrote about Dutch Postbank's campaign to facilitate the efforts of kidpreneurs, and now a Florida-based company is taking the notion a step further by offering mini-franchises for kids.

Founded last year, Florida-based FranChild enables kids ages 5 to 15 to go way beyond lemonade stands and operate a "grownup-style" business instead. Parents and kids begin by picking a product to sell: beeswax candles, organic soap, jewellery or apparel. The initial startup cost is just USD 25, which gets the child a FranChild Company Certificate to acknowledge his or her business launch; business cards ready to print from FranChild's ready-made templates; how-to instructions for marketing and selling products; access to the My First Franchise Resource Center, a USD 75,000 marketing system for creating customized packaging products; discount pricing on inventory and supplies; and access to newsletters, updates and a members-only forum. For an extra USD 2 per month, kids can also get their own business webpage. Kids then order their inventory and create their business cards and packaging, and they're ready to start selling. In addition to extra spending money (which can be considerable, according to the testimonials), FranChild gives kids valuable business and life lessons, and it provides an educational context in which parents and kids can spend time together.

FranChild's founders stress that the time commitment is small for both kids and parents, though overscheduled families may still want to think twice before stretching those schedules even further. Nor should earnings be the primary motivation, FranChild warns. Far be it from us to promote child labour; on the other hand, could be a fun way to while away the time during those long summer months! FranChild operates only in the US—one to bring to a country near you?

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

Spotted by: Bill McMahon

While you may never be too old to learn, when it comes to gadgets, you can never be too young to teach. A Dutch initiative is taking advantage of kids’ innate cell phone proficiency by training them as ‘phone coaches’ and getting them to transfer their skills to older users.

Bellendoejezo—which roughly translates to “this is how you make a call”—organizes cell phone workshops that cover topics such as using predictive text, creating contact groups, enabling Bluetooth and exploring mobile internet. Not all of the students’ students are equally advanced, though, so sometimes they’ll stick to the basics, like locking a phone’s keyboard, sending a text message and using voicemail.

A group of VMBO students (preparatory middle-level vocational education for students aged 12–16) was trained to work as phone coaches. The program’s goal is to improve their social skills and self-esteem, and give them access to corporate environments they might otherwise not be exposed to. Bellendoejezo is aimed at the corporate market, and charges up to EUR 50 per person for 60-minute workshops. Clients so far have included law firms, banks and an energy company. (Related: Teaching people to use their feature-rich phones.)

Seems like a relatively easy to launch (non-profit) project that benefits everyone involved. One to copy to other parts of the world? Students with an entrepreneurial bent, meanwhile—those that have already been charging their parents for computer and phone tutorials—will no doubt spot the business opportunity here and start up their own coaching services ;-)

Website: www.bellendoejezo.com
Contact: bellendoejezo@live.nl