Where Trendstop's Trendtracker delivers fashion forecasts to anyone with a mobile phone, UK-based Stylesignal just announced a like-minded app for its subscribers that's delivered on the brand-new iPad.

Stylesignal provides its customers with constantly updated fashion forecasts, trend information, news coverage and inspiration, all for prices starting at USD 99 per week. Now that Apple's iPad is out, however, the company has ported its full package of coverage to that platform. The iPad's high-quality display has the same colour acuity and wide viewing angle of ultra-high end photographic displays, the company notes, making it perfect for viewing swatches, photographs and designs used commercially in the fashion industry. Accordingly, instead of just looking at a picture, Stylesignal subscribers can now “pinch to zoom, touch to see a colour palette based on industry referenced colours, or move from street style photos to catwalk pictures at the flick of a finger,” it says. The continuously updated iPad app also serves as a trend book that never goes out of date, the company says. This month and next, Stylesignal is giving new subscribers a free iPad; existing ones can download the iPad app from Apple's App Store for free.

Will the iPad prove to enable the always-up-to-date business tools we've all been waiting for? Only time will tell, but it seems to us the publishing possibilities are compelling. One to watch and experiment with!

Website: www.stylesignal.com/ipad/
Contact: hello@stylesignal.com

It's a rare product today that doesn't come with a barcode. Much the way 94wines lets buyers personalize its QR-enabled bottles with their own digital content, so Stickybits lets anyone scan any product barcode and append their own music, text, photos or video content.

Where 94wines provides a QR code with each bottle it sells—enabling buyers to link the content they wish to the bottles they purchase—Stickybits lets consumers add digital content to any barcode out there. Users need only download the free Stickybits app—it's available for both Android and iPhone—scan a barcode, and attach content. When the geo-tagged barcode is scanned again by someone else, they'll see whatever was attached to it along with who else has scanned it along the way. Users can even be notified when a barcode is scanned, gets new attachments or changes location. Also available from Stickybits, meanwhile, are barcode stickers that can be attached to anything—similar, in many ways, to what Tikitag did with RFID—as well as downloadable, printable barcodes that can be glued, ironed, printed, tattooed or otherwise stuck onto anything in the real world. Stickers are priced starting at USD 9.95 for a pack of 20. Thanks to a partnership with Zazzle, Stickybits also offers birthday cards, business cards, mugs and shirts with unique, content-enabled barcodes printed on them.

Stickybits distributed 12,000 packs of its stickers last month at SXSWi, according to media reports, so there are almost certainly consumer products with content-enriched barcodes circulating in the wild by now. The digital graffiti possibilities are undeniable, but so are the marketing opportunities. In some ways, it's like the early days of the web all over again—who will be first to charge brands for the right to post the first content on their own brands' barcodes, as TechCrunch points out...? And which brands will be first to start enhancing their barcodes with compelling content? (Related: More decorative, designer barcodes — Google window decals link online & off for retailers.)

Website: www.stickybits.com
Contact: help@stickybits.com

Spotted by: Jim Stewart

We've seen numerous social networks for travellers in recent years, including KLM's location-specific Club China and Club Africa for connecting people who do business in those parts of the world. Taking a slightly different tack is British Airways' Metrotwin, which focuses on comparing and contrasting city “twins” instead.

New York and London are the cities paired on the main Metrotwin site, which provides recommendations for the best neighbourhoods, businesses, attractions and places to visit on both sides of the pond. Rather than connecting travellers, it strives to be more of a social utility for time-starved, novelty-seeking urbanites living in or travelling between the two cities. Same goes for Metrotwin Mumbai, a like-minded arm of the effort that pairs London and Mumbai instead. The site explains: “Do you know where to find the Breach Candy of London? What about the Tate Modern of Mumbai? Metrotwin makes these cross-references useful by asking people like you to suggest Mumbai and London ‘twins’ for neighbourhoods, businesses, attractions, places and people.” Rather than reviewing any and every cafe in those cities, then, it focuses on comparable “best of” destinations, drawing from local online communities and bloggers—who, incidentally, get rewarded for their content with British Airways miles.

Now in beta, Metrotwin puts an interesting spin on travel review sites by focusing on equivalent attractions in very different cities. That's how people often learn about new things, after all—by comparing them with what they already know—so the approach makes intuitive sense. One to emulate for travellers in your part of the world, or to apply to a different product category?

Website: www.mumbai.metrotwin.com
Contact: support@metrotwin.com

Spotted by: Louisa Redshaw

Image credits: Deepa and obo-bobolina

University of the People—which we covered last week—may be tuition-free, but plenty of other schools around the globe are profitable. Just launched earlier this year, Supercool School is an education platform that lets anyone create and monetize an online school of their very own.

For USD 15 per month, users of San Francisco-based Supercool School can create real-time classes and make them available to an unlimited number of students from all around the world. The white-label platform offers streaming audio and video as well as the ability to share documents and presentations over the web. Every live class is recorded and stored, enabling thousands of students to view them afterwards. School creators can offer their classes for free or charge for them as part of a global education business that's customizable, brandable and scalable. Professional accounts with unlimited access to Supercool School are now in invitation-only beta; in the meantime, a free version of the platform can be used to offer up to 15 classes per month.

More than 45,000 companies and 300,000 entrepreneurs post revenues of roughly $30 billion per year in the U.S. education and training services industry alone, says Supercool, which now enables more than 100 schools, 700 classes and 2,500 users. Time to start a little global education business of your own...? (Related: Peer-to-peer '(un)classes' match interest with passion.)

Website: www.supercoolschool.com
Contact: contact@supercoolschool.com

Spotted by: John Greene

The world may be waiting in breathless anticipation for the arrival of Apple's widely hyped iPad, but Taiwanese AIPTEK has come up with a device that may well be a better choice for children. Its Story Book inColor lets kids enjoy a variety of illustrated audio stories without the risks or distractions of an internet connection.

With a book-like form factor including fold-back cover, Story Book inColor comes preloaded with 20 built-in stories including both illustrations and narration. A bookcase metaphor on the device simulates the feeling of choosing a book from a shelf, and page transitions mimic the experience of reading a real book. Many more stories for Story Book inColor are also available on AIPTEK's site, including English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese contents as well as motion formats. The device's 1GB of internal memory can store up to 45 titles, and more can be saved to SD/SDHC, MMC, MS pro and USB storage. After 20 minutes of reading, Story Book inColor even pops up an icon to remind children to give their eyes a rest. When not in use as an ebook reader, the device can serve as a digital photo frame. Pricing on Story Book inColor's books ranges from USD 4.99 to USD 9.99. The device itself is available at a variety of Chinese retailers for TWD 6,900. In the U.S. it's available online for USD 179.99.

AIPTEK plans to develop stores in the US and Europe, according to an article in the Taipei Times; one to partner with in your neck of the tablet-crazed woods...? (Related: Online platform for long-distance bedtime stories — Personalized e-stories for kids on iPhone and Kindle — iPhone app narrates stories for young kids.)

Website: www.ebookincolor.com
Contact: en.ebookincolor.com/b52.php

Spotted by: Satyamadhav Mohapatra