Have you heard lately that Apple iPhones have erratic signal? There’s one surefire way to solve the iPhone 4 antenna problem: don’t let your hand or fingers come in contact with its metal band.

Easier said than done, right? Unless you’re willing to constantly use the speakerphone, a headset, or a pair of gloves, your only viable option is to keep the iPhone in a case–or, as some have discovered, wrap it in a rubber “bumper.”

A CNET report that iPhone Guru blogger Oliver Nelson crafted a clever DIY iPhone 4 bumper solution out of one of those rubber wristbands you probably have sitting in a junk drawer.

It’s a pretty straightforward project: stretch a wristband around the edge of your iPhone and presto, you’re done. If you’re handy with an X-Acto knife, you can cut holes for the headphone jack, mute switch, dock connector, and so on.

Photo by Oliver Nelson.

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Designed by Katsunari and Ami Igarashi, this white button-down shirt is equipped with a built-in microfiber cloth for gently wiping down mobile devices or eyeglasses.

The Wipe Shirt is available in two different styles: one with the microfiber patch sewn onto the shirt’s bottom and one with the patch located on the cuff of the sleeve, in sizes small to extra-large.

The shirt is yet another product in the couples’ innovative repertoire at FIFT that furthers the company’s stated mission — according to design blog Smith & Tamago — to “promote interaction between their products and the user.”

The shirt is also fashion forward, as it was designed with the help of a clothing designer with a degree from the Antwerp Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

The microfiber fabric is cutting-edge, provided by leading tech-fabric maker Unitika.

Photo by fift.jp

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Most of this flash game developers are earning a living out of this little flash games. This is a great negosyo idea in the coming year. Here’s an excerpt from VentureBeat.

About 16 percent of those surveyed make more than $1,000 a month (the survey included 1,104 developers and publishers). The top 1 percent make more than $25,000 a month, according to the survey by Mochi Media.

That means that Flash games are becoming more than a hobbyist market, according to the San Francisco-based company, whose mission is to help Flash developers monetize their games through ads and virtual goods sales.

The numbers of developers making money is a higher percentage than other fields such as blogging or music. The company’s first Flash Games Market Survey is the first comprehensive study of the demographics behind Flash developers.

About a third of Flash developers say they monetize their games in four different ways, including running ads or enabling micro-transactions so that players can buy virtual goods, such as extra weapons or decorative clothing.

About 58 percent use ads wrapped around games; 43 percent use sponsors, and 25 percent get revenue from licensing, ads on web sites and creating custom games for brands.

The industry is relatively young. About two-thirds of developers said they started making games within the last two years, and 75 percent of game publishers started their web site game portals within the last two years, said Ada Chen, product marketing manager at Mochi Media.

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Interested in selling online? online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon are once surefire places to earn extra money or to build an online retail business. It’s not quite so simple anymore, here’s a report from the The New York Times. You may get some clues here on how to start this kind of business here in the Philippines which ebay is locally present here now.

Identify product areas that interest you, and seek a niche. Rather than sell, say, digital cameras, you might sell a specialty tripod or other accessories that aren’t already sold abundantly online.

Skip McGrath, an eBay Powerseller,, started with automatic pepper mills. Based in Anacortes, Wash., he decided to sell specialty kitchen gadgets on eBay. “They’re light, easy to ship and I’m one of the few sellers selling them,” he said. “If I had pots and pans, I’d have 200 competitors.”

Find a reliable wholesaler who offers low enough prices to generate high enough profit margins on resale. McGrath, who said he generated roughly $150,000 in annual revenue with his eBay store, buys his pepper mills from a Seattle-based wholesale dealer. Finding the right wholesaler can require an extensive search.

Many sellers, McGrath said, source their products offline, through local wholesalers or flea markets. Comparison shopping can still be done online, using sites like Liquidation.com and eBay, which offer wholesale items in bulk.

Selling on Amazon is more automated and requires less buyer interaction. The site collects money from customers and deposits it in seller accounts. In most categories of goods, eBay requires that sellers accept payment only through electronic systems, including its own PayPal system.

Amazon has no auctions — all items are sold at fixed prices — and automatically sets the shipping fees depending on the item being sold. EBay sellers can choose their own shipping fees and have more control over the look and timing of listings.

McGrath said that eBay was still the better option for selling clothes, toys and household goods. Books, music and other electronic media, he said, tend to do better on Amazon.

Photo by Amazon/eBay.

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Junk is a lucrative business here in the Philippines, from the street buyers who buys used bottles, newspapers, irons and plastics to the wholesale buyers. The electronic junks that clutter in our house is yet to be harness to recycle or reuse the working items and at the same time turn it back as money. Springwise has this report from the U.S.  offering a solution is EcoATM, an automated reuse-and-recycle machine that makes it easy and financially rewarding for consumers to offload their abandoned electronics.

The process is simple: a customer feeds the machine an old mobile phone and it analyses the device and assigns it a value. If the phone has a resale value, the customer receives store credit, or can donate the amount to charity. If there’s no resale value, customers can choose to have the handset recycled.

The first EcoATM was installed in Omaha, Nebraska, and has already proved successful, with 23 phones collected on the first day.

It’s likely to hold appeal for retailers and manufacturers too, as the system is designed to facilitate compliance with new federal ‘takeback’ laws. Although it currently only takes mobile phones, EcoATM will soon be able to accept a range of consumer electronics including MP3 players, digital cameras and even computers and printers.

The incentive for EcoATM is clear: an estimated 12 billion dollars is currently sitting in drawers across America in the form of old phones.

Photo by EcoATM.

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Ever experience going to a popular restaurant only to find out that its full of people so you have to wait on the waiting bench to have your turn? There is a great business idea for the restaurant owner to have there guest need not get bored waiting for there turn. ReadyPing lets restaurants notify guests by text message when their table is ready. The system aims to improve on restaurant pagers, which require a substantial upfront investment plus maintenance costs and have a limited range. Restaurants don’t need to purchase new hardware to use ReadyPing; all that’s required is an internet connection and a computer. ReadyPing charges a flat monthly fee of USD 35, which includes sending an unlimited number of ‘pings’.

To use the system, the hosts enter the guest or party’s name, number of guests, and their mobile number. When their table is available, the host clicks a button to send a customizable text message. ReadyPing is currently only available in the United States, but i’m sure this will be a hit here in the Philippines with so many restaurants around the country, why not develop a system something like this for the Philippine market.

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Attention dance club owners in the Philippines and would be owners. How would you like to make your dance club go to the the next level? An event previewed at the Amsterdam Dance Event has set-up a system that builds playlists from multiple Twones timelines that collaborates with a Tony Player, this is the innovative aspect thats pushing it one step further. Twones is a new online music service that automatically tracks every song a user plays while online—whether via iTunes, YouTube, last.fm and other services — and then creates a single timeline of the music they’ve been listening to. Users can share their timelines and discover new music by exploring a friend’s musical history. The service, which launches in December 2007, works via a small browser plug-in.

When Twones members arrive at a club, they register their presence via text message or their phone’s bluetooth connection. The tracks they’ve most recently listened to — as registered by Twones — are then imported to the DJ’s playlist. The DJ picks from those tracks and mixes them, building a set based entirely on the crowds’ recent musical preferences. To add extra recognition and excitement for people whose songs are played, their headshots and usernames are displayed on a giant screen. I’m sure it would be a hit in the dance club scene in the Philippines.

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