My Best Friend’s Hair
If you’ve spent a day in Broad Ripple, it’s likely you’ve noticed the abundance of hair salons. With so many options, how do you choose? Enter My Best Friend’s Hair, where consumers can search for stylists based on their criteria (price, specialties, location), and stylists can be found by consumers.

Quipol
Quipol makes it easy to gauge your audience’s sentiment. While not specifically designed for fashion, this flexible tool certainly has a future in it! What better way to explain why, than to show you. Here’s some new glasses I’m considering from Warby Parker (another fashion + tech love story). What say you?

Apparel Media
These guys aren’t from Indy, but with IU as an alma mater and Chicago as their HQ, they’re pretty darn local. What started as a custom apparel printing business, has now transformed into a high caliber solution to help global brands connect with a hyperlocal audience. Companies like AXE have used Apparel Media to get in front of their target (male, 18-24) by co-branding shirts, bundled with product samples or QR-enabled insert cards. (Read more on Forbes)

Roboto Wear
A self described “clothing company with a mechanical heart,” RobotoWear has created a line of robot t-shirts, polos, hoodies and hats, perfect for the tech-minded.

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The Evolution of QR Codes
Quick Response Codes (QR codes) are two-dimensional barcodes that can deliver large amounts of information while taking up a small amount of print space. QR codes can be made up of many different types of data and can be downloaded at a high-speed by a QR reader. Originally these codes were used in the automotive industry for manufacturing, but due to their ability to store and deliver a message in a fast and concise manner, QR codes quickly found purchase in a variety of industries.

Much like its predecessors, Microsoft Tags and Jagtags, QR codes are easily read by mobile devices, which use the camera as the reader. The contents of the tag typically direct the viewer to a URL where they can find more information on a product, service, topic, or issue. Since QR code software is open source, multiple companies can create QR codes, and theoretically each company’s reader should be able to read any QR code. This is an advantage that alternative solutions lack.

Best Buy was one of the first companies to take advantage of the QR code, using it to amplify the awareness and promotion of their products. They added QR codes to the fact tags, which instantly catered to shoppers’ desire to use their mobile phone in their purchasing decisions. Shoppers use the QR Reader on their smartphone to get detailed information about the product they are considering; they can read consumer reviews, compare benefits and features of similar products, and quickly share information with a friend.

Uses
Best Buy employs just one of the many ways retailers and businesses can use QR codes to market their company, product, or service.

• Depth: QR codes allow you to share a larger amount of information about your product or service. By placing them on advertisements, packaging, or business cards you are able to provide details that you’d otherwise have to limit.
• Discovery: Let QR codes help people discover something. Cities, parks, and museums are placing QR codes throughout their streets, paths, and exhibits allowing people to take self-guided tours.
• Simplicity: It doesn’t have to be complicated. Adapting to the paperless trend, event organizers are now using QR codes to serve as paperless tickets.
• Surprise: Think in new and innovative ways to share your QR code and end message. One of the most innovative ad campaigns I have ever seen using QR codes is the press freedom campaign, The Voice, which was developed by Reporters without Borders.

Marketing your QR Codes
When creating a QR code strategy, be sure to consider each customer touch point. Identify where your target market exists and the best way to communicate with them. Placement is key, so understand your audience’s mindset when they scan your code and how you can tailor your message to meet them where they already are.

Lastly, before you launch any marketing campaign that includes the use of QR codes, make sure to check out this list of issues that could make your campaign fail. 1 out of 4 QR code campaigns fail, and you want to make sure the experience your deliver doesn’t result in an error message.

Do you remember Del.icio.us? Or Delicious as it’s been simplified to today. I’ve been a longtime user now (since ’07). Their simple, but powerful, tagging system immediately became a trusty aid for me to catalog and organize my project management apps, blog inspiration, gift lists, wish lists, wedding, trips, and more. Delicious was a gateway solution for me (and millions of others) to tame the web and cull it according to my personal tastes.

Quickly after joining Delicious, I discovered other, more specialized apps to help me collect & share the web.

First there was Tumblr: a beautiful, engaging, simply designed and very compelling microblogging tool. Links became alive when you could display them as videos, photos or quotes – providing a sort of beauty and depth that Delicious lacked.

Then I found Svpply, a tool to catalog, share and discover things I wanted to buy. I was doing this before on Tumblr, but Svpply makes it so easy to capture the category (clothes, shoes, media, home goods, etc.) and price of a product. And I can follow other users, search their lists, and find new things that match my tastes.

When I recently took a trip to Paris, I signed up for Duffel, a travel app to collect lodging, restaurants, and activities that I was planning for the trip. Only it’s more than a list; coupled with a virtual cork board and Google Map integration, it is a comprehensive dashboard for easily planning your travels.

Then of course there’s Spotify (pre-cursored by Last.fm), which I can use to build playlists that portray my musical personality and share with the world at any moment what I’m listening to.

These are all wonderful tools, and I use them often. But I feel that despite all of these solutions, I’ve lapped back to my original problem: how to organize my corner of the web. My interests, albeit quite a bit more organized now, are still divided at best. And many of them could happily coexist if given the chance.

With the recent rollout of the new Delicious, I had hope. After being sold by Yahoo, Delicious went back into beta to introduce Delicious Stacks – Playlists for the Web. It feels sort of Tumblr-esque. You can create a stack dedicated to a theme, associate photos with your links, and view them in a grid layout. You can share stacks and follow stacks. It’s easy to see how one could turn back to Delicious as a more appealing place to keep your repository.

But there’s too many other specialized traits of Tumblr, Svpply, Spotify and Duffel that I don’t think I could give up. I love Tumblr‘s aesthetic and affinity for fashion; Duffel‘s integration with Google maps is clutch; no one makes it quite as easy to catalog your shopping list as Svpply; and Spotify is a straight up specialist in music. So Delicious Stacks, while I applaud your leap, I’m not sure you’re the answer to streamlining my collections.

When I think of my dream solution, I think of those folks over at Salesforce. They were on to something with their app store – allowing other people, who can satisfy a niche need better, develop that solution and plug it into their platform so their customers can enjoy a single ecosystem. The platform is key.

There’s a “Gang of Four” warring to create this platform. Google owns information, Apple the device, Amazon the cloud, and Facebook the identity. Facebook recently gave us a glimpse of their strategy at the f8 conference: Facebook Timeline. With the promise of “all your apps in one space” it could be just the trick. I’m eagerly awaiting the possibility!

—-

Last.fm
Founded 2002
Last.fm lets you effortlessly keep a record of what you listen to from any player. Based on your taste, Last.fm recommends you more music and concerts. (Last.fm)

del.icio.us
Founded in 2003
A social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. (Wikipedia)

The Facebook
Founded 2004
A social network where users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other personal information. (Wikipedia)

Polyvore
Founded 2007
Polyvore is a tool that helps you clip, style and share digital collages of products you find while shopping.

Tumblr
Founded 2007
A microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog. (Wikipedia)

Spotify
Founded 2008
Spotify is an online music streaming service. Like a growing number of distribution applications, Spotify uses peer-to-peer technology to stream music to its users. (Spotify Forum)

Pinterest
Founded 2009
A vision board-styled social photo sharing website where users can create and manage theme-based image collections. (Wikipedia)

Svpply
Founded 2009
Use Svpply to keep track of the things you want to buy, or browse a personal feed of products from across the web, curated and filtered by the people and stores you find interesting. (Svpply)

Duffel
Founded 2009
Duffel is place to collect your ideas on where to go and what to do while you’re traveling. Comprehensive, centralized trip-planning dashboard – with tools that enable travelers to drag and drop information on lodging, dining and activities from across the Web, get travel inspiration by viewing other members’ public itineraries, and plan group trips involving multiple destination experts. (Duffel)

The New Delicious
Released in 2011
With Delicious you save, stack and share the web. Instantly save your favorite links, collect your discoveries in stacks, share what you find, and dig deeper into your favorite topics. ( Delicious)

Facebook Timeline
Text Released 2011
Timeline is a new way of presenting yourself on Facebook, that dives deep into your past, but also makes your history dynamic while giving apps a new lease on life and works just as well on mobile as it does the desktop. (Gizmodo)

It’s a beautiful example of delightful usability.

With the introduction of “Timeline,” Facebook has re-imagined the social profile. They have come up with a truly innovative design that is unlike any profile page you have ever seen before. For Facebook, a company whose designs are typically very restrained, “Timeline” is a grand departure from the old profile page. It’s a beautiful example of delightful usability.

Over the past year, Facebook has made a series of strategic acquisitions whose labors are beginning to come to fruition. Starting in October of last year, they purchased Drop.io. This April they bought New York-based, Daytum, a data collection and organization startup. And in June and August, Facebook acquired Sofa (a software design firm) and Push Pop Press (an innovative digital publishing platform) respectively.

Through these acquisitions, Facebook has leveraged some of the best design talent in the industry to rethink the social profile into a literal timeline of stories. While Google has been spit-polishing their products, Facebook has been rebuilding theirs from the ground up with an all-star design team. They’ve approached things with a fresh perspective that has resulted in a better experience.

Design is about problem solving. In order to find solutions we have to look at the core problem or goal and be willing to throw out everything we think we know. Avoid skating to where the puck has been. Skate where the puck is going to be.

But there actually may be a third, more exciting value prop to amplifying your list: innovation, or even invention, of products.

The post details the common scenario of proposal writing:

For example, let’s say you have to draft up a contract for a client project, a rather humdrum task. Applying N-dimensional thinking, you decide to transform this task by increasing its overall efficiency (one new dimension), improving the contract template design (a second dimension), and learning a new application that will add value to your general skill set and resumé (a third dimension).

It’s a familiar story, and it’s one that for some of our colleagues, inspired the launch of Tinderbox, a web-based application that helps you create, manage, and track proposals more efficiently.

Task lists just got a little more exciting. What do you get to do today?

Have Passion and Be Curious
If you were lucky to attend Verge this week, you heard Kristian Andersen speak to passion and curiosity. As professional individuals, we sometimes think that we are confined by what is said on paper, and to achieve more we must have more letters to put after our name or more accomplishments to list out. However, we shouldn’t limit ourselves and allow our resume to be the sole indicator of who we are.

“Curiosity is the one determinant for success; it’s the source of innovation.”

As Kristian put it, “What makes people special is where disparate interests intersect.” By having passion about a problem, a solution, or an idea you are more likely to push yourself everyday to reach your goal. By having a general sense of curiosity you are more likely to explore other opportunities and interests. And coupling your passion with curiosity is where you start to stand apart from the crowd.

Ask Good Questions
At this week’s Linking Indy Women, I had the pleasure of hearing Heather Haas discuss what it means to “ask good questions”. If you’ve found yourself in a situation where you don’t have the expertise or experience to back up your ideas or opinions, she simply explained asking good questions is a great way to establish or validate credibility.

“Ask thought provoking questions that can get people to start thinking differently about how to reach the end goal.”

You may not know everything about the subject matter, but you are in the conversation for a reason and chances are there is value you can bring. First, listen to what is being said, identify the strong and weak elements, and think holistically about the entire situation. Then begin asking thought provoking questions. These questions should get others to think differently about the subject or see it in a way they haven’t before. In helping others see something in a new light you easily build credibility behind your name. Your ideas, viewpoints, and opinions have become valuable to them.

Pull Don’t Push
Asking questions to establish credibility, in turn, can open up an invitation for you to talk about you. Without it, Haas explained, people are less likely to invest in what you have to say. Only after you’ve proven your ability to understand their problem, do you earn the right to talk about you. So rather than jumping in with a “me-first” mentality, listen, ask, and earn your invitation to talk about yourself. It’s simply creating a pull and not a push conversation. Your chance of people investing in what you’re offering is significantly higher once you have established credibility.

No matter where you are in your career path we have all hit that roadblock where we’ve had to prove our abilities and ourselves before we could continue on. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what advice might you have or have been given when building credibility behind your name.

If you are a true Hoosier then you couldn’t be more excited about Indy’s opportunity to host the 2012 Super Bowl. You may be a bit worried if you’re a local about where you can watch the game, how you’ll get around, or what events to attend, but have no fear the 2012 Super Bowl Host Committee is taking care of everything!

This will be the most compact, connected, and convenient Super Bowl in history.

Indianapolis is hosting the most urban Super Bowl to date, and with that comes its advantages and disadvantages. On June 29th, Dianna Boyce the Communications Director of the 2012 Super Bowl Host Committee was joined by Scott Dorsey, Co-Founder and CEO of ExactTarget and Taulbee Jackson, CEO of Raidious, to share some insights on their communication strategy for this year’s Big Game.

They plan to make it about more than just a game. They plan to make it an experience and here is how:

Super Service
Indy is already known for its Midwestern lifestyle and hospitality which will make visitors feel right at home in our city. But hosting a Super Bowl is more than just being hospitable – it’s about creating magic. As Dorsey explained, having attended a few Super Bowls before, “you walk off the plane in anticipation to be greeted by banners, signs, excitement, and confetti falling from the sky, but it isn’t always like that.”

The Host Committee made it clear, it will be like that this year! Boyce even took note of the confetti idea…ha!

They have organized a training program called “Super Service” for Indy’s hotels, restaurants, cab drivers, and many others in the hospitality sector that will be working during those weeks, in an effort to unify the city and ensure our guests are delightfully welcomed.

Fans First
“Fans First” has been dubbed as this year’s theme. After last year’s experience in Dallas the NFL realized “bigger isn’t always better” and Indy’s commitment to engagement and communication will prove them right. By using various channels such as email, mobile, and social Indy has built a foundation for providing information in a fast and effective way.

Over the course of the next few months there will be Twitter hash tags designated to various topics you’ll want to follow while here, such as: where to park, where to eat, what streets are closed, what events are going on, etc.

Raidious plans to shut down their office two weeks prior to the game to be setup as the social media command center. They will be sending out mobile updates on navigating the city and events, answering your questions via Twitter and Facebook, and blogging about anything and everything that will be going on.

Real Time Connectivity
We’ve all been at an event somewhere in the world where it’s overwhelming trying to get around or even know where to go. You get the feeling that you have to know somebody to get in somewhere or find out later that you missed something you would have loved to go to. Not to mention the difficulty of getting enough service on your phone to try and find the answer to any of those questions.

It’s not too good to be true, and this is just ONE example of how Indy is doing it better. The Host Committee is working with the City of Indianapolis and multiple mobile service providers to increase the bandwidth and cell coverage in Indy during the big game and the weeks prior to it. You’ll be able to call a friend, map directions, post updates, share photos, and actually communicate in real time!

Some may be skeptical of Indy’s ability to manage such an event, but they shouldn’t be. This year’s 2012 Super Bowl Host Committee boasts some of the most innovative minds out there. Trust me they have thought of it all. Various companies, organizations, and individuals are volunteering their time and services to make this a success.

How are you getting involved?

Today’s company founders only seem to be getting younger, seemingly with fewer traditional qualifications (bachelor’s degrees and MBAs). A phenomena that’s being supported by the likes of Peter Theil (who believes we’re in a bubble – a higher education one, that is) and his 20 Under 20 Fellowship, which is awarding $100,000 grants to top talent “kids” who stop out of school. He’s offering them an alternative to a rules driven, education machine – and putting them into life, where they’ll learn entrepreneurship and build tomorrow’s technology companies.

Tomorrow’s companies are disruptive, and don’t wait for the world to tell them what it needs. Rather, they are “defining the world’s appetite,” as Roger Rosenblatt shares in his book Unless it Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing:

“For your [work] to be great—I mean great, not clever, or even brilliant, or most misleading of all, beautiful—it must be useful to the world. And for that to happen you must form an opinion of the world…. How can you know what is useful to the world? The world will not tell you. The world will merely let you know what it wants, which changes from moment to moment, and is nearly always cockeyed. You cannot allow yourself to be directed by its tastes. When a [person] wonders, “Will it sell?” he is lost, not because he is looking to make an extra buck or two, but rather because, by dint of asking the question in the first place, he has oriented himself toward the expectations of others. The world is not a focus group. The world is an appetite waiting to be defined. The greatest love you can show it is to create what it needs, which means you must know that yourself.”

So how will we know if Theil’s fellows are creating technology that is useful? What will make one startup stand out from the others? Who will become the next member in a Gang of Four? At the recent D9 Conference, Marc Andreessen describes what he looks for as an investor:

It’s really rare for people to have a successful start-up in this industry without a breakthrough product. I’ll take it a step further. It has to be a radical product. It has to be something where, when people look at it, at first they say, “I don’t get it, I don’t understand it. I think it’s too weird, I think it’s too unusual.” One of our key things as investors is we always look for the thing that people are laughing at and that’s growing like a weed.

It’s the story of Apple’s iPod and Ford’s Model T car. It’s the killer app and the disruptive technology. And it’s the radical – ideas that look back on our roots to inform forward thinking.

“When Everybody Zigs, Zag”.

As the book describes, the concept of zagging is often a bit harder than you may expect. Yet, over the weekend I found a great example of a company that has managed to zag with excellence. While in the checkout line at the grocery store I overheard the cashier and bag boy commenting on one of my purchases:

Cashier: “Check out this drunken bar code!”
Bag Boy: “Cool I’ve never seen anything like it!”
Cashier: “Yeah they have designed something you would have never thought could be designed.”

They were talking about how different the Skinny Cow bar code looked compared to the countless other bar codes they’ve scanned.

I have to admit, I have never given much thought to the design of a bar code until their conversation. I’ve always assumed they had to appear a certain way in order to be accurately read by scanners. We’ve all been there…frustrated at a self-checkout station with a bar code that won’t scan. I would have thought a designed version would cause the same problem, but after a bit of research I found otherwise.

Since 2005 Design Bar Code has been reinventing the traditional bar code design for many Japanese brands. Today they have partnered with PACARC, LLC to make Design Bar code available to many American brands.

Design Barcode’s technology allows them manipulate traditional bar codes into works of art, while still complying with bar code standards so all products are easily read by scanners. Through their innovative thinking, Design Bar Code has started a revolution in what to consider in a package design.

Skinny Cow had taken notice to the details and their barcode is just another way for them to express their cheeky brand. After all, design is in the details.

The Bar Code Revolution
Here are a few examples of quirky barcodes that have been created by Design Barcode.

Since my first post on Fashion and Tech, Gilt Groupe raised an additional $138 million in financing, for a total of $221 million, and commands a present valuation near $1 billion. The “internet gold rush of the east” is official, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, as “would-be entrepreneurs ditch Wall Street or Madison Avenue careers to set up companies in New York-centric industries such as fashion, retail, finance and media.” You may have heard of other promising young startups from New York, too: Foursquare, Tumblr, SecondMarket, and up and comers Warby Parker, Etsy, GroupMe, and Kickstarter.

The phrase “New York-centric industries such as fashion, retail, finance and media” caught me, particularly as Indy appears to be redefining what sort of industries are central to our own city. As part of its commitment to advance new business and maintain existing businesses, Develop Indy is paying attention to our own high growth IT startups, and perhaps more surprisingly, has recognized fashion and food as emerging industries.

As Indy throttles forward, we are faced head-on with the need to retain native talent, and perhaps more importantly, import new talent. An integral element of a modern employer’s allure is the lifestyle and culture of the surrounding city. Today’s talent isn’t just interested in a good wage; they are just as concerned about the community they are plugging into, inside and out of the office. A recent Indy Star article by Erika Smith corroborates just that:

“Gen Y’ers gravitate toward neighborhoods where they can walk or bike to work, the grocery store, bars and coffee shops…Sharing also is important to them. So is being kind to the environment…After all, we want to have a life, not just a job.”

The resurgence of food as a lifestyle, not just a necessity, is a natural step for our city, so rich in agriculture history and resources. We have amazing access to fresh, local ingredients, and world-class chefs leading the charge, showing us how to fully enjoy Indiana produce. And with the ever quickening rate of new concept restaurants, food trucks, markets, and even farms, the entrepreneurial energy of this (re)emerging industry is alive and well.

However, fashion seems to be something a little harder for us to try on. In fact, Hoosiers are often the brunt of sartorial jokes. So how do we grow this industry? The freshly minted Indianapolis Fashion Collective is trying to do exactly that, as they work to “to Unite, Empower, Showcase, and Grow the Indianapolis area fashion industry through collaboration, education, and awareness… exploring Indy as a fashion destination; marketing and events; mentoring and funding new talent; procuring manufacturing and sourcing for our members and Indianapolis as a whole; and partnerships with the community and other fashion-related businesses.”

As Indy looks at our own strengths, we realize that out of the gate our designers may not be recognized at next year’s CFDA Awards, and we may never have New York’s Garment District. What we do have, is excellence in distribution & logistics and a strong manufacturing base. As shopping online increases, and new store models like Gilt Groupe and Rent the Runway pop up, Indianapolis has a strong bid to handle their logistics: experienced talent, comprehensive & central transportation infrastructure and favorable sales tax structure (that’s how we gained a third center for Amazon). I also think we can look to our IT industry to sweep up the fledgling fashion community in its momentum, especially as the intersection of fashion & tech start to form real pathways. A couple of companies already in this space include: iGoDigital, with its suite of personalization & recommendation tools that allow the in-store experience to be replicated online; and Fifth Gear, who offers pick/pack/ship operations for a variety of industries, including fashion & retail, and ecommerce solutions as well.

As we look at improving our city’s lifestyle through food and fashion, and continue to grow information technology – I look forward to the ideas that abound from cross-pollinating these industries and developing new lifestyle technologies.

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