Online print galleries collate and/or curate the works of interesting artists and graphic designers. They fulfill the role of traditional galleries but can also bring new formats, new sensibilities and interesting new collaborations to the table.

Here are three of our favourites:

The Branded Collaboration:
Urban Outfitters x Society6

Retail clothing brand Urban Outfitters have partnered with international arts community Society6 to launch Print Shop.

Alongside some exclusive works, the majority of the designs are chosen from Society6′s archives and then delivered as prints, laptop skins or iPhone/iPod skins – with Society6 handling all the shipping.

By combining mass market reach with the authenticity / individuality of artist-designed products, both parties stand to do well from this collaboration.

[Note: Society6 are a great example in themselves - seeking out exciting collaborations for their community of artists. Look out for a followup post on this interesting model.]

Site: www.printshop.urbanoutfitters.com

The Growing Community Gallery:
Redbubble

Redbubble is less curated and more collated. Artists, designers and photographers can upload and exhibit their works, and sell framed prints, posters, canvas prints, t-shirts, greetings cards and calendars based on those works.

Think funky gallery with a print-on-demand gift shop attached.

Simply supply the digital files and set your pricing – and Redbubble handles the manufacturing, shipping and customer service issues for a flat rate per item. And it seems to be working as they’ve shipped over 350,000 items in three years.

For Redbubble, success comes note only from the neat business model, but also in attracting such a high-calibre community of artists.

Site: www.redbubble.com

The Artisan Collection:
Keep Calm Gallery

And where Redbubble is operating at scale, the Keep Calm Gallery actually started as an outlet for the founders’ own works.

Launched by Lucas Lepola and Hayley Thwaites from their university halls, the site focuses on typography-led screen printing with a nod towards an ‘English heritage’ aesthetic. Moving beyond their own designs, they now work with a select group of artists, designers and print makers – selling high-quality artistic prints and a small collection of homewares, often in limited runs.

By focusing on artisan-quality production and limited edition appeal, Lucas and Hayley have created an exciting niche business.

Site: www.keepcalmgallery.com

What floats your boat?

If you’re an artist, there are more avenues than ever for getting your work sold.

And if you’re an artistically minded entrepreneur, there are more artists than ever for you to work with to create an interesting business – whether that’s limited edition fine art prints or mass-market iPod skins.

Which of these three models most appeals to you?

Pic: John Picken

Happy St Patrick’s Day

In celebration of St Patrick’s Day, all this week we’re featuring innovative businesses and entrepreneurs from the island of Ireland.

Of course, over the last year we’ve covered more than a few Irish businesses – so I thought it’d be worth rounding up some of our favourites from the last 12 months as featured here.

Enjoy.

Learning Pool

Learning Pool, the public sector e-learning company, has captured a sizable share of the online learning market in the UK public sector. Of particular interest is their shared resource pool which cuts costs, reduces development times and avoids the needless duplication that plagues the public sector.

Edun Live

Founded by Ali Hewson and U2 favorite Bono, Edun Live sells organic and cotton t-shirts that are made ‘in Africa by Africans’ using a ‘grew to sew’ model.

Catwalk Genius

Catwalk Genius is both online retailer and a way for consumers to back up and coming designers by buying shares in their new collections – a bit like SellABand but for dresses not albums.

Kidspotter

Kidspotter works with amusement parks, shopping centres and other high footfall locations to provide location aware tech to keep an eye on wandering youngsters.

MatchMedia

When we covered them last year, Belfast-based Match Media were developing a ‘percentage and prediction engine’ (PPE) that uses 3rd party betting information to provide a real-time visual representation of the likely outcome of an event. They’ve since added two new products, Froggi Feet (a children’s activity brand) and Appograph (a kind of autograph book for the iPhone).

Rory’s Story Cubes

Rory’s Story Cubes are a set of dice featuring an array of images designed to be used in a kind of word association – helping anyone from school kids to business people brainstorm and tell their stories. We covered them after they launched their iPhone version which has won major plaudits.

Auld Sod Company

Last year’s St Patrick’s Day post, the Auld Sod Export Company sell ‘official Irish dirt’ to (mainly) Irish ex-pats and sentimental Irish-Americans.

Weddingdates.ie, HolidayHomeIreland, Lookaly

A handful of directory and listings sites from Ireland that we featured earlier this year.

RevaHealth

We also included RevaHealth in that same roundup but this site stands out on its own as one of the world’s largest niche directory sites – focused exclusively on private health clinics. Definitely one to watch.

The huge growth of micro-blogging has inevitably led to a host of businesses based on similar ideas.

Some, like Yammer (a private Twitter-like service for use within organisations) have tweaked the idea for niche audiences; while others like FourSquare and Gowalla, have moved towards mobile ‘check in’ applications that let people know what you’re up to and where.

Live events too, have proven an inspiration for many micro-blogging based ideas. Here are a few favourites:

Fantator – Twitter’s Sporty Cousin

Recently launched London-based startup, Fantator, is a micro blogging service that invites users to provide play by play updates (“Fantate”) on live sporting events – these updates are then delivered in a Twitter-like stream that friends can follow.

The founder, Peter Nwankwo, envisages it as a way for fans to get access to untelevised sporting events:

“With some sports matches lacking television and radio coverage which is accessible to millions of sports fans, we hope this joint effort from Fantators around the world will allow fans to stay in the loop”.

But the real benefit might simply be in the added value of the back channel comments – allowing friends to discuss live events (and ones that they’re watching on TV) in real time.

HotPotato – Social Networking for Events

The idea is quite similar in some ways to HotPotato – the ‘social media for events’ startup we profiled recently – that allows users to find events and provide real time commentary.

FestBuzz and HashDash

It’s also not a world away from FestBuzz, the Twitter aggregator for Edinburgh festivals which received some initial funding from 4iP (the public service new media investment fund run by UK TV company Channel 4). In fact, 4iP also funded HashDash who create branded Twitter clients for TV shows, allowing fans to discuss their shows to their heart’s content.

FanPulse – Trash Talking on Your iPhone

We also like the look of FanPulse, an iPhone application that lets you check in to sporting events that you’re watching (live or on TV), “trash-talk” with friends throughout, check out what they’re watching and get live updates for a host of professional sporting leagues and events.

I could go on …

What’s still unanswered is whether users will choose to migrate to event-specific sites rather than form their own little ad hoc groups on Twitter.

A quick Twitter search for “superbowl” gives you more tweets about Sunday’s game than you could ever hope to read. The more Twitter-savvy could easily agree a hashtag with friends or even start a Twitter list to create their own back channel.

A greater opportunity might lie in the data itself.

Rather than simply trying to move the conversation from one site to another, some startups are focused on the enormous amount of data micro-blogging creates. And finding ingenious ways to use it.

FestBuzz, for example, scours Twitter for comments about the Edinburgh festival and then applies what it calls a “unique sen­ti­ment clas­si­fi­ca­tion engine to assign a star rat­ing to a show based on the tweets about it”.

That aggregated content is used to create a crowdsourced ratings site against which advertising is sold. Perhaps more interestingly, they’re also leveraging their technology by charging for access to their API.

In the world of Twitter-like and Twitter-inspired services for events, the real opportunity might lie in the listening rather than the tweeting.

Organising the Internet has been a common goal for countless online ventures – from local business directories to Google. But while generalist sites often struggle to compete with the big boys, niche directory websites frequently see much better results by serving a previously unmet need.

Here are a few we like with a distinctly Irish feel:

WeddingDates.ie lets Irish couples narrow down their list of potential venues by checking availability live on the site. This makes a lot of sense – most couples will already have a date in mind, so phoning every venue in the phonebook or traditional directory to ask the same question would be a bit of a pain.

Results pages show ‘detailed hotel descriptions, large format photos, and downloadable brochures and menus’. Revenues come via wedding suppliers (bands, florists, dress designers) advertising and enhanced (paid) listing options for venues.

Indeed wedding suppliers provide the topic for many successful directory sites. FindaBand.ie, for example, showcase up and coming Irish acts to people ‘looking for a band for their wedding, birthday party, corporate event or pub gig’.

Targeting the tourism market is another common theme. HolidayHomeIreland.com is a recent new entry from a Derry-based teacher turned entrepreneur, building on the success of his DonegalCottageHolidays.com website which lists over 500 privately owned cottages and holiday apartments to rent.

As a bit of a twist on the simple directory / search site, Belfast-based Lookaly highlights ‘the best places in Northern Ireland’ based on reviews from users. A slick look and simple to use funtionality is helping this site to grow quickly.

Staying on the Irish theme but taking a bit of a jump in scale, RevaHealth.com (founded by Irish entrepreneur Caelen King) is the world’s largest directory/search engine for dental and cosmetic surgery – listing over 100,000 clinics in around 100 different countries.

Finally,  Pitchup.com is our one non-Irish entrant (simply because I just read about it this morning) but it does list over 5,000 campgrounds and caravan sites in the UK and Ireland. The site was launched in Summer 2009 – capitalising on the growing trend towards ‘staycations’ and fuelled by credit-crunched holiday makers looking for economical alternatives to overseas travel.

The featured-packed search function is simple to use, reader reviews add context and in a nice twist they’ve teamed up with another directory business, the Good Pub Guide, to highlight the best pubs near each campground or park. It appears that revenues come solely through advertising at present but becoming a big player in this niche market will no doubt lead to plenty of other opportunities.

What’s Your Niche?

In fact, there’s very little you can’t search for through a variety of directory sites – the key to success here seems to be in the execution rather than the idea. That said, niche is the order of the day – finding yours could be as easy as Googling ‘find an x in x’ and seeing if it’s already been done.

Feel free to add your own favourite niche directories and search engines (Irish or otherwise) in the comments below.

[Update: The guys from RevaHealth got a mention on Springwise here - and they seemed to think the same, "there are still niche areas where consumers will welcome a comprehensive, accessible directory with reviews"]

For better or worse, much of the buzz around leveraging the wisdom of the crowds has been around open source efforts like Linux, customer-driven sites like MyStarbucksIdea, and incentivized commercial innovation efforts like InnoCentive, Idea Connection, and the Cisco iPrize.

Less noise has been made around crowdsourcing efforts for the greater good that seek to change our world for the better.

People may be well aware of efforts such as these:

• The Xprize Foundation, which has already awarded a $10 million prize to the first private team to launch a rocket into space. The first Xprize ignited a $1 Billion private space industry and the minds of millions of children in the process. The foundation now has four new public challenges – the Google Lunar Xprize, the Progressive Automotive Xprize (100 mpg cars), the Archon Xprize for Genomics (fast genome sequencing), and the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.
• The Freedom Prize Foundation will be awarding over $4 Million in Freedom Prizes to inspire Industry, Schools, Government, Military, and Communities to significantly reduce their use of oil, thereby promoting America’s national security, economic prosperity and health. The foundation is focused on inspiring what can be done today to start getting the United States off oil.

But there are also lesser-known organizations like these:

• Ashoka’s Changemakers is a community of action where people can collaborate on solutions to world problems. The community provides the platform for people to attack projects one idea at a time as they attempt to solve the world’s most pressing social problems.
• philOptima is a site focused on connecting researchers with grant makers. They work primarily in education, health, public safety, governmental oversight, and the environment.
• my health innovation is a newcomer similar to MyStarbucksIdea, but focused on collecting innovative health care ideas and getting hospitals, caregivers and patients to use them. They want to make the experience of health care as close to perfect as possible.

Does ‘For Good’ Crowdsourced Innovation Work?

Proof that it does has just arrived in the form of the renewal of a partnership between the Rockefeller Foundation and InnoCentive to link non-profit organizations to more than 175,000 world-class scientific thinkers to help develop solutions for their work on behalf of the world’s most poor and vulnerable populations. The partnership was launched in 2006, and so far the two organizations have run ten challenges, resulting in an astonishing 80 percent success rate.

Non-profits can apply, through the Rockefeller Foundation, to place their organization’s scientific or technological Challenges on InnoCentive’s Website. The Rockefeller Foundation will choose the proposal that best fits its needs and fund the award given to the Solver using a grant.

Will this proven success inspire more scientists, non-profits, and companies to participate in open innovation for the greater good?

One can only hope.

About the Author: Braden Kelley, Founder of Business Strategy Innovation and author of Blogging Innovation, has been advising companies on how to increase their revenue and cut their costs since 1996. He has maximized profits for companies in Japan, Germany, England, and the United States.

We all know that print media is suffering. Magazines and, in particular, newspapers are cutting jobs and shutting up shop due to declining ad revenues and the increasing importance of the web.

Needless to say this is making a lot of journalists more than a little worried. But it should also be worrying anyone (this site included) that sees unbiased, fact-based journalism as a vital part of a healthy society.

Journalism Needs New Business Models

In short, we need to start finding new ways to pay for journalism. And although many of the ‘traditional’ media’s woes can be traced back to the web, the web may also be part of the solution.

Not only are established media organisations investing more heavily in online media (both web-native content and online versions of print publications) and finding new ways to generate revenues from them, but new business models are also starting to emerge that may change the way journalism works.

We’ve picked out three new business models (some primarily online, some off) which we feel bring something interesting to the table:

• new startup True/Slant,
• philanthropy-funded Propublica
• and the community-funded model of Spot.us.

True/Slant: Journalists as Micro Publishers

Run by a former news editor from America Online, the site has launched with 65 journalists reporting on everything from business to politics to culture and sports.

Although it relies primarily on a traditional advertising-funded model, True/Slant has introduced two interesting elements which help set it apart. Firstly, each contributing journalist is paid only a modest salary – their real earnings potential comes from a share of the advertising sold within their own dedicated section of the website.

The better the journos get at attracting and fostering a community around their content, the more they will earn. Although this revenue share model is fairly common online, it is more usually applied to user generated content rather than professional contributors.

Perhaps more contentiously, True/Slant is also offering advertisers the opportunity to maintain their own blog-based sections within the site in a cross between advertorial and custom publishing. For some, this may cross a few journalistic boundaries but with the growing interest in custom publishing it will likely appeal to progressive advertisers.

Propublica: Investigative Journalism for the Public Good

Investigative journalism is time consuming, costly and often speculative. As such, it’s no wonder that many news organisations see it as a luxury. Indeed, Propublica quotes the following study on their website:

“a 2005 survey by Arizona State University of the 100 largest U.S. daily newspapers showed that 37% had no full-time investigative reporters, a majority had two or fewer such reporters, and only 10% had four or more.”

Unfortunately, it is exactly this kind of investigative journalism that is arguably the most beneficial to society. By creating an independent newsroom – employing over 30 full-time investigative journalists – Propublica addresses this issue head on. What’s more, it’s fully-funded through philanthropic contributions.

The fruits of their labors are made available, for free, for publication by existing media organisations and for public consumption via their website.

(See also an interesting – if undeveloped – take on the idea from a dozen UK journalists under the less catchy title The Foundation for Investigative Reporting)

Spot.us: Investigative Journalism for Hire

Spot.us takes perhaps, the most direct approach. The site describes itself as an open source project, to pioneer “community funded reporting.”

In practice that means that the public can contribute ‘tips’ for stories that they’d like to see covered. Journalists then pitch their story ideas to the Spot.us community who can then choose to fund these stories directly. The final piece is either bought by an existing news organisation (at which point any donations are returned) or published under a Creative Commons license.

What’s the Answer?

Ultimately the future of journalism (both on and offline) will probably blend bits and pieces of numerous business models – with every publisher utilising it’s own unique combination of advertising, sponsorship, paid for content, ‘freemium’ content, micropayments, joint venture deals and even ecommerce.

Whether or not this will be sufficient to maintain the news business in its current format is unclear (but unlikely).

A new report/guide issued today by UK home business website Enterprise Nation, suggests a growing trend towards people starting businesses in their spare time while keeping hold of their day jobs. (Disclosure: We helped with a few of the short profiles included in the guide.)

They’ve given the trend the rather catchy title, “Working 5-9″ and have even commissioned a new version of the Dolly Parton classic to accompany the launch of the guide.

Make sure you download the full Working 5-9 Guide but as a little sneak peek, here’s a handful of the 5-9 business ideas profiled in the guide:

Catering

Working part time in a call centre might not be Lynne Tanner’s dream job but it’s helping the Leicester-based entrepreneur get her start-up catering and catering supplies business off the ground.

Personal Services

Alongside husband and fellow ‘5 to 9er’ Tom, Head of Philosophy Nicola Kelsall, runs Spiralling – selling meditation CDs, meditation aids and delivering sound therapy treatments.

Online Magazine

Brian started SciFind.co.uk back in 1999 as a hobby. Putting what he has learned to good use, Brian now runs SciFind, and an associated web design and marketing business, full time.

Professional Services

Working as a marketing director helped highlight Marivic’s love of PR – something she hopes to build on in her own business. “It’s amazing how hard you push yourself when you know that, if done properly, it can be a smooth transition.”

Childrens’ Books

Scottish mum and History teacher, Hannah Young is not only a budding children’s author but is also planning the launch of an online forum for mothers.

Music Business

Mark started Burden Music, which provides support services and tuition for bands and musicians, in 2007 – while still working 4 days a week in a local taxi office.

Extreme Sports

ExtremeSponsors.com, an online community that acts as the link between talented extreme sports athletes and companies within the industry – it was started by a full time IT manager.

Site: www.enterprisenation.com

Recruitment companies tend to fall into a few categories. There are the big agencies that cover just about every job type going. There are niche agencies that specialize in particular industries and job types (say IT recruitment or construction).

Then there are the much smaller group of businesses that match particular types of candidates with job opportunities. And it’s this third group that are delivering some innovative niche concepts.

Forties People

A while ago we wrote about an idea for a recruitment agency specializing in placing senior citizens in jobs. While not quite that far down the road, London-based agency Forties People do pretty much what their name suggests.

The company prides itself on its ‘anti ageist’ policies and ethos – and work with employers who take a similar stance. By focusing on providing mature candidates, the company has carved out a clear niche with both employer and candidate clients.

nuResume

There are something like 18 million college students in America and while most employment agencies will have a few jobs suitable for students, there are very few that specialize in finding them work.

NuResume is billed as the ‘first student resume network’. The site allows students to create online multimedia resumes and apply for jobs and internships as posted by employers. There are also an abundance of social networking tools built into the site to allow students to interact with each other, form clubs etc… The site is free for all involved.

Babajob

India-based site Babajob aims to connect employers and potential employees – especially those in the informal sector – through social connections developed on their sister social networking site Babalife. Not only do they facilitate connections but actually reward them as well.

“Let’s say Rajesh is looking for a cook. He creates a posting on babajob.com and adds a few people he knows on babalife.com. Now let’s assume that he ultimately decides to hire his uncle’s driver’s sister. Assuming all these folks are on babalife.com, then both Rajesh’s uncle and his driver, will earn 100R (~$2.5).”

For those without the access to maintain their own profiles on the sites, their accounts can be managed by a ‘mentor’ who can be a friend, a cyber cafe owner or even an NGO. In short, babjob is leveraging the social web to help even the lowest paid members of the community find employment.

More Niche Recruitment Ideas

Here are a few niche recruitment and employment ideas we’d like to see:

1. Jobs for Kids – An agency or website that finds after school and weekend jobs for kids – fostering a positive approach to employment and hard work and ensuring legislation and minimum pay rates are adhered to.
2. Bi-Lingual – A site for job seekers who are fluent in multiple languages, finding them jobs in translation services, customer service, tourism etc…
3. Working Mothers (and Fathers) – Focused on finding suitable employment for full time parents keen to work around their other commitments.

Let us know if you spot any businesses like these (or if you run one) and we’ll make sure to add them here. If you have any other unique ideas, please feel free to add them in the comments below.

Pic: Flickr