Taking a whole new angle on internet entrepreneurship, Freelancer.comprovides a forum for freelancers to connect with small businesses, capitalizing on peoples’ need for freelancer services. The website proudly claims the status of “world’s largest freelancing, outsourcing and crowdsourcing marketplace for small business.” With over 7,500,000 employers networking on their site and with over 4,500,000 projects posted since 2004, they certainly seem fit to make such a claim.

So how does it work? Whether you’re a small upstart, an already established small business, or a full-fledged company, you can upload design projects to Freelancer.com, then compare and consider bids from freelancers interested in being hired. You don’t pay anything until you find a find a product with which you are 100% satisfied. If you’re an aspiring freelancer, all you have to do to find work is sign up for free and browse the project listings!

The ease of this network is really what makes it a beautiful idea—it guarantees quality for the professionals seeking help, and offers a plentitude of easy opportunities to freelancers looking for hire.

How many times have you realized, after the fact, that you had a discount at that store you just left, that you could have saved money on entrance tickets to that last museum you visited, or that you had a membership loyalty card to that retail store, but forgot all about it in the chaos of trying to find your credit card? And who can keep track of all the membership bonuses and perks from all of their clubs and associations?

Mobile app and web service Larky offers a solution to this dilemma, organizing all of these rewards systems, so that you can get the most out of your memberships and can capitalize on as many savings as possible. Currently, Larky only has an iPhone app available, however their Android app is promised as forthcoming. The app service serves not only as a means of organizing all your rewards programs on its “perks dashboard,” but also as an alert system, alerting users when they are near potential savings and membership bonuses and discounts.

This service is obviously targeting a pain felt by the majority of frequent buyers and cuts right to the heart of loyalty programs’ weaknesses. With this system at our fingertips, not only will consumers be better off and organized, but merchants will be able to offer stronger loyalty programs, since customers will be better assured of the benefits.

As the popularity of the smartphone seems to have swallowed the nation, the mashup of medical services and smartphone technology is becoming more and more plausible. BioAid, a UK-based company, offers one such service in providing a hearing aid smartphone application. The team has developed a system by which users can configure the app to one of 6 possible settings, according to their individual condition. The phone takes in surrounding sounds via the built-in microphone, and then plays it back to the in real-time through the loudspeaker or headphones. This extremely cost-effective alternative to the traditional hearing aid is also unique in its ability not only to amplify the small sounds, but also to mute the extremely loud noises that tend to plague the hearing-impaired population.

Professor Ray Meddis, formerly a professor of psychology at the University of Essex, is part of the BioAid development team. Here he explains the product in more detail:

Besides offering improvement of life for the hearing-impaired, this app also signals a new age of medical technology: cheaper, easier, and increasingly user-friendly.

As we distractedly watch the popularity of smartphone apps like Instagram skyrocket, we may be missing the exponential growth of an even more staggering phenomenon: world hunger. However, thanks to El Salvadorian-based NGO Manos Unidas, the two seemingly unrelated phenomena might soon become much more closely linked. A new app called FoodShareFilter seeks not only to raise awareness of, but also to raise funds to fight epidemic of world hunger, by capitalizing on the recent popularity of food posts on instagram.

Users can download this separate app, use it to filter a picture of their most recent culinary discovery, and then transfer the filtered photo to be filtered & uploaded via instagram, the same way one usually would. FoodShareFilter adds a message to the photo reading, “This photo helps millions of people to avoid starvation” in Spanish, along with the hashtag #FoodShareFilter.

While the developer does not profit from the sale of the app, users do pay a minimal fee for the app of just over $1, which goes directly to prevention of world hunger.

This unique solution to an awareness and fundraising dilemma poses exciting possibilities for other NGOs and social causes. Blogger Murtaza Patel poses an intriguing question: how can other charities capitalize monetarily on the current online sharing fad?

(This logo reads, in Spanish, “#FoodShareFilter: If you’re going to share your food, share it for real.” )

A unique spin on customer loyalty & reward programs, Perk is a new web browser that rewards web users for searching, browsing, shopping and sharing online. Users can earn points by doing any of these things, which are then channeled into an account with any of the browser’s participating partners. “Points earned by users can easily be converted to gift cards, airline miles, donations for nonprofits, and more,” says Springwise blogger, Katherine Noyes. The browser’s current brand partners are Ace Hardware, Dockers, Walgreens and Nordstrom.

This innovative, Google Chrome-based browser is currently available for Mac OS X 10.6 and later and for Windows XP 7 and later. With a browser like this, the real question is: why would we ever use Internet Explorer ever again?

In an interview with the editors of Springwise, innovator Tomonori Kagaya offered a couple pieces of insight and advice for the aspiring Entrepreneur.
When asked about his regular habits, Neurowear founder Kagaya hinted at the foundational importance of novelty in the process of innovation. To unwind, he visits new cities and new restaurants. To garner inspiration and motivation, Kagaya suggests the following: “Encounters with new experiences. I’m always looking for a new experience – that makes me excited.” The secret to being a successful entrepreneur is coming up with a new, innovative concept. Differentiation is key.

Kagaya confessed that the most frustrating part of the innovation process was having to keep on schedule. He also expressed regret at not having taken time to gather more user data. However, that oversight at the beginning of the process does not seem to be dissuading this brilliant mind from pushing forward. Kagaya expresses a hope for a huge increase in number of users, and mentions their plans to expand their Neuro-music database.

If his future innovations are anything like the ones he currently has out on the market, I would say we can expect some exciting new things from Tomonori Kagaya.

How many times have we wished that we could just read someone else’s mind, to understand what they cannot, or will not, verbally express to us? Human beings are curious creatures, eager to know and discover that which is currently—and maybe will always be—out of reach. Unfortunately, no innovator has stumbled upon a practical solution to human mindreading. But what if the clothing we wore could read our minds?

Thanks to Japanese visionary Tomonori Kagaya, this is now an actual possibility. Neurowear, Kagaya’s Tokyo-based company, offers a line of innovative products designed to respond to the wearer’s emotions and thoughts. For example, one of Neurowear’s first innovations was a pair of novelty cat ears that would twitch according to the wearer’s mood.

Kagaya’s most recent and brilliant innovation is Mico, a pair of headphones that play music based on the wearer’s thoughts and emotions—an accessory that reads and responds to mental processes even before the wearer can express it himself. This introduces an entirely new level to musical discovery. How many times have we wished for just the right mix of melody, mood, and lyrical composition to match our current disposition? While we cannot always find that tune even in our perusal of the extensive musical collections that we have at our fingertips (e.g. Pandora, Spotify, Itunes, etc.), Mico is designed to find and introduce the perfect song to us, eliminating the need for painstaking search.

“If we don’t know the title, artist name, genre, then how can we find the song? We need another approach. Don’t go searching for music, let music find you – that must be a new experience. So we made Mico.” –Tomonori Kagaya