Coming up with new ideas by yourself is hard. Coming up with new ideas that people like is even harder. It takes time, research, and lots and lots of money. Solution: let the general population do it for you. Crowdsourcing is the hottest new thing in marketing. It lets potentially millions of people give you their input on the latest trends and innovative ideas. It also builds excitement around your product and business. As an extra bonus, the only thing you have to pay for is any prizes awarded to the best ideas, if you choose to award prizes at all.

Many business have opted for crowdsourcing as a way to get the best possible product. Wrangler has a contest to design the best new blue jeans. Brisk crowdsources the designs for their limited edition cans. Even the US army has taken advantage of this unique strategy by introducing a contest to design the best combat support vehicle.

In an age where people want to share their opinion on anything and everything on the internet, crowdsourcing is an inexpensive and easy way to tap into the potential of the masses.

The world’s biggest car manufacturer and software company plan to work together to create positive synergism. Collectively they are looking to invest a total of $1 billion dollars to develop an in car electronics system to allow Toyota’s battery-powered vehicles to run more efficiently.

Toyota is also looking to improve data, navigation, in car entertainment, multi media and most importantly energy usage. The companies are supposed to be finished by 2012 and have the system implemented in a series of electric and hybrid cars. This will improve the companies’ image with consumers due to their effort to push for more energy efficient cars. The collaborative news comes at a perfect time, considering the recent spike in oil prices. Now when people are thinking about purchasing a new vehicle, miles per gallon will be an even greater deciding issue. By Toyota using the best software company, it will distinguish themselves from all other competitors.

  The internet is a completely new phenomenon.  This is a place where collaboration and competition coexist.  In the 20th century no one would have thought that this day would ever have come.  In the past there were winners and there were losers; there were those who made the sale, and those whose merchandise were not purchased.  Companies didn’t want to share the reason to their success unless they could make money doing it.  People claimed that they were protecting their investments; however greed and fear keep people from collaborating.  Nevertheless, the internet has completely changed this.  Now, with the open source revolution, anyone can view the html or php of a webpage.  Basically, you can see the successful recipe right before you’re about to make cookies.  However instead of leading to thievery this open source revolution has led to immense growth online.

After 9/11, every citizen became familiar with the color coded terrorism alert system. Different colors represent different levels of threat towards America from terrorists. From the low green level to the highest color of risk, red, the color system lost its potency with me since other alert system such as the air quality of the world system has a comparable color coated system.

Now the government has switched its ranking system from the five option, to a two choice level of warning- Elevated or Imminent. Here’s the kicker, the government has also noticed how important Facebook and Twitter has become. Instead of simply posting the warning levels on news stations, starting April 27th, the government will use the social media giants to effectively spread the warnings. Hopefully this will spread the news faster and more efficiently to the people of this great country.

Have you ever thought about getting serious about biking?  The only thing holding you back is the cost.  ”I only wish it weren’t $1500-2000 for a decent road bike!”  Well, let me introduce you to BikesDirect.com.  This site is simply amazing.  It carries tons of bikes including road, mountain, cruiser, hybrid, and women’s bikes.  Most of them are over 50% off – they are shipped directly from the factory.  You simply have to assemble them yourself – a small price to pay for saving over $1000 on some bikes.

Check it out.  You won’t regret it… Just make sure you have a tissue ready for all the drool.