Springwise is an Amsterdam based independent firm focused on innovation and new business ideas. Since 2002 (when it was founded by Reiner Evers) the company scans the globe for the most promising business ventures, ideas and concepts ready for regional or international adaptation, expansion, partnering, investment or cooperation.

Their full color free newsletter is delivered weekly to more than 85,000 business professionals and entrepreneurs living in more than 120 countries around the world. They claim to be the first company providing such a service on a global scale.

The idea behind the site is really smart and simple: providing food to entrepreneurial minds.

Springwise is built on spontaneous contributions coming from a global network of more than 8000 business and marketing-savvy “spotters” living in, or traveling to, more than 70 countries.

When they find something of potential interest, all they have to do is submitting a short story by e-mail or through a specific form in a dedicated website, providing some basic information like the name of the spotted product (or service), a short description, the related website url (if any), the country in which the company is located and the reason why the spotter believes this product (or service) is unique.

Every time a contribution is accepted, the spotter is rewarded with 10 points that, once reached a minimum 50-point threshold, can be converted in gifts like Moleskine notebooks, iPods, videogames, books, digital cameras, downloadable music and many others you can find on the gift gallery page.

Joining the Springspotters community is free. It seems that you can also submit spots on-the-fly, through the Springwise website, without having to register or to sign in, but in this case you will not be able to gain points or to access the history of your past submissions (both accepted and denied) and your points balance.

In addition to relying on the Springspotters’ network, the guys at Springwise scan about 400 online and offline business publications per month.

As a result, Springwise’s idea database is really huge. Literally packed with smart ideas from all over the world categorized in many different topics like automotive, eco & sustainability, education, entertainment, fashion & beauty, government and non-profit, marketing & advertising, ….

Every idea can be printed, mailed to someone or commented.

A (minor) area of improvement for the site could be the indication of the number of ideas under each topic. But this is really a minor issue.

This site can really be a great source of inspiration and is definitely worth a bookmark for teachers, students, business journalists, wannabe entrepreneurs, or more simply if you are interested in innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.

But there’s even something more.

When you have a continuous flow of information submitted by a network of thousands of people in more than 70 countries, and an editorial staff scanning lots of business publications on a monthly basis, you have a good level of knowledge of what is going on in the marketplace, of what is working well and of what, ultimately, people want.

This is where Trendwatching comes in.

Trendwatching is Springwise’s sister company, focusing on finding out the most promising consumer trends, insights, and related hands-on business ideas. Their monthly briefing is delivered to more than 135,000 business professionals in more than 120 countries.

You can access the briefings for free but you have to pay if you want the full 2008 Trend Report which includes presentation slides, videos and other extras.

(Just to be clear, we cover Springwise because we think it’s worth-a-wow but we are not connected with them and we don’t earn money doing this. We probably should, …but this is another story!)

We all have a digital camera. But did you ever try to print your best digital photos at the store down the street? It can be quite expensive!

Today one of the blogs we are following (MakeUseOf.com) is covering PrintRates, a service that will help you in comparing online digital photo printing services in order to save money without sacrificing quality. It works like Campusi, the book search engine that we covered in a previous post.

PrintRates is a price search engine. You just have to define the number of digital prints you want, the paper size, your preferred delivery method and hit the Search Prices button. In the example below I am searching prices for 150 prints on a 4×6 paper with the cheapest delivery method.

Your search will result in a list of online stores matching the given criteria. In this case it seems I am saving up to 49.72$ which is the difference between the most expensive and the cheapest service in the list.

If you click on the more info button, you will be sent to a page where you can order your photos from the selected printer but also read a profile of the company, post a review or send the page to a friend.

In the screenshot below I selected the first store listed in the previous result page (the cheapest offer) by clicking on the More Info button.

As you can see, the summary shows that the store has been reviewed 12 times and is rated 4 out of 5 on both quality and service, that your photos will be printed on “konica” paper and that there is a coupon available. Hitting the Print Now button will take you directly to the store homepage.

In addition to reading the reviews made by other customers, you can post your own review and add your own ratings. You can always contact other reviewers and discuss with them via the site forum. The site also provides a good list of articles on more or less technical issues about digital photography.

In addition, if you need to buy a new camera or some accessories, there is a store section in association with Amazon.com.

We think that this site is a really useful resource if you are looking for cheap and reliable online digital photo printing services.

Too bad, the service is now available only for US and UK residents and is comparing only 53 online digital photo printing stores (33 in the US and 20 in the UK). This means that the calculation of the potential savings is taking into account a very limited number of offers.

The site also lacks an “about” page where you can take some more info on the company behind the project and their development plans. So we don’t know if they will add more stores and more countries in the near future.

We’ve just found a site where you can find the best price for a book you’re looking for on the internet: in fact, Campusi.com is a real book price search engine. To use their own words:

We search over 200 online bookstore prices to find you the best deal on any new & used books and textbooks.

Actually, they do even more. Let’s take for example “Business Dynamics: System Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World”, by John D. Sterman. This is a book on how to build system dynamics models to help you dealing with business issues… The subject is not so important: I’ve picked this book just because I know it’s very expensive and to show how much you can save by using Campusi.

Here’s the book’s cover.

The image above is linked to the Amazon product page. If you want, click on it and take a look at the price… $154.06 + shipping!

Now let’s search for this book on Campusi.com.

Just type the book title (business dynamics) and the author’s name (sterman) in the search form, and click on search. Below you can see a partial screenshot of the search results, showing all the books matching the given criteria.

As you can see, the first one is exactly the item we were looking for, the second is the same book without the CD-ROM, the third (not shown in the shot) is an old edition, the fourth is the instructor’s manual. There is also a fifth item whose the title is exactly the same as those of the first one… We will come back on this soon, but – for the moment – let’s click on the first one to compare the prices for the exact item.

Here’s the result:

As I mentioned before, Campusi actually does more than simply comparing raw prices: they show many things like conditions, shipping costs, taxes and – most important – they give you available coupons.

Then they calculate the actual cost you have to pay to buy an item from a given vendor! The image is not very clear, but the cheapest ‘new’ item costs $103.73, which means that you can save almost 33% on the regular price. However, if you don’t mind having a brand new book, you can buy a used item from Amazon UK for just $80.05 overall, saving 47.5%!

Now, saving 47.5% on the regular price can be already considered a very good deal, but you can save even more! Let’s take a deeper look at the fifth result of our original research:

The book is exactly the same with the CD-ROM. The only difference is that in this case we are buying the International Edition that is a PAPERBACK version. This means that it will be much cheaper! This can be verified by clicking again on the ‘compare prices’ button.

Here’s the result.

As you can see, the cheapest ‘new’ (paperback) item sells for $71.88!

If you consider the original price of the book ($154.06), this five-minute-research on the Campusi book price search engine, helped you save 82.18$ (53.34%).

Really amazing. And it’s completely free!

I know a lot of smart people complaining about the fact that they don’t have time to keep up with all the news and developments in the Internet world. They know that the web is full of wonderful sites literally packed with useful information. They feel as they are missing a lot of opportunities. And they are!

When someone asks me how can I always be so up-to-date (it’s not completely true but it’s their perception and I’ve built a sort of personal brand on this) I simply explain that my secret weapon is an RSS feed reader: a software tool (or a web service) that every day allows me to check dozens of interesting websites in a fraction of the time that I should spend visiting them individually. To be completely true, this is only one of the tools I use, but it’s the most important one. The one I couldn’t live without.

That said, it’s not so easy to explain how an RSS reader works and why someone should use it without going into too-much technical details. Especially if your friend is an Internet novice.Some months ago, I found the CommonCraft website. They are a small consulting company focusing on the production of short, simple and effective videos to explain apparently complicated issues.

Here’s the video they produced about RSS. It’s called “RSS in Plain English“

Since the day I discovered their website I always refer my friends to their work. Their paper-and-whiteboard format (paperworks) is simply amazing! Definitely worth-a-wow!

Other issues they covered are: Wikis, Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Photo Sharing. Google hired them to produce videos on Google Docs and Google Maps for Mobile With My Position. Other companies did the same.Some of the videos have been translated, transcripted and/or subtitled. More details on the CommonCraft Show page.

Check their work. They may become your secret weapon.