Link of the day - If You Sell Links On Your Site, I Will Buy Them Off You
http://www.pedalpub.com/Entrepreneurs: Eric Olson and Al Boyce, dedicated home brewers with day jobs--Olson teaches business at Normandale Community College in Bloomington, Minn., and Boyce is a computer programmer for U.S. Bank in St. Paul, Minn.
What Possessed Them: A fellow home brewer e-mailed Olson a photo of a crazy-looking pub on wheels in Europe. "I said, 'Damn, this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life.'" He tracked down the creators--brothers Henk and Zwier van Laar in (where else?) Amsterdam--and asked how to make one. They sold him one instead.
"Aha" Moment::In 2007, they got the first PedalPub rolling and sent e-mails out to friends and family, expecting a mild reaction. "But our e-mail list started to explode," Olson says. "And that's when I had the first inkling that this might be really successful."
Startup: Savings and home-equity loans covered the $40,000 to buy their first PedalPub, plus $20,000 to buy a van, a trailer, insurance, storage and marketing materials.
Pedalmania: Olson and Boyce have six PedalPubs in the Twin Cities, one in Houston, plus licensees in Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; Lawrence, Kan., and Milwaukee; plus, one sold to Amstel Light.
Customers: Birthday parties, corporate events, even a wedding. Most are women--68 percent.
Vital Stats: PedalPubs weigh 2,340 pounds empty (without beer or dri nkers) and have a top speed of 5 mph. They seat 10 pedalers, a bartender and a driver and rent for $160 to $190 per hour, BYOB.
2011 and Beyond: They plan to franchise the concept next year. Says Olson, "I'd love to see 500 of these things all over the country."
For more unusual ways to make money, visit
this site.
[Via -
Entrepreneur.Com]
The Million-Dollar Idea in Everyone: Easy New Ways to Make Money from Your Interests, Insights, and Inventions IdeaSpotting: How to Find Your Next Great IdeaHow to Make Millions with Your Ideas: An Entrepreneur's Guide by Dan S. Kennedy 
The benefits of music as a therapeutic tool are widely acknowledged, but actually creating music has traditionally required more dexterity and skill than many handicapped people have at their command. Not so the Skoog, a brand-new musical instrument that can be played by anyone.
Designed specifically to empower those unable to play traditional instruments, the Skoog is a soft, squeezable object that plugs into a computer's USB port. Once that's done, users can simply touch, press, squash, twist or tap the Skoog to play a wide range of instruments intuitively. With five colour-coded, touch-sensitive sides, the Skoog offers access to the full dynamic characteristics of a real flute or xylophone, for example, without requiring mastery on the part of the player. Any part of the body can be used to play the Skoog in a variety of ways, such as squeezing it for flute sounds or tapping it to strike a xylophone. And because the Skoog uses physical modelling synthesis — not just sampling, midi or wavetable synthesis — it responds directly to the player's movements, so that variations in touch directly affect the sound produced. Twelve brass, woodwind, percussion and string instruments can be played using the Skoog, which can also be customized through sensitivity and skill settings. Pricing is GBP 625 for a Skoog Personal Edition, or GBP 500 in educational settings.
Currently sold by Scottish Skoogmusic — a spinoff from the University of Edinburgh, where it was developed — the Skoog is already in use in schools across the UK and beyond.
Website: www.skoogmusic.com
Contact: info@skoogmusic.com
Spotted by: Jane Strachan
