People victimized by Internet trolls and their hateful online comments can repay the perps with a cake, as long as they know the troller’s actual physical address. For a fee of $35, Brooklyn’s Troll Cakes Bakery and Detective Agency will bake a cake, decorate it with the troll’s hateful words, and then deliver it right to their door. Even if they don’t know the address – this is where the “detective agency” takes over – for $60 the service will research an unknown address and take it from there. The company even has a service for Donald Trump haters: it will decorate a cake with a customer’s favorite Trump tweet (or nasty comment) and send it to the White House. It’s called the “Tiny Hands Special.”  [Image Credit: © TrollCakes.com ]

Smartphones are fast becoming important medical devices as digital consumerism takes hold, challenging the consumer health industry and healthcare generally. Thanks to digital consumerism, healthcare providers will have to handle huge amounts of new customized data. It’s happening already: mConsumers – i.e., mobile consumers – are using physical fitness apps to set and pursue fitness goals; paying monthly subscription fees to have round-the-clock access to their physicians; and are using mHealth apps that detect different physical conditions during emergencies, including heart attacks. Start-up companies are moving quickly to take advantage of the changing technological landscape. One such company is applying a fast-emerging advanced technology known as 3-D printing to make drugs and vitamins. Euromonitor envisions mConsumers will someday be able to customize 3-D printed drugs and vitamin supplements from their mobile devices.

InFarm partnered with retailer Metro to evaluate its modular self-contained farm in a supermarket in Berlin. According to InFarm, the indoor farming technology is efficient enough to make the cost of operating a vertical farm affordable on a micro scale. Designed to make the most of available space, the technology enables the growing of produce in a single area. Some of the advantages offered by the system include elimination of transportation, storage, and refrigeration costs, as well as reduction in water and fertilizer use.

A market research firm predicts that sales of virtual reality and augmented reality hardware, including smart glasses and head-mounted displays, will reach $1.06 billion by 2018. Marketers like Coca-Cola, HBO and Nissan are betting on the eventual selling power of the technology, if hardware prices drop to levels that consumers can afford. Right now, these early experimenters have to provide the gadgetry themselves, so testing is done at big events like the Detroit Auto Show. Despite significant current hurdles – i.e., high cost and cumbersome equipment – the early players are betting that eventually the technology will deliver the “visceral customer experiences” that could drive product sales.

PepsiCo has launched an innovative campaign across digital out of home (DOOH) in the UK that integrates Vine videos into Pepsi Max creative in real-time.

 

In a “media-first” the soft drinks maker is encouraging members of the public to create and submit Vines using the hashtag #LiveForNow showing something “unbelievable” they have done. The best efforts will be published across seven UK cities on The Grid, Ocean Outdoor’s network of screens.

 

The campaign was planned by OMD UK in partnership with Talon Outdoor, created by AMV with Vine moderation from Jaywing.

 

Instacart is a San Francisco startup that will buy all your groceries from your favorite store and deliver them within an hour or two. it is live in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, D.C. and Chicago. 

 

Apoorva Mehta, founder and CEO of Instacart, says: “We’re in the early stages, but we have the data to prove this is becoming more and more mainstream. Grocery delivery is going to be the way people get their groceries.”

Technology from a Finnish start-up called Kiosked claims to turn any visual element on a web page, including photographs and videos, into advertisements. As the New York Times says, Kiosked works like this:

 

"...publishers who want to earn revenue from photographs and videos on their sites place a snippet of code from Kiosked on their pages. When a reader visits the page, Kiosked does a split-second scan of the written material that accompanies a photo on the page — perhaps a news story or a product review. It then presents a selection of one or more relevant products or services the reader can buy online, overlaying the items on a strip that hovers above the photo."

hisbe  (how it should be) – is a community interest company that "thinks supermarkets should be doing business in a more responsible way. Our purpose is to help make the food industry more fair and sustainable.at hiSbe we think that putting happiness first is a route to a more responsible, fair and sustainable food industry."

Since 2011, Austin Texas-based in.gredients has sold local food with pure ingredients, package-free.

 

It says:

 

 

"Our mission is to be a different kind of grocery store – one that is responsible to the environment and community and one that facilitates a healthy lifestyle.

 

healthy soil + healthy air + healthy water = healthy people"

 

A New York Times reporter eats a 3-D printed meal.

 

"My plan: I would immerse myself in the world of 3-D printing. I would live for a week using nothing but 3-D-printed objects — toothbrushes, furniture, bicycles, vitamin pills — in order to judge the technology’s potential and pitfalls."

 

"Our pizza will be in the shape of Italy, a topographically correct replica of the country, complete with the Apennine Mountain range in the middle."

 

Started in 2009, Quirky continues to evolve as an innovation marketplace. As Quirky says:

 

AmazonFresh continues to expand and is now in San Francisco: 

 

"Introducing AmazonFresh

 

Free same-day and early morning delivery on orders over $35 of more than 500,000 Amazon items, including fresh grocery and local products.

 

AmazonFresh is now available in the San Francisco area in select zip codes as a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime Fresh, a new level of Amazon Prime that includes all the benefits of Prime, plus access to AmazonFresh. After your free 30-day trial, you will be charged $299."