The Espresso: Edition 136

We hope you like the new format for The Espresso. As always we promise to bring you whats new in thinking from around the world in all facets of life and business. We have said before that for us innovation and creativity is simply looking at things differently and thinking "what else". Our team have sat down for the last couple of months to pull apart The Espresso to make it more user friendly for our readers and more accessible and easy to get at on your mobile devices.

We have also taken on board what we have talked about for the last year or so about cleanliness, simplicity and minimisation. It's easy to talk about but you have to be able to put it into practice and we hope that you like the new layout and format  for The Espresso.

As always we welcome your feedback as the team here live by the philosophy "what else, what else, what else". Keep the contributions coming, keep the suggestions coming and we promise to keep bringing the best ideas and new thinking from around the world.

As our editorial team here at The Espresso will confirm, riding a motorbike on the road has its safety challenges. When we came across this new innovation to help motorcyclists, we had to talk about it. Italian company Dainese has developed D-Air which  is incorporated into the motorbike riders clothing and into the bike. It's pretty cool. The protective gear is in two parts. The first part being the clothing for the rider, the second part being for the bike itself. Essentially, if the bike comes into contact with something, radio signals automatically set off airbags which are built into the riders clothing. Once detected, the system takes 45 milliseconds to inflate the airbag, hopefully providing some protection for the rider. The second piece is for the bike which focusses on the bikes frame and also sets off airbags. Pretty interesting concept and sure to find a home amongst the riding public and it's only a matter of time before cyclists get their own version.

Originally we wrote about a GPS system that was being used in hospitals to track patients that may have wayward tendencies. Now, a school in Brazil has introduced the same sort of technology into students uniforms. The kids are fitted with radio tags as a part of a system that will automatically text parents with the whereabouts of there kids. It's still in beta testing but the Victoria Reconquista School believes this could be a solution to the wayward tendencies of kids and to provide peace of mind for mums and dads. They're investing substantial money into the test case study and although it sounds like a good idea, one could see the t-shirts being bundled into bags and left at school while the kid takes off to find mayhem. Let's look on the positive side and say that this is  a good innovation that may help.

So you're out on the weekend and you take a shot with your iPhone and think to yourself, "that would make a cool shot for a t-shirt". Well, download the app and you're on your way. Instashirt is a free app for your iPhone that allows you to choose a photo from your camera roll, decide on the t-shirt quality, colour and size, press a button and it's in production. You can pay with Paypal or on credit card and based on the fact they are all using high quality American Apparel branded t-shirts, this seems like a pretty cool way to customise your own fashion. No wonder so many fashion retailers are doing it tough these days. For our readers in the States it's shipped for free, internationally we will have to work out the cost. The applications for this app are unlimited and are sure to create more headaches for the fashion industry.