Over a month ago in the UK, the Daily Telegraph spurred public furor after the broadsheet newspaper released details of parliamentary official’s botched expenses. MPs had apparently submitted expenses for off-limit items including the cleaning of one Member’s moat. The backlash got so intense that the Speaker of the House was forced to resign – the first to resign in over 300 years.
After this and a number of MPs promising to stand down at the next general election, it looked like everything calmed down but it looks like another British paper is not finished with its hunt. The Guardian [...]

Nascent online service Quirky is hoping to eliminate the opaque process of product research, industrial design, marketing, and manufacturing that stands between inventors and consumers, collapsing them into a streamlined, democratized online discussion they’re saying takes only days from start to finish.
Anyone with an idea and $99 can pay to pitch their proposal to Quirky’s users, who after deciding whether or not the idea is viable, will then provide feedback as the idea approaches manufacturing, voting on potential names, logos, and product design choices. Once the product begins selling, those in the Quirky community who contributed most to the feedback [...]

At our 2009 New York conference, a panel led by Florian Peter (CScout) discussed how creators and the community openly come together to develop new thinking and make ideas happen. John Geraci (Outside.in), Scott Heiferman (Meetup), Avner Ronen (boxee) and Domenico Vitale (PI&C) explain how they leverage open communities to develop new products, services and experiences for the benefit of everybody concerned.

Fosters in Australia teamed up with the Taboo Group to create a beer based on the tastes of thousands of creative minds (and their tongues). Nelson beer has been brewed in Melbourne and is the product of user feedback. They held gatherings and parties and then gathered feedback from almost a thousand “creative types” regarding the look, taste, and possible names for the beer.

An article by one of the project team on Lost At E Minor describes the process more:
For the past few months, our Newcastle office has been getting stuck into the goodness that was the aptly [...]

iTunes 8.1 has been released, and it has a handful of new features. One curious standout is a new addition called “iTunes DJ”. It’s similar to the Party Shuffle of past versions -but now, anyone with an iPhone can request, and cue up songs remotely to the “DJ” using iTunes. Party goers can also vote up songs they like higher in the playlist. It’s kind of fun in a way, but I don’t know if “crowd sourced” DJing is the way to go. There are always those people at a party with really bad, or inappropriate requests for the DJ [...]