KEY POINTS:
Stupid online business ideas that made someone rich:
SantaMail: Get a postal address at North Pole, Alaska, pretend you are Santa Claus and charge parents US$10 for every letter you send to their kids. Byron Reese sent more than 200,000 letters since the start of his business in 2001, which has earned him a few million.
FitDeck: Create a deck of cards featuring exercise routines and sell it online for US$18.95. These flash cards for the flabby made former Navy elite squad member and fitness instructor Phil Black US$4.7 million in sales last year.
Lucky Wishbone Co: Fake plastic wishbones sound stupid. But it's a gimmick that captured the imagination of mainstream America. The company is now producing 30,000 wishbones a day and at US$3 a pop Ken Ahroni, the company founder, expects 2006 sales to reach $1 million.
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A German woman drove her son to rob a jewellery shop so she could make sure nothing bad happened to him. Daniela Langer, 36, from Dresden, told a court: "He was determined to do it and I could not talk him out of it, so I offered to drive him there to keep an eye on him. I was worried about him." She said she found out what her son Marcel, 18, was planning when she went to a DIY store with him and he asked her to get him some rope and some duct tape - and told her to make sure she left no fingerprints on it. She ended up acting as a look-out while her son and two other men broke in and stole $25,000 of jewellery and stabbed the owner of the shop.
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Ian Wishart is hearing things. In a press release he proclaimed the exchange between Helen Clark and Newstalk ZB's Farming Show host Jamie Mackay went like this:
Presenter: I wonder what would happen if Mr Wishart was burgled or assaulted, who would he be first on the phone to?
Clark: Oh, he would be bleating to the police, you know, the same people whose reputation he's trying to destroy.
Presenter: Well, let's just hope the 111 lines are clogged.
Clark: Might be "death" to him.
It seems Clark actually said, "might be deaf to him" which makes much more sense. Hardly a death wish, Ian.
