Solving the world’s beer storage problem. Last night Awesome Squared got together at Claremont Tonic in South Yarra (go there – real good), to eat all the Asian food and hear Andrew tell us his best pick-up line to date. We won’t spoil it for you, but maybe you’ll be lucky enough to hear it from the man himself. This month’s grant when to a simple but clever idea that will hopefully soon become a household name. The Beer End. “It’s like a bookend for your beer.” You should get the general gist. It’s a problem that most of us face, every day: Stacking beer or wine bottles in the fridge, without them rolling about or taking up too much space. We all like to have beer – or cruisers (ew) or whatever in the fridge for when friends come round. So now we can have more and they won’t move about. Good one, Zac Martin. The money will go towards enlisting an industrial designer to make the first prototype.  

On Wednesday we spent money. On ourselves and on others. We ate pizza at Rita’s on Johnston Street. If you’re ever around and ever hungry, head there. We talked about many things, and finally we talked about All Of The Numbers. Kealey Nutt has a very cute dog. She also has an awesome idea: A Melburnian web based radio station. Think ‘RRR for geeks’ – as Kealey puts it. To sum it up as best as we can, think Broadsheet, Process Journal, and various blogs that discuss our interests, obsessions, and possibly aversions. Now take all that content and discuss it on radio – with comedians, designers, entrepreneurs, storytellers, musicians and more. The $1K will help with the funding of setting up and executing the station.We’re excited to see – and listen to – what’s next.

A Mexican restaurant, a new 10th member, tacos and more tacos. $1,000 to give away. This month we gave our grant to the boys at Free Love magazine, a free monthly mag that features one photographer, one writer, and one designer, plus a CD full of goodness. Each month this magazine costs dollars to print, to which the boys did not have said dollars for edition 3. So we got behind them and sent some dollars their way. Enjoy. You should also almost definitely like them on Facebook, here.

Do you ride a bike?   Some of us do and some of us don’t. Either way we are all for social change and creating a greener environment. That’s why we gave this month’s grant to Roll-Up bike valet for free Park(ing) day,  submitted by the lovely Joyce Watts. We got together last night at South Yarra Trattoria thanks to Morgan’s recommendation. The place was filled with elderly citizens – we’re hoping this was a compliment to our level of intelligence. Luckily we were given a (sound proof) glass room to ourselves; Kristian’s voice alone would have cleared the restaurant. We ate pasta. Lots of it. Except for Kristian who is on a juice diet (go figure). So Joyce has an awesome idea. September 21 is International Parking Day. Individuals from around the world get together and take over parking spaces for the public to do… whatever they want. Joyce, working with the ever wicked Roll-Up wants to offer three car spaces up as Valet parking for bikes. She’ll be able to fit ten bikes in one car space. The aim? Joyce is trying to encourage more people to ride their bikes as a mode of transport – which we think is… read more →

Last night Awesome Squared headed to Kanapai, a wonderfully dirty Japanese den in South Yarra. We were out for two reasons: 1. Have a sake bomb: Asahi, chop sticks and Sake. We’re not sure how much of the contents made it to our mouths, as opposed to the table, floor or Erika’s jeans. 2. It was our second grant giveaway. After mountains of sushi, not enough fried chicken, and much debate, we came to a decision as to who we would swing 1K across to. httpmote. Mitch Denny is a dad, a husband, and also a dabbler in many visual & tech things. According to his application he thinks of 100 new ideas a week. This one in particular took our fancy: Mitch hates remote controls. Funnily enough, so do we. Mitch wants to build a system where he can use his iPhone to buzz open his garage door. He also wants to share that buzzer with his friends and family, and even when he gets Jim’s Mowing to mow his lawn. This would work by ‘sharing’ the remote via a text or URL, with a time limit so that when ‘Jim’ comes to mow his lawn, he can buzz… read more →