Be it for double-opt-in compliancy or a new registered user for your app or website, validating an e-mail address is something you have to do. And it's not only you, it's what other hundreds of services are also requiring their users. 

This takes time, and if anything Google thought us is that faster is better. By using image requests you can take a step away from the process and let users validate their e-mail straight from their inbox. 

Later edit: Following the feedback here and HN a solution for mail clients that automatically load or prefetch images is to disable this kind of validation for them. 

It's also worh mentioning that Movable Ink offers some very interesting uses for dynamic image requests. 

Lately I've been following what happens in online fashion from a business perspective. Here are some of the places that fill out my Flipboard.

FashInvest

Event though it's low on editorial content and it has the feeling of a press-release directory it's a good place to get breaking news.

fashionfunded

Personal blog of Christie Brophy where this recently mom turned entrepreneur explores innovation trends in fashion & design.

The Business of Fashion

Covering all that is fashion business related, not only start-ups. Great for getting a feel of the industry as a whole.

Quora - Online Fashion Startups

Quora - Online Fashion

Quora has always been a great resource for carefully articulated opionions about start-ups, and posts like this one prove it will soon become a great knowledge base for other verticals too. 

FailHarder - facebook page

News about online fashion & retail startups from an insider's (CEO of an upcoming footwear company) perspective. 

Of course, this is an open list and if you know any other resource or blog please leave a comment.

Matthew Carrol over at Quora has a great answer where he explains the current state and business model and what's to come. Read it here.

Idea

A company radio accesible only to employees with a valid email @domain. Besides searching for songs and playing them using Youtube, the employees can import their Last.fm profile and automically create a stream of songs that everyone likes. Using text to speech engine (the realistic AOL engine, not Microsoft SAM :) jingles are automatically created to either announce  a meeting or give general info like "You are listening ACME Radio. The weather is sweet and Alen is mixing right now"

Context

In a point and click game the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. Nearly all adventure games are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult

Insight

He (Sean Ryan, director of games partnerships at Facebook) said there are many under-served genres on Facebook such as hidden object games. There are just a couple of hidden-object games on Facebook, where there are 150 or so on Big Fish Games’ casual web site...

source Facebook game leaders: We’re not worried about Google+ games

Idea

Adventure game where your friends are part of the story and you have to find clues using a spyglass that only reveals them when you hoover over one of the characters' face. 

Another important point to make here is that the world’s top ten tech companies, all US based, have unprecedented levels of cash reserves currently standing at around $300B. A decent percentage of this cash is held in Europe and it is not tax efficient to bring it back to the US. 

source European venture capital and a theory of evolution

I got this ideea that if I analyze the top best games of each year since 1980 I will be able to somehow predict the next best selling mobile game. Still working on it and will post if anything comes up ;)

This is how I noticed the resemblence between the experience of playing arcade games and the most popular mobile games. If you think about it not much has changed about arcade games. We still play in short bursts, still insert coins/money and still don't find it wierd to stare at a screen instead of a person. The only thing that I think is missing is the high-score, the local leaderboards. They were the ones who granted the ability to "leave a mark" in the space. Remember George's Frogger high-score ?

Ideas stuck in a head serve no one so I think sharing them with everyone is the best thing to do.

Local Stock Market

NASDAQ for local businesses. 

Give anyone the opportunity to be an investor by purchasing bond-like securities (in the form of discounted vouchers) from local SMEs. They could be later resold to other individuals or to the issuing company itself. This way, local business gain access to capital when banks are reluctant to lend.

Example: Better inc. is a great start-up in organically grown fruits and has around 10,000$ in assests. In order to start the business they need 5,000$ more in cash, but because the amount is negligible to any investor or bank they are pretty much stuck. In order to get them going they can issue 1,000 vouchers of 5$ for their products at a discounted price of 2,5$ . The vouchers/bonds are transferrable and solve both customer acquisition and capital challenges.

Play Chess with friends

Party games meet social networking.

Notice the italics in the name ?They are there with a reason, of course. The twist is that each piece becomes one of your friends and you gain bonus points if you get them to friend or interact with one another. 

Example. The bishop (John) captures the Queen (Mary). Gain 2 more points if you get them to go out for a coffe / friend one another.

Anyone interested in pursuing them ? Mail me at alen@alentodorov.com or just do them :)

Probably the best man to answer this question is Brett Crosby (Group Product Marketing Manager of Google Analytics / Urchin)

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1947

Probably the best way to understand why people make sometimes bad investing decision is this:
Imagine I was to tell you to pick a number between 1 and 10 - any number. Extremely easy task.
But what if money were involved and you'll win 10,000$ if you pick the most likely number that people will pick or loose 1,000$ if you won't ?

See? :)