Pharmacy innovation

Here's an interesting case of old economy (pharmacy) innovation. I found this article on the PWC site. First, this pharmacy has a new employee: A robot. By using a robot arm for collecting drugs not only do they increase production while decreasing costs, but also are the number of errors decreased. Not an unimportant aspect when dealing with drugs!

Second they build a computer system for better cooperating with doctors. And they are expanding that cooperation. Currently they check the records of all 55 plus cases on drug use and problems. This alone has saved over 400.000 euros last year in Dronten (NL) alone. Can you imagine the savings on a national scale?

Top science

The Dutch Innovation Platform wants Holland to become one of the five leading countries in scientific research and technology... Great. The ways to achieve this however seem to be... Less then adequate. Although this article has some good points. A joint effort with Belgium and Germany to make the region Eindhoven - Leuven - Aken a new European Silicon Valley sounds nice. Too bad this region is WAY TO BIG. But a 3 nation region is of course better, it would make exporting and international partnering easier. And of course the famous "innovation vouchers" are mentioned (again). With these, small companies can get 7.500 euros worth of innovation at a local university, a really huge amount of money (yeah right). There goes another 7,5 mil down the drain.

Spouseworkers

The Dutch government has decided that spouses (wives) of foreign knowledge workers? (Why only knowledge workers?) don't need a special permit to work here. In other words: if we want to "import" someone from abroad because of his or her special knowledge (mainly ICT specialists, scientific researchers and special technological wizzkids), their "better half" is allowed to work here too, no matter what his/her skills are. The first step to a more open innovative culture. Let's hope they all married extremely bright and intelligent women with great ideas to match!

Holiday Generator

Check out this fake holiday generator, send your postcards from fake destinations to the tax office or your parents! whilst working undisturbed at home.... I'd like to have a FakeMe, MiniMe, WomenMe, RichMe, AfricanMe, WorkMe, TravelMe and drop in and out of them at my leasure...ah bliss!

Who ya gonna call?

One on three mobile users are afraid that by losing their cellphone, they also lose all their friends, since most mobile users store their friends numbers in their cellphones only, according to a survey done by British company Intervoice.
More than 50% procent of all cellphone users lost a phone by theft or by simply losing it, at one time or another, in the past three years. 19% of those interviewed are worried about the time it will take to regain their contact info. And one on three interviewed women? thinks this means a permanent loss of at least some of their contacts..!

Sounds to me there's a massive market for good and simple (model, make and platform independent) backup software for cellphones! Who ya gonna call? Contactsolvers!

Copy or Copyright?

Brain Hoolahan of file-reg.com posted a valid question on our Ideamaker forum at OpenBC: who's idea is it anyway? Hey that's a great idea! And now it's mine, bye! You automatically got copyright on all y'r broodings, but how to make it stick?
A couple of my tips:
A: Time stamp your idea (in Holland send it to the tax office) or use file-reg. All they do is time-stamp the idea. With an official time stamp you can claim that you were the first. Sticks in Court and it's dirt cheap.
B: What also works for me sometimes, is to publicly post it on sites like this, which has a creative commons license. Or send a press release around and post it on a online pressrelease site like presscentre.nl (Same time-stamp effect).
C:Try to bring your idea a.s.a.p. to another level: a demo, mockup, model, logo, whatever.
D:These evolved forms of your idea you CAN officially deposit, get patented or trademarked.
E: Use a reasonable! NDA for parties to whom you want to present or discuss your idea (and you don't trust completely).
G: If all of the above is not suitable for you or your idea.. hey... just keep your mouth shut and work on it alone. Chances are however, your idea will never see the daylight, let alone be born into a business or product all by yourself. You will need help from other people in some form or another at some point in time to get your idea further developed or realised and that means talking about it.

It's a thin line between copy and copyright in bringing a idea further with other people involved, and every situation is different. Use your instincts, gut feeling, reason and intelligence and ask around beforehand, on "how to tackle issues" from experienced ideamakers, maybe inquire about or get references from the company/people involved, and get some good legal help at some stage.

A lot of it still depends on good ol' trust, give and take, sharing, a word a word and your own common sense. Remember there's no failsafe way to do things, no contract 100% solid, so be prepared to take some risks in some form or another along the way. Good luck!

Fake anti-Spam replies.

Since last week I've been using Junker, and yes, I'm happy about it. I'm using it for two corporate accounts that get spammed a lot. But today, I got a phone call from a business relation about the e-mail I've sent him. I had no idea what he was talking about, but it turned out it was about the automated (Junker) reply to his newsletter he had send to my adress. He phoned because he had some bad experiences in the past with anti-spam software... He had got some fake anti-spam software replies in the past to his outgoing emails, he was asked to fill out some info, in order for him to be whitelisted. (his email etc)... so these spammers masked as anti-spam software and then spammed you and all your whitelisted relations from then on. Great!

Teleportation, antigravity and 'lifters'

I did some research last week for a new story I am working on and found some pages you might like. If you are into this stuff, it will give you nothing new, if not, it will tickle your mind.
Apparently people at IBM are having some fun with concepts on quantum teleportation. Also see "a fun talk on..". It gives you some info on the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect, if you like to impress your neighbors. Practival implementations for the short term: high speed data transfer.
If you ever wondered how we could get rid of those blasted helicopter rotors and noisy hovercrafts, see some videos on lifters. You only need 30.000 volts and 250 milliwats (a light weight power drill does 500 Watts by comparison) to get a small one going up. There are instructions to build a home-model yourself. No moving parts. Beware when you have dry hair, since a lot of static energy will build up, I imagine. Play the video!
Antigravity? Not exactly. "Casting a shadow in the gravity field" may be more accurate. See the Wired-article on the Podkletnov device. And a "heya to all" photo from Nasa Labs working on the same principles (and no: it is not a turn table they hold up in the photo).
To make it ever stranger, see some video footage on the Hutchison device where water and paint is "falling upwards". Good old Tesla is still alive and kicking apparently, since the whole effect is caused by some Tesla Coils put together on different frequencies. A small drawback on the H-device: it affects the surrounding area and "melts metal at room temperature..."
Oych!

Demo conference

Demo is THE Innovation conference in the US for new tech. With an all star cast of Jurors including Marc Andreessen (Netscape founder),Brin & Page (aka The Google Boyz), and Mike Ramsay (founder of Tivo) and a lot of heavyweight investors present, you know the 75 Demonstrators are gonna be grilled to the max in those 6 minutes they've got for their no .ppt Elevator pitches!
Day 1 had MDA with their Instant Scene Modeler ISM, a stereo camera to create realistic three-dimensional models of people, places and things by stitching together hundreds of photographs into a single 3-D model in seconds! Then there was VKB's virtual keyboard. It gives handheld computer users access to a laser projected QWERTY keyboard that can be set up on any flat surface. Cool! There was Motorola's iRadio service and Mediabolic's new network media player who gives TV viewers access to a range of custom-designed web-based applications.
Day 2 saw Novint Technologies' Falcon, a sort of joystick on steroids and Pluck who brings together RSS feeds, web publishing and more in a single web-based app. source Wired

Creative Capital Conference

The Creative Capital Conference - Amsterdam, 17 and 18 March 2005.
What are the real issues for a creative public domain? Join the conversation about the meaning of Creative Capital, cultural propositions and social platforms during this conference.

Nextgen social networking

Imeem is a promising new distributed social networking app, combining IM, P2P, filesharing, weblogging and more. It also offers realtime online networking like Wired Reach. Founders come from companies like TiVo and Napster. Imeem is still in beta and by invitation-only; testing is done on several US universities,m not live yet, and allready hot and hyped! There's a lively trade in invitations, just like the trade for those Gmail accounts back in 2004.
Folksonomy is a neologism for collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords. This feature began appearing in social software in 2004. Some examples of online folksonomies being social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and Jots and my own personal favorite StumbleUpon , fastgrowing Flickr, for photo sharing, 43 Things (secretly funded by Amazon) for goal sharing, and Tagsurf for tag-based discussions. source Wilco Verdoold.

Having trouble finding yourself?

Judith Meskill's blog posting on the Social Software Weblog from 9 February - Having trouble ‘finding’ yourself? caught my fancy.

She highlighted Crunkie, ”...a revolutionary new location-based mobile blog virtual community service that allows users to find friends and post location-tagged messages, pictures and other media instantly retrievable by friends and other Crunkie users…”


Lost? Need to find yourself? Might be just the trick!

Inventions don't last decades

Interesting article in the Economist on innovation. In short: inventions don't last for decades anymore, so rather than chasing wonder new products, big companies should focus on making lots of small improvements and innovations on existing products and make a good profit out of them. I personally think most innovation will come from small companies and start-ups. Big companies therefore should spend much more on start-up capital and takeovers and less on R&D, since the money spend in seed funding start-ups will see much higher gains after an exit.

Shake y'r..

What a brilliant idea this site! I can envision: Shaked celeb sites, ShakedIN socialnetwork , a Duracell sponsored ShakeD!Contest, Pepsi's Max-shakeD fotocontest, a ShakedIN or ShakedOUT site, Shaked ID's, Shake me up Scotty!... shake shake shake.... shake y'r....

Wired Floor

This is an idea I have been thinking about for years; I have installed floor heating in my house when I had it renovated. I looked at all the wiring that went into the floor and asked myself 'what more could you do with that?'. Then I was brushing my teeth with my electrical toothbrush and had an idea. Why not install a grid of electrical wires under my floor and make the whole floor act like my toothbrush. You could lay the wires every 10 centimeters vertical and horizontal and then make a lamp or other electrical tool and place it anywhere. You wouldn't want to put electricity on every wire but just the ones that are under one of your tools. You could place lamps, your television and other stuff on the floor and only the wires under those things would be connected.

Pfew, hard to explain in english. Which brings me to another question; why is this Blog written in english anyway? All the readers are dutch aren't they?

This is my first post in a month or so. I have been very busy with Junker, my anti-spam service. Junker.nl is now available for free for a month.

Ideamaker

James Burke told me about a popular program on BBC 2 every Tuesday night called Dragons Den where entrepreneurs pitch for the amount of money they need before the Dragons. This is the winner of episode 5, she got a deal: 110,000 pound for 30% shares. Sounds to me we could do the same here, we've got the name Ideamaker, let's give the cable guys a ring!

DIY galore!

Make your own 'Reactive Robot' with this robot kit. Not the robot with the most features… but: from Kevin Warwicks R&D team (remember… the guy that had a microchip implanted in his own arm?!) & for the kids the same with Lego! Emachineshop lets people design 3-D objects like car parts and door knobs in metal or plastic, checks whether a design can be made, tells the customer how much it will cost & lets you order them online. Download the free software, draw your part, and click to order. DIY fingerprint main door lockset for homeowners and businesses that desire added security and convenience at the touch of a finger. Semi-prof DIY games?For all aficionados of lower bass frequencies: build your own subwoofer. Luxury animal with a love of the outdoors? Design your own deck wíth hotspring Spa! Build an electrically powered 4-wheel buggy (with bicycle wheels) for your children. DIY last will & testament maker software (UK laws…) All grazed from the digital meadows by Antoinette Hoes!

New Venture seminar.

I attended the New Venture Award seminar yesterday in Amsterdam at Living Tomorrow filled with innovative entrepreneurs loaded with cool ideas, great presentations and a cool film by Claire Arens of New Venture , Novu's chairman Wouter Pijzel, last years winner Bas Jan Veldhoen of Perfix and Maurice Benkand Verwee of Novem Int. on the Torzio. Very informative, well organised, and simply fun to be at. Here's some handy tools for all you ideamakers/entrepeneurs out there: Very handy reality check tool on viability of your business idea by Novu. Innovation barometer of your company, a Prototyping tool and the Inventors market (All in Dutch). Also this ING Bank BP price and a brand new non profit BP price in 122 developing countries!

Goodbye Pda, hello Smartphone

Sales of Pda's are rapidly falling in favour of the "smart" phones (what's in a name..) They got mobile versions of Windows/Office/Outlook onboard or similar apps on OS's like Symbian, they have run MP3'players, Route guide's and a slew of mobile games. Even Napster is developing a mobile version. Next up will be phones who can run PSP Games, have mobile TV, Local content and connect thru the cheapest available connection :Wifi/Wimax/GSM/Voip or even newer protocols. I wonder if we'll get a Mac smart phone soon? The iCall with a display for $249 and the reCall for $99 also known as the iCall shuffle (that's the one without the display, so you never know who you gonna call...) Life is smart, Life is random!

Spoofing

Now here's an idea... don't advertise, just let people come to your site even if they don't want to. DNS Spoofing, according to NU.nl, is a high risk on the internet. This is bad news for any site... if you're "spoofed", you'd probably never go to their site again. Dont count on Governments to do anything about it! So it's up to us entrepreneurs to come up with some good software to prevent spoofing attacks. Anyone up for developing and financing anti Spoof software?

Napster for ideas..

Videora 1.0 is a new personal video download program. Utilizing BitTorrent peer to peer technology and RSS feeds, it automatically and "intelligently" finds and downloads video you want to watch.... sounds cool, but let's see if it really is proactive. According to the Webby Awards 2005 Trend report, peer to peer will be used more and more for sharing files and patents They call it "Napster for ideas"....Napster? Time to put up a Ideabroker PTP network!

The Chinese are coming!

Huawei a massive IT company from China, is aiming for a breakthrough in Europe, after a initial focus on emerging markets like Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. They recently signed a distribution deal with Siemens and Marconi, and won a 400 million euro contract to build a 3G network for Dutch mobile operator Telfort. IBM recently sold it's PC hardware division to China's number one pc maker Lenovo for US 1.75 bn! So extend your exit strategy options with these new Chinese companies! Next Up..Chinese Telecom in Europe? Ni Hao!