Innovation Zen

Wires - the one stretch of material that makes the line between true mobility and the quest for plug-points. The search for wireless power solutions has been on for quite a while. Wikipedia tells us that the principles underlying the basis wireless energy transfer date back to 1825.
The advent of computing systems as our constant […]

Memory has been getting more power efficient and faster with more bits for the buck. Nanochip, a start-up from Silicon Valley is developing a prototype based on IBM’s Millipede project.
An excerpt from ZDNet
The Nanochip design is a Micro-Electro-Mechanical System, or MEMS, device. A descendent of IBM’s Millipede device, it uses polarization instead of Millepede’s […]

Generating energy to power devices from muscle movements may just be the next big thing to make wireless mobility truly mobile. On one side there is the efforts on in the field of increasing the power capacity of batteries. At the same time there is immense research going on in powering devices by converting the […]

For the innovations that have driven usability across the web and the proliferation of computing devices, the innovations on the silicon front have been critical.
It is the chipsets of today that showcase and drive the technological innovations on the computing front for tomorrow and Michael Copeland of CNN has brilliantly captured that in his brief […]

This past year saw a flurry of activities on the UI side from some of the biggest names in the tech industry. Now, innovation and research is a part of technology but what matters to consumers is how much of the innovation actually makes it to products.
Technology review has a great up write-up on the […]

Biotechnology deals with the pieces of technology that are related with the biological aspects of our world. The biotechnology mainly contributes in the food science, medicine and agriculture sector. According to the definition in more technical terms, biotechnology is the modern science which contributes in the efficient utilization of biological processes and biological organisms.
In our […]

Now that I’m traveling by air more often, I’m frequently astounded by the inanities and bureaucratic nightmares of modern airlines. While I’m certain many share a disdain for airlines, I’m specifically annoyed at the ways they seem to go out of their way to appear technologically backwards. Take for example this AP report […]

802.11n is, simply, the new standard for wireless or WIFI. So what does this mean to you; well 802.11n will provide a better wireless signal over the current standard 802.11b/g.
Think of wireless like Playstation, at first Playstation was pretty cool, and then Playstation 2 came out. PS2 ran faster, had fewer flaws, and […]

Electronic mail appeared as a blessing. It would let you communicate with friends, family and co-workers in a matter of seconds, regardless of where they were around the world.
With such a fantastic communication tool, however, other problems emerged. Just ask any manager of a big corporation and he will tell you that 40% or more […]

As the wireless penetration rate increases across the United States, some interesting data starts to emerge.
During the second half of 2006, more than 3 out of 20 American households did not have a land line telephone, and of those without a land line telephone, most had at least one working wireless telephone. The National Health […]

The iPhone is everywhere. I felt that it would be redundant to write more about it, so instead I will leave you with the most interesting links that I managed to gather:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone
http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/03/iphone-review/
http://www.techcrunch.com/iphone-weekend-one/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070705/091939.shtml
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/hands-on-time-with-the-iphone/
http://terrywhite.com/techblog/?p=196

Companies like Microsoft, Nokia and IBM started operating there over 6 years ago. Others are moving in. The so called Z-Park is the center of the technological development in China, and BusinessWeek recently published an article about it.
“P&G’s strategy conforms nicely with Chinese President Hu Jintao’s plan, announced in 2006, to turn China into an […]

It looks like we are shifting from a Gaussian world to a Paretian one, or so claims John Hagel on a recent article titled “The Power of the Power Laws”.

Pirates of Silicon Valley is a half documentary half movie that describes the early years of Apple Computers, Microsoft, and their founders. The link points to a complete online version of the movie (although the screen dimension is reduced). If you have not seen it check it out, it is pretty interesting.

ComputerWorld has an interesting article titled “Don’t Believe the Hype: The 21 Biggest Technology Flops”. As explained on the website the technologies listed are not necessarily bad, but their were either ahead of their times or overblown by high expectations. Here is the list:

There is a very interesting “Innovation Timeline” created by the What’s Next website. You will probably need to zoom the picture to read the listed innovations, but here is some of the stuff that the predict to appear before 2050:

General Motors is planning to have a working prototype of their all-electric car, called Volt, already by the end of 2007. Additionally they are aiming to start producing the model by 2010. Looks like a challenging goal, but some top managers are confirming this strategy.
Bob Lutz, Vice Chairman of GM, commented: “Competitors who write this […]

Considering all the buzz that the iPhone generated we can assume that it will disrupt the mobile phone industry and make Apple hit the jackpot again, can’t we? Well, I would not be so secure about that. While I admire Steve Jobs’ initiative to invade a challenging business such as the mobile phone one, I think that Apple’s strategy has some flaws, and below I will outline each of them…

The InformationWeek website has an extensive article covering 5 disruptive technologies that will (according to the article) make its entrance into mainstream applications in 2007.

In emerging and innovative markets, however, a completely different managerial mindset is required. Competing in those markets, contrary to what most people believe, is not about having a superior technology.

Male, 22 years old, dark haired. If I turn on the television or the radio, which combined account for the vast majority of ad spending, sooner or later I will come across the advertising of a disposable tampon, a denture adhesive and a shampoo for curly red hair.

Have you ever been annoyed by the subscription cards that fall out of magazines? I guess most people have, they not only interrupt the reading experience but also force you to make an extra run to the trash bin. Incredibly, though, such cards still generate around 12% of magazine’s new subscriptions, no wonder editors stick them wherever they can.

I do agree with the author to a certain extent, mainly with the idea that under some circumstances only companies are able to develop radical innovations. But that has to do with the fact that consumers often times are not able to articulate their needs, and they are not necessarily aware of what one could possibly do with current technologies.

There is a lot of buzz going on around “crowdsourcing” lately, a term coined by the Wired journalist Jeff Howe is his article “The Rise of the Crowdsourcing”. The first time I googled (lower case g because it is already recognized as a verb by the Webster dictionary) “crowdsourcing” it generated around 200.000 results, and that was only a couple of weeks after Howe’s article!

This is the second part of my collection of quotes (click here to see the first part). I find particularly interesting the companies that turned down multi-billion dollar opportunities like IBM refusing to invest in the photocopier or Atari rejecting Steve Job’s proposal to develop the personal computer. Those companies were nonetheless being managed by very smart people, understanding what influenced such decisions is the complex matter.

Remember that a bit (binary digit) is the single piece of information in digital systems, it is either a 0 or a 1. A byte, instead, is a group of 8 bits. When we talk about computer memories or data storage 1 kilobit refers to 1024 (2^10) bits, 1 megabit refers to 1024 kilobits (or 1024 x 1024 bits), 1 kilobyte refers to 1024 bytes and so on. In telecommunications, however, transmission rates have traditionally been declared in bits per second (bps) and 1 kilobit refers to 1000 bits and not 1024 as in data storage.

Internet is something amazing. One day (early 2005) you are trying to figure out how to share videos with your friends, the other (mid 2006) you own a service that delivers 100 million videos per day.

For many years people have talked about the wonders of optical fibers. Yet the dream of an all-optical network is far away from materializing. Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) is a reality in very few places around the world,

The collection of quotes I present below illustrate how managers, scientists and academics often fail to free themselves from paradigms. As Peter Ustinov said “If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done”.
The list was too big therefore I decided to break it up in 2 parts. Have fun.