WisconsInnovation

One of the new social sites that provides a unique way to fund ideas and dreams to fruition is Kickstarter.com. While the site is focused on creative projects proposed by designers, artists. theatrical, film makers etc, the concept of the site is certainly one that could carry over into more technical products. My guess is that a site already exists, I just haven't stumbled on it yet.

I recently met Rob Barros, a Minneapolis based film maker doing a documentary on John Howe, The Architect. Howe is little known, even having done over 50% of the drawings for Frank Lloyd Wright's projects. Barros used Kickstarter to post his project with a movie trailer, description of the project, description of what the money would be used for. Then sent out emails, shared with a Facebook page and it went viral enough to raise the needed $9K for the project in 2 months.

I interviewed Rob while in Phoenix, where he was on site doing some filming, about what this meant to the success of the project in this blog post on funding of creative projects with social media.

I believe incubators and more concepts like this are what will help entrepreneurs in the early stage of forming companies, or selling a product idea to someone else.  Madison would do well to step up the incubator concept like Milwaukee, Boston, and Palo Alto CA, to keep our inventors and creatives in our local area.

What are some social communities you know about that help entrepreneurs get started?

Here's a good example of tinkering a program's code to help do your job more effectively. Unfortunately, Microsoft's Kinect is not open sourced and therefore must be hacked in order to edit the code.

"Hacking Microsoft’s Kinect seems to be a worldwide fad right now, but this latest repurposing might be the most practical ever. A group of graduate engineering students at the University of Washington have hacked a Kinect so it can help doctors perform surgery.

University of Washington’s newspaper, The Daily, details the students' work, which involved writing new code for Microsoft’s Kinect that allowed it to interface with their robotic equipment and basically send feedback about a patient’s body position back through the system. Because of this tracking, the students were able to workout where important internal organs were and prevent the machines from cutting too deep.

“We could define basically a force field around, say, a liver,” said Howard Chizeck, University of Washington’s professor of electrical engineering. “If the surgeon got too close, he would run into that force field and it would protect the object he didn’t want to cut.”

What better way to spread holiday cheer to those that need it most than downloading Google Chrome! Not what you expected? Well, Google Chrome has a new promotion that for every tab opened in Google Chrome between December 15th and 19th, they will donate to the charity of your choice (out of a given 5 options). This is a great opportunity for people to give without having to leave their couches and computers, but it's also an incredible marketing ploy for Google Chrome! This is something that other websites could take note of in order to increase webpage views, however, most don't have the extraordinary power that Google possesses. All in all, it's pretty impressive, so I hope some of you out there will try it out!

Many of you may have seen the Toyota commercial where a mother talks about how she is more confident with her son's safety playing football due to Toyota technology regarding head injuries. If you haven't, you can watch it here. This commercial is part of a new Toyota campaign called "Ideas For Good". There are 3 steps to becoming part of Ideas For Good. A contributor first picks from five different Toyota technologies. They then think of a creative way to improve our lives using that technology, unrelated to cars. The last step involves the users sharing their big ideas online to make the world a better place. I thought this sounded similar to something we might learn in class and it turns out the challenge is a collaboration between InnoCentive and Toyota. There is one winner for each of the five technologies, and they get to pick from a new 2011 Prius, Venza, or Highlander Hybrid. It's amazing to me that one of the world's most successful car companies is asking the general public to contribute in order to change the way we think about car technology. What do you think? Is Toyota Ideas for Good a step forward for the car industry?

I found this article very interesting and thought it was relevant to post it on the blog. RockMelt is the newest Internet browser (Safari, Firefox, IE, Google Chrome) and it offers some really innovative features. Instead of having the go to a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter, RockMelt has sidebars with these applications already built in. While you surf the Web at your leisure, you can simultaneously access all features of Facebook (chat, posts, photos, etc.) and Twitter. You can also subscribe to other websites like CNN or NYTimes. Whenever a new article is written, you receive a notification. RockMelt brings the media to you rather than you having to go out and search for it. I encourage everyone to check it out. Currently it is invite only, but send me (Evan Diamond) a Facebook message and I can send invitations. Thanks!

On October 27, 2008, a new video game called LittleBigPlanet was released on the Playstation 3 vidieo game console. Developed by an innovative group of developers at Media Molecule studios, this game took an entirely new approach to gaming by giving the players full control over their gaming experience. Players were given all of the tools that the developers at Media Molecule used to build the game so that they were able to create their own levels. In this manner, players were able to cater their gaming experience to their own tastes. Furthermore, by being able to share your creations with other players around the world, LittleBigPlanet created a sense of community that is unrivaled by any other video game--this community has already built over 3 MILLION LEVELS, and remember that this was purely for their own satisfaction and pleasure.

Textsfromlastnight.com is a wonderful reminder that user innovation can take place even when the contributors are operating at less then optimal mental capacity. Users send in their entertaining text messages to the sites editors, who then decide whether or not the text is worthy of publication on their site. The funny thing is, these texts are likely remembered far more clearly by the readers of the site than the people who originally sent them. The site has recently expanded into the t-shirt business, selling t-shirts bearing the text from last night that you wish. They have also put out a book showcasing the most profound texts. It looks like all the dumb things you say while under the influence do have value after all!

I remember we talked a little about digg.com in class. I recently stumbled across reddit.com and found it similar to digg. Users submit links that they find interesting and people upvote or downvote it depending on if they like it or not. The links with the most votes get moved to the top. Everyone can check it out at reddit.com