A robot to take care of your dirty socks...

Do you remember the robot guru Trevor Blackwell? He appeared at CNET News.com some months ago, thanks to Miriam and Zamir. Some time ago, I did a piece for IEEE Spectrum as well, and it went online today on Spectrum’s new Automation blog.
Text and movie can be found here:

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/2007/08/labor_without_the_laborer.html

An older movie and some pictures are here:

http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/2007/06/anybots_bots_more_videos_and_p.html

Using the sun to cross the Atlantic

Many things that happens in New York are very business oriented. One thing that recently happened was not only business oriented, but could be categorized in many different beats. If there existed an innovation news feed, this thing would clearly belong there.

The 14 meter long catamaran Sun21 just arrived to New York. It is the world's first boat to cross the Atlantic, by just using solar power. The people behind Sun21 showed that it is not only possible, but also a pretty good idea, to make more use of the sun while on the sea.

The business aspect of this is that a sun powered boat does not need any traditional fuel. The political aspect is that this is an eye-opener for environmental issues. There is even a slight sport aspect, since both sailing and motor boating are considered as sports.

However, to make the article interesting for Spectrum's web readers, I narrowed it down to focus on the technology aboard:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may07/comments/1823

Innovative projects

In beginning of May, I went to the Interactive Telecommunications Program's spring show, arranged at New York University. There, some student artists and innovators (yes, that's how they described themselves) were showing interesting projects. It was fun to see how they mixed old stuff with new technology, even though I would categorize most of the projects as innovative, rather than as innovations.

In terms of covering the event for Spectrum, I realized that a slideshow with some captions would be one of the best ways to cover it. Innovative journalism for innovative stuff; An innovation journalism approach is probably more suitable for other articles.

Article:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may07/comments/1824

Girls of Engineering: Smart is Sexy

Everyday, I go to the gym with two of my colleagues at Spectrum. Everyday, we discuss article ideas and how to improve the magazine. And we are especially interested in increasing the hit rate for the online version of Spectrum. What do many people search for on Internet? Nudity! What can a magazine for engineers do about that to attract readers, but still be considered as proper by readers and advertisers? How about an investigative behind-the-scene article about the photo calendar Girls of Engineering 2007?! My gym buddy Philip E. Ross did some interesting findings, enough for him to produce the most questionable article IEEE Spectrum has published for quite a while:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may07/5099

The automatic shader generation

This is Johan Andersson, rendering architect at Dice/Electronic Arts. He and his colleagues have developed a graphics engine, Frostbite, which makes it possible to decrease the time it takes to develop computer games. Frostbite also good for rendering objects and game environments that should be possible to break down or destroy. Sounds easy, but is tricky.

In the future, I guess we will see Frostbite also in other games than the upcoming Battlefield: Bad Company.

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr07/comments/1795

Hot Doings at a Really Cool Show

I went to the Cool Product Expo at Stanford, mostly to take a look at NeuroSky's innovation. They have created a device that measures the electrical activity of the brain's neurons and combined it with a computer game. Quite cool.

Except Neurosky's stuff, I also found other interesting things, which I also wrote something about. The picture to the left is Kurt A. Kulmann, showing how to clean water with help of UV light.

While at the expo, I met Zamir. He made a nice movie - be sure to take a look at it. I also made a movie, not as good as Zamir's, which I produced in my room at Cardinal Hotel in Palo Alto...


Article: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr07/comments/1776

Movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvLm6_DY02k

April Fools

This is professor A.P.Rilföl, from Yôke University. He has made a great innovation, which today was announced on Spectrum's web site.

It is the first time ever that Spectrum publish a April Fool's article, and I am sure there will be a discussion about it during the news room's next meeting. Is it good or bad for such a serious magazine to publish something like this?
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/apr07/comments/1752

How to Sell a Free Computer Game

Icy Tower is the name of one of the world's most popular PC games. The game happens to be produced by a friend of mine, and he just let me know that he soon will bring the game into the mobile world. I mentioned this to the Executive Editor at Spectrum, and he told me to write a blog posting about it. So I did, even though I really don't feel very comfortable with writing about people I know. However, one feature with blogs is that the reader reads them with an insight that the content usually is written with a personal touch.

So, is there anything interesting in the blog post from an innovation journalism perspective? Well, switching from PC to mobile phones is not really anything new. But it is hopefully interesting to know a little about the general game market, as well as to read about the driving forces behind a business idea completely different from the market giants': To give away popular games for free.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/mar07/comments/1741

Toy Story (IEEE Spectrum)

First day at work, at the technology magazine IEEE Spectrum. What would happen? Was I supposed to make a revealing reportage about security of wireless networks, or make a scoop about a new bug in Windows Vista? Wrong! Together with the magazine’s web editor, I entered into the world of toys, and the Toy Fair at Javits Convention Center in New York. The web editor wanted me to write a short story, from a personal perspective.

I tried to find some breaking news from the toy industry, but didn’t really find any. From an InJo perspective, it would maybe have been a good idea to talk to the end user – the kids. But since I didn’t find any at the exhibition, I just mentioned about that idea in the article. Therefore, I don’t consider the article to be a “real” InJo article.

Two days after the visit, my edited article was posted at the IEEE web site. A few days later, the story was picked up by Slashdot, which gave the Spectrum website another couple of thousand hits – enough to make my article the third most popular one on the website since the beginning of the year. That was fun :-)

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb07/comments/1714