Square Up with Square

Today's innovation news comes to us from the world of secure & mobile phone payments. Introducing SQUARE, the latest brainchild from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey (@jack).

The device - which is no bigger than a half dollar and plugs into the headphone jack of any smartphone - is a mini credit card swiping machine. Once a card is swiped, information (including a snapshot of the card holder, for security purposes) is sent and displayed on the phone. Payment can then be processed, and receipts send to shoppers via text.

It's a lot like PayPal, except it allows anyone to take a physical credit card charge. A much simpler and cheaper alternative to what's out there now, this is sure to be a huge boost for artists and smaller vendors. For example, I went to a couple of Phish shows over the holiday break, and I love the idea of someday (soon) using a credit card to buy a grilled cheese in the lot!

(via TechCrunch)

The Four Tempations of an Innovator

Great article on the Four Tempations of the Innovator from the Idea Hub section of American Express's website. Home Run syndrome, Bells & Whistles-itis, over-complication and the dangers of incentivizing...a well-articulated write up of some of innovation's most notable adversaries.

(via Open Forum)

New Legos Inspired by Arts & Crafts

With a little help from Japanese home goods company Muji, Lego is introducing an innovative new line of craft-inspired toys. Sets include some bricks pieces from Lego and some colored paper sheets and stencils from Muji. A special hole punch then lets fit your pieces together and build.

Looking to the world of arts and crafts for inspiration seems like a "back-to-basics" move by Lego, and is an example of companies extending themselves backwards to capitalize on the world of products they first leveraged. I think these basketball hoops and pitching machines from EA Sports fall into the same category.

(via PSFK)

Finally Going Back for the Whisky

A New Zealand historical society just announced plans to retrieve two cases of whisky from the ice near the South Pole. The bottles were left behind by Ernest Shackleton, an Irish explorer, on a failed expedition to the Pole almost 100 years ago.

Hoping some go to a museum, and the rest to the auction block. A must have for the whisky drinker on your shopping list this holiday season!

Baby Crying? There's an App for that

Wondering why your baby is crying? Check out the Cry Translator, an innovative new piece of software from Biloop Technologies slated to hit the App store next week. It analyzes the pitch, volume, and tone of your babies howl, and “translates” it's findings into one of five categories: hungry, sleepy, stressed, annoyed or bored.

On a grand scale, this strikes me as a baby step (pun intended) towards the development of point of care healthcare diagnostics. On a smaller scale, echoing what the Wired folks said a bit, this really reminds me of the "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes" episode of the Simpsons, where Homer's brother Hank develops and makes a bundle off an invention that translates baby-babbly. Either way pretty cool...

[via Wired's GadgetLab]

Denim Means Business

The Prez! Throwing his fast ball...in jeans! But not just him; what about Steve Jobs and his classic jeans-with-no-belt look? In what has to be the most innovative repackaging, repositioning, re-whatever-you-want-to-call it, jeans are back in a whole new way, now the most integral part of the trendiest "power" look in business class.

Check out this story about Power Jeans from the Wall Street Journal.

Stephen King Scavenger Hunt

UK publisher Hodder & Stoughton has schemed an innovative way to release Stephen King's upcoming book, Under the Dome. They've broken the horror novelists new tome into 5,000 snippets, and scattered the pieces across the UK and hundreds of websites (the most recent discovery was made on GQ.com). The person who finds the most wins a grand prize – obviously – but for King's rabid fan base, the chance to read new stuff, no matter how little, prior to the book's release date is a prize in and of itself.

Stairways to Heaven

On the off chance that anyone is spending Sunday afternoon designing their dreamhouse, these photos of innovative staircases should provide some inspiration.

Part of this Complete Breakfast

Happy Halloween everyone!

I was in the supermarket yesterday morning buying candy for trick or treaters, and decided to run a little mental exercise. I asked myself, what are the three largest products categories in the store, in terms of choice and variety? I did a quick lap around, and here's what I came up with:
1. Cereal
2. Potato Chips
3. Toothpaste

Numbers 1 & 2 didn't surprise me, but the third did. You'd never think toothpaste would make this list, but maybe that's because the product tends to be smaller, and come in palm-sized packaging. But look for yourself next time your in a supermarket. "Whitening," "now with Scope," "Tartar control," "citrus splash"...these are the descriptors consumers want, and the toothpaste people are listening. Each brand now has a laundry list of extension products, flavor selection is approaching the rainbow-status of Vitamin Water, and the result is one of the dense-ist aisle gauntlets in the store.

Now in terms of cereal, the fact that they were my clear #1 shouldn't surprise anyone. There are more variations of Raisin Bran than there are gossip magazines at the checkout. The selection of names runs a gamut from cartoon characters (Count Chocula) to Biblical references (Ezekiel 4:9). Every fruit, nut and grain in the world is present and accounted for in some form or another.

Recognizing that the cereal world now has such a complete selection of ingredients made me think of an innovative new business I saw online, named Moja Mix. A build-your-own-cereal service, Moja Mix essentially plops someone into the cereal aisle, tears the box tops off everything, and lets customers pick and choose what they want and the dosage size. Face it – the cereal aisle is as vast and huge as the world itself, with recipes and flavor combinations as culturally representative as a UN summit. Something like this, that puts the customer in charge, seems like a natural progression.

Paint your Walls with Ideas

I remember seeing black board paint for the first time and being impressed by the concept. Write on the walls? Why not - loved the idea! However, a few "clapping the erasers" in middle school detention flashbacks and the thought of having chalk dust swirling around in the air during meetings made me hold off and stick with paper and pen for a bit longer.

But a couple of weeks ago one of my fellow innovationists saw something at the ICA in Boston that showed me how far along the broader concept had come. IdeaPaint, conceived by some college buddies during a brainstorming session, is a paint that turns any surface into a white board. Very cool!

An Ice Breaker for Power Lines

By now, those of you who follow the NFL have probably seen highlights of Tom Brady & Co.'s 59-0 drubbing of the Tennessee Titans last Sunday. More ridiculous than his statline (6 TD's and 380 yards passing in less than 3 quarters work) was the fact that a wintery mix of sleet and snow - keep in mind we're talking about mid-October - moved in over the field about an hour before gametime and lasted until the final whistle.

The HD vision of Foxboro got the rest of New England thinking about Jack Frost breathing down their neck, and probably triggered a mad, postgame dash to Home Depot for bags of sand, ice melt and shovels.

Winter in New England can run the gamut of blizzards to Nor'easters, hail and rain to weeks of sub-zero temperatures. It can mean everything from school closings to grocery store's running out of milk within an hour of the weatherman giving his forecast. It can also mean ice storms, trees collapsing under their own weight, frozen power lines, and millions of people across our region losing power for extended periods of time. As it did last year.

That's why we're hoping this innovation from Dartmouth engineering professor Victor Petrenko has legs. He's envisioned a system that increases the amount of power/heat that courses through a set of power lines. The lines can be juiced up with the flip of a switch, until they are hot enough to melt any ice that may build up during the course of a storm. If implemented, his invention could mean saving millions in cleanup and repair...not to mention keeping folks with power in thier homes during a season they need it most.

May the Roof Tiles above You Change Color

A bit of technological and design brilliance emanated from a group of MIT grads last week, in the form of color-changing roof tiles. The tiles, made of polymers commonly found in hair gels, turn white when hot (to reflect the sun) and black when cold (to absorb the sun).

So on a scorcher of summer day, when you'd normally have the AC's cranking, the tiles turn white and help a home to stay cool from the outside-in. In the winter, when the air outside is frigid, they change back to black and absorb all the energy and heat they can from the sun's rays.

Mentioning "scorcher of a summer day" above made me think of how blazingly hot the blacktop in beach parking lots get in the summer. What about the roads? They are a mass of reflective gold that does nothing but bake all day in the sun. As usual, science is waaaay ahead of me: the Solar Roadways project.

Point-and-Click Google

Google has some UK designers off in a lab working on an innovative device that will provide tag information on a subject simply by pointing at it. Google Vision, as it's being referred to, will combine GPS, OLED and advanced image recognition technology.

Think about how this could change everything from how sightseers take tours to – further down the line a bit – how doctors could potentially diagnose and treat patients. It will also – when combined with my arsenal of iPhone apps – make me an invincible, omnipotent trivia machine! Muh-ha-ha!

(via Coolhunter)

Sears Gives Shoppers the Points Up Front

Here is some interesting business model innovation from KMart/Sears, just in time for the Holidays (which, according to the world of retail, starts the day after Halloween). The Sears Christmas Club gets shoppers to sign up for a certain amount of spending, and then gives them the bonus points that amount entitles them to up front. This is like a Sub Club card where they start you off with a freebie. Not a bad idea, especially considering that the economic climate that will likely hang like a dark cloud over the shopping season.


(via Springwise)

Thirsty Thursday: Drinkers Buy Low at Berlin Bar

Market rules apply at Broker's Bier Borse in Berlin. The more patrons buy a beer, the more the price of that beer climbs, making the costs of the other, less-ordered beers fall. And the whole concept is tied together with a "ticker" that updates every three minutes, showing price movement for everything on tap.

Update: FIsker gets Big Loan

In an update to a story posted here last Thursday, the Department of Energy announced Tuesday that it will loan Fisker Automotive over a half billion dollars (!!!) for the development of their two lines of hybrid cars.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu states that the move will help lower greenhouse gas emissions and save/create 5,000 jobs (read the DOE's statement here). This piggybacks on a similar announcement around Telsa Motors electric sedan launch slated for 2011, and seems to be proving that Obama's team is walking the walk.

Dolby 5.1 for your Olfactory System?

Wild new concept idea from the Behance Network: a way to add smell to your television or movie-watching experience. And we're not talking about the smell of butter and dried soda syrup in the theater lobby, either...we're talking surround sound for the nose!

Cartridges load into the SMELLIT unit (sketched out above) just like you load color packs into a printer, except they pack "scents" instead of toner. They then discharge in time with whatever is happening on screen.

Car peeling out of a parking lot after pulling a bank job? Get ready for pungence of burnt rubber. The guy at the end of the street doesn't pick up after his dog, and the main character in the movie you're watching steps right in...well, you get the picture.

Griffin takes on the iPhone Lens

Griffin Technology, the technical solution providers and digital accessories makers, have designed a very cool iPhone case with built-in lens for extra focus called the Clarifi.

From their website:

Slide the Clarifi lens into place over the built-in lens of your iPhone. Your macro and close-up shots are instantly finer in detail, more accurate in color. With Clarifi's lens, your iPhone can image an entire business card with astounding clarity. Slide the lens aside for normal photography. WIthout Clarifi, iPhone requires about 18 inches to focus properly. Slide Clarifi's lens into place and you can move in to 4 inches for crisp detail and great pictures.

Apple's new TV spot states that there are 75,000 apps available for the iPhone. All the software stuff people are creating continues to impress, for sure, but my eye will be out for more external "hacks" like this.

It's an Electric...Boogie Woogie Woogie

What's under the cover, you ask? A prototype of Fisker Automotive's new electric luxury roadster. The Karma S, as it's called, was introduced to the public at the AlwaysOn Going Green conference, and is designed to go 50 miles on it's batteries (with a liquid-fuel based generator on board). It will cost around $80,000.

The Karma might not have been the most noteworthy news at the Fisker booth, though; an investor let slip that the company plans to develop and release a $39,000 version of thier plug-in hybrid by 2012.

How Rock Band Almost Got Rocked

Coincidental timing that I'm stumbling upon this article the morning after I spent a long night listening to my upstairs neighbors bang out John Bonham-like solos on a Rock Bank drum kit. It's another example of how valuable it is to watch actual consumers interact with your product, even if that means hours of studying karaoke!

And never mind the bags under my eyes, I'm glad the boys from Harmonix stuck it out.

Nikon Launches Camera that Projects

Just saw this new product launch from Nikon. The COOLPIX S1000pj is, from what it says, the first digital camera with a built-in projector capability. I'll be interested to follow this capability, and see how Nikon (and others) improve and expand upon this technology.

Writing on the Wall, in the Air

Engineers at Duke have developed a new way to enter information using smart phones: by writing it into the air. They've leveraged the phone's accelerometers (an internal device that tracks the phones movements and orientations, a huge asset in most games) and turned the phone into a pen, and the air into a blank tablet.

"By holding the phone like a pen, you can write short messages or draw simple diagrams in the air," said Sandip Agrawal, an electrical and computer engineering student at Duke University in North Carolina.

The PhonePoint Pen is due out in a few months, and could be the safe alternative to "driving while texting" the world has been waiting for.

Thanks to LiveScience.

Spelling FAME with three WWW's

An online syllabus for a new class at the Parsons New School is adorned with the following quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Fame is proof that people are gullible." The class is called Internet Famous.

FAME, at least according to this professor, is defined as getting hits; and students in this class learn the science behind how to best leverage social media channels and gain online audiences.

There is no A for Effort, though, as student's grades are tabulated solely on what kind of fame they are able to generate for themselves over the course of the semester:

Offered at Parsons New School of Deisgn, Internet Famous Class is dedicated to learning how to spread your work to the widest possible audience online. It's also the first algorithmically graded class in the history of academics.

Our Famotron software measures the online attention economy — view counts, blog links, social media activity, followers and their influence — and awards students their final letter grade.

Is this affiliated with the Reality TV school?

The Rubik's Redux

I've been reading people's posts on the American International Toy Fair, which wrapped up last week in NYC (photo gallery here). The Rubik's Touch Cube took home top honors for toy of the year, which, from what I can tell, is the toy industries version of an Oscar for Movie of the Year. Lots of thank-you's and people onstage hugging. The handheld-puzzle classic has been given an iPhone-inspired makeover, with touchscreen interfaces and multiple games.

Other cool debut's included Elmo Gloves (Mattel) and 3-D Sidewalk Chalk (Crayola).

Diamond Dust & Tonic?

Double Cross, a new premium vodka brand from Slovenia, recently arrived in US test markets.

Considering that there are some brands out there that distill 14 times, the septuple (7x) distillation struck me as a bit ho-hum for the premium category. What about this juice warrants a $50+ price point, I wondered? Oh, right. There it is. This hooch is filtered through diamond dust. That'll do it.

Reminds me of a Swiss brand I saw last year called Xellent. They distill their vodka with pure Swiss glacier water.

It was Mr. Green...on the Jetway...with the Cellphone!

Another example of an old favorite reinventing itself with new technology. The below is from a recent Hasbro press release, announcing the latest reincarnation of it's board game classic Clue.

"This fall, Hasbro’s classic game of murderous mayhem will take an international twist as the iconic characters from CLUE embark on a globetrotting adventure to foil the plans of the Criminal League for Ultimate Espionage (C.L.U.E.) in CLUE: Secrets & Spies Edition. Intrigue begets intrigue as the new optional text messaging feature transmits game shaping intelligence to Agents Plum, Scarlet, Mustard and the others while an ultraviolet, secret decoder reveals hidden missions to the players."

Read full release here.

Social Communities Become Errand Runners

Found a flyer for RunMyErrand.com's beta website on my door last night. They bill themselves as a site for "the busy" and "the not so busy," a social community through which users can find people to run the errands they're to busy to do themselves.

An online, paypal-like payment system seems to differentiate this from other sites like Craigslist, or the message board of multi-colored flyers behind the sugar station at the coffee house. It links the poster and the runner financially through a credit system; one credit equals one dollar.

Lets say I post "pick up my dry cleaning" as a 7 credit job. It would then go up on the site's wall for all to see, and potential errand-runners would apply to run my errand. I'd look at thier profiles and reviews others have posted, and make my choice. (Maybe they'd have a crazy, errand-running story like this guy??) Once my errand has been completed, funds would be transferred from me-the-poster to them-the-runner through this online credit system. I'd have my freshly laundered shirts, and they'd have seven bucks plunked into thier bank account. No in-person meeting needed, no exchange of cash required. And considering that paying someone for services rendered is an errand in and of itself, this is definately a good thing.