Windows Phone 9 = Kinect + Projector?
Is that a 31 inch Minority Report interface in your pocket?
Put it all on Jack?
Twitter? Maybe he just got lucky. Square, the way to pay with your phone? Others may beat him to it. Square, the way to turn the rest of us into merchantpreneurs? Mr Dorsey may yet live to rule our world
Snail mail about to fail?
They’ve got until October, then the US Postal service expects to run out of money. This video shows Congress trying to find out “Where have all the letters gone?”
Giants like PepsiCo, Time Warner and Pfizer talk candidly about how Social Media impacts them
When things go wrong, you could sometimes be forgiven for imagining that big institutions are indifferent to the effects of social media. This video should clear that up, at least for these household names, which seem fully engaged
Guitar perfectly in tune when its strings aren’t
No motors, gears or levers. 100% virtual physics and yet 100% real acoustics. It doesn’t make sense, but it works breathtakingly well. The catch? It isn’t cheap. Yet.
Startup mentoring as reality TV
What’s it like being interviewed by Paul Graham when you’re applying to Y Combinator? Watch this unmissable video of intense grilling and inspired brainstorming in front of a live audience
The iij top 10 upcoming customer service innovation books
Where is customer service innovation really happening right now? Is it mostly in sales, brands, marketing, call centers, e-commerce, retailing, CRM, products, social media, mobile, games, finance? These titles show that it’s taking place over the entire spectrum
Can America still pick winners in the energy innovation race?
An opportunity to watch Steve Chu, US Energy Secretary, running us through a list of technologies which he hopes will help America reassert itself in the rapidly intensifying struggle for competitiveness and maybe even its very survival
World record for the most innovations in a single experience?
A YouTube clip of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page playing a slow soulful country music version of a classical Chopin prelude with jazz-style backing at London’s Royal Albert Hall accompanied by a giant church organ. He was using a guitar internally modified so that you could bend its B string by pulling down against its shoulder strap peg in 1983
30,000 Clinical Pathology Labs For A Dollar
No British press coverage for a major innovation story: biotech legend Una Ryan secures funding from both the UK’s Department for International Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
From the ‘highly influential videos you’ve never seen’ department
Before the current mainstream recognition of ‘gamification as a business strategy’, these issues were rarely taken seriously by outsiders. Now that we’re all interested, these videos are an utter revelation, even to many insiders
Is there a Solid State Drive in your near future?
A remarkable tale of a technology whose blistering speed comes at a price that this beleaguered expert on the perils of inadequate backups is totally convinced you should be prepared to pay
The philosophical assumptions of social media
Platforms such as FaceBook have come under criticism for not offering ways to differentiate ‘types of friends’, and as such, not being ‘truly social’. Whilst this may be true, philosophers, sociologists and cultural anthropologists would argue that fixing this may introduce just as many problems as it solves
The iij Top Ten Upcoming Mobile Innovation Books
Surprisingly, we had the opposite problem to our usual one with this category: this time we were not quite as inundated with contenders
iij haunted by epic discovery failure
For some unfathomable reason, we’ve never covered anything on games design luminary Will Wright, and if that wasn’t bad enough, we never even knew that his latest major project wasn’t even a game.
Yeah, like, there’s this professor that GROWS electrical kit
Apart from biology, our physical world is mostly either dumb, rock hard, or both. We use that hard, dumb stuff to make durable things like tools, vehicles and buildings. Biology, although soft, squishy and smart, somehow also manages to grow incredibly hard things, like shells and teeth. Maybe biology can teach us better ways to make hard stuff too
iij Top Ten Startup Weekend Videos
I had to work my way through an enormous number of clips to put this together, but I still only scratched the surface. I had to do it now, because soon, there are going to be just too many to even attempt this with any sense of purpose.
Is the whole lean startup thing really nothing more than UX?
If you’re thinking: “Aha! at last, a lean startup skeptic! I always suspected all that MVP and pivot stuff was really just snake oil!” then this video is for you. But buckle up, you’re in for a bumpy user experience
The science? Social. The people? Mechanical. Sort of.
This lab is turning the way social science research is conducted on its head, and that’s not just because the whole thing is online
The iij top 20 upcoming design books for innovators
These titles are at the leading edge of thinking about where design and innovation meet. Not just in predictable design territory, such as consumer products or web and mobile apps, but also in such diverse fields as cultural development, physiological experience analysis and architectural kinetics
Extreme uncertainty over startups as a solution to everything
Startups attempt innovation under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Is it possible that we can find new ways to solve the world’s biggest problems using ‘extreme uncertainty’?
Microsoft can beat Google, but only by letting go of a cow
It may be a cash cow, but a ‘Windows first’ policy is holding back Windows Phone in a field dominated by Android
Maybe Scoble got it wrong and Convofy isn’t just the future of work
Robert’s insight into Adobe’s next OS was probably right, perhaps he just didn’t take it far enough
The angel scene: how much has changed since September?
You’ll probably scrutinise ‘angel disruptus maximus’ Naval Ravikant’s latest video much more thoroughly than I have, just to see how his predictions have changed since the last talk of his that we covered
Sneak preview of MIT research into robot humanisation
Can we build robots that can be taught in the same way that humans teach each other? That’s not how we teach robots now. Is this the way to make robots more useful in natural disasters?
Unemployment, social media addiction and startup proliferation
What are the differences in social media activity when comparing employed and unemployed people? Would you take on a job that was underpaid and unattractive, start or join a fun but non-paying, penniless startup, anything so as not to have fewer social experiences to share online?
Must-see video of banker doing something wonderful
‘My twelve year old son has autism, and has a terrible time with math. We have tried everything, viewed everything, bought everything. We stumbled upon your video on decimals, and it got through! Then we went on to the dreaded fractions. Again, he got it! We could not believe it! He is so excited.’
The iij Top Twenty Upcoming Social Media Books
What is the range of subject matter in our ‘spring collection’ of (weighty and in some cases expensive) Social Media volumes? Integration, culture, storytelling, journalism, transmedia, immersion, law, enterprise, strategy, teaching, meaning, creativity, identity, invention and belonging
Two innovation universes, one amazing video
This starts off as a talk about startup methodology but somehow manages to morph into a sales pitch for an intriguing new solar technology. If you’re able to keep up with Bill Gross’s sometimes ferocious pace of delivery, stick with it, it’s well worth the ride
Photosynth as a metaphor for an even bigger challenge
Remember the software that could use lots of casually taken photos of a scene and somehow combine them into a 3D model that you could then navigate in a breathtakingly intuitive way? Well, what if you could do the same with independently created scientific research databases?
How handing healthcare ownership back to the patient might just work
It’s a funny old world where it takes Wired Magazine to show the medical fraternity how truly unintelligible (but life-critical) gibberish can be transformed in ways that allow us to take control of our own well being
I Think, Therefore I Pivot: The Lean Startup Philosophy At Work
I just read this question on Quora: ‘What good books tell the story of the business model iterations and pivots of a notable company?’ My response is not a book, but a video of a talk at Y Combinator Startup School
The iij Top 10 Upcoming Agile Books
These titles aren’t available yet, but you may need to move quickly once they are. Agile software development may be rapidly moving into the mainstream, but that doesn’t mean the innovation in that field is slowing down
Innovation videos: making sure they’re not ignored
Fail to do most of the things below, and you risk the likelihood that even an outstanding presentation will be consigned to oblivion. Most innovation videos uploaded to YouTube are let down by things that are easily prevented
Startup death spiral? Surely not!
Maybe it’s just something that nobody wanted to talk about. Large organisations had, over the years, paid countless professors to study the shortcomings of large organisations, leaving the trials and tribulations of the startup unstudied, waiting for Steve Blank to one day notice something shockingly consistent about the way most startups spin out of control
Thousands of lean startup devotees bravely endure shaky YouTube video
Yes, it’s Eric Ries classic ‘Minimum Viable Product’ presentation. It’s so absorbing that you soon stop noticing the jitters. Oh, and no, you can’t even cheat by just listening to it. There are slides. And if you saw it in 2009 but you did nothing about it, shame on you, it’s time to watch it again.
Marketers target our invisible connective tissue, offline and online
We’re leaving trails behind us, both offline and online, inside and outside social media, that we don’t notice, but marketers do, and they’re using them to spot our closest friends, betting that they’ll share our tastes and would probably buy what we bought if they were approached.
Where does user generated content end and video journalism begin?
You don’t need to be a journalist to record reality well. But if you can regularly produce credible content, what do you want to be? How should ‘video news gathering’ fit into that question?
Customer Development. Trendy Phrase. Gimmick?
It doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia article yet (as at 2nd of February 2011). It came from someone called Steve Blank and a book from 2005, and yet it’s the hottest thing at all the top business schools. This video interview explains why
Angels teach Venture Capitalists how to accelerate startups
The new breed of angels: as much ‘startup coentrepreneurs’ as they are investors. Executive control, once obligatory, now seen as a liability, is being replaced with new brands of investor offerings which minimise dilution and instead creatively collaborate to facilitate leanness and opportunistic market agility. VCs are keenly studying this new wizardry
Where are the droids we’re looking for?
Are we on the threshold of Asimov’s robot dreams? We can’t make humanoids useful enough. We can’t make them cheap enough. Why not?
Choosing Tech Careers: Biotech vs. Consumer Tech
Most of the consumer technologies of 20 years ago seem ludicrously primitive today, whereas, for many diseases, current biotech leaves us almost as powerless to prevent the suffering and death of millions today as we were generations ago. However, it still offers the tantalising prospect of unlocking nature’s technology, and potentially rendering all our diseases and current consumer tech obsolete
A disturbing but important lecture about reinventing the lecture
As a keen watcher of lectures online, my initial reaction to this fierce assault on their value was hostile. But after watching this video again, I’ll admit that some valid points are being made
Clash of innovation news titans
An epic transatlantic on-air wrangle over Google’s future. Veteran BBC innovation investigator Peter Day vs. US prediction guru Mark Anderson. They each put up a characteristically robust performance. But who won? Whatever, it was riveting radio.
Ron Conway, archangel, on video, on how it all began
He’s been investing in a new company every six days for fifteen years. What’s that like? He secured Google’s first Venture Capital when Google had six people. What was that like?
Emotion: the new weapon of choice for experience designers?
Could it be true that we’ve finally mastered the art of controlling users’ emotions? This talk by a design consultant claims that this is what their research has made possible
A replicator you’d give your right arm for
This video includes the most memorable anecdotes I’ve ever heard. “What’s that doing in there?” his freaked-out girlfriend asked. “Well, I just wanted to see if the artificial leg I just made was dishwasher safe”
The rebirth of the rebirth of distance
It’s been quite a while since the last big fuss about ‘peak oil’: hardly surprising, once oil fell from its pre-crash peak. A guy who made a lot of that fuss is back giving his post-crash perspective in a video. He believes the ‘local vs. global’ balance could be about to change
What’s the impact of crowdsourcing on the media?
What does crowdsourcing mean to an editor? Asking the audience. Doesn’t sound so radical, does it? But within mainstream media, the very term is plagued by controversy. This revealing video gives the view from some leading pioneers, both in the back room and on the front line.
The apps creators are on fire
So many ideas, all coming at you at once. Don’t expect these people to pour anything onto the flames but gasoline. iPad (and tablet) apps from a content creation perspective