Financiers pay the ultimate price in socially-funded horror
This impressive panel investigates radical funding ideas for new projects. Included is the possibility that it might be possible to dispense with ‘investors’ altogether, in some cases with amusingly ‘horrific’ alternatives
Who IS this guy?
Never heard of Oliver Kreylos? You will. He’s just transformed the Kinect from a hands-free game controller into a holographic camera. The demo blew many minds, quickly getting a million YouTube hits. He didn’t think it was that impressive: check out what he’s working on now
Where does nanochemistry belong in the world of nanotech?
To get some insight into this new discipline, you might find this video describing the background to a researcher’s eureka moment well worth watching. It’s a talk by Geoffrey Ozin, widely regarded as the father of nanochemistry
Next year’s innovation books
A carefully selected (but woefully incomplete) list of some fascinating titles that you can’t buy yet
Unlikely tale of a bike created by twiddling three buttons
One of the great music biz anecdote clips, Jim Steinman’s surprising gifts as a gonzo raconteur prove worthy of the acknowledged master of that art, Peter Ustinov
A phone that morphs into a tablet
What are the next generation of phones going to look like? There hasn’t been a radically new ‘phone form factor’ for a while. Perhaps the iPad and its ‘larger than a phone’ screen size will drive a whole new generation of phone design ideas
Stop! Too much solar power!
Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic explosion. The grid can’t take it.
Tomorrow’s digital licensing: what are the issues?
If you bought into all the hubris about the ‘inevitable’ demise of charging for content, you might imagine that debating the future of licensing was pointless. Or just dull. Watching this might change your mind
Does the idea of “turning everything into a game” just sound silly to you?
Then you may be behind the times. Your business might soon be someone else’s football and you may become nothing more than their pawn. Just because business is only just starting to realise that turning everything into a game can work, doesn’t mean that you can afford to just sit back and wait for the results
Who is Mr Prediction in Tech?
This year was expected to be so full of unprecedented upheavals that getting it right would be tougher than ever.
Priceless video: father and son grappling with the past, present and future of design
Alex Bogusky, legendary poster boy for the ad business, rashly decides to interview his dad online. The outcome reveals what looks like a stormy relationship between a ‘designer parent’ and a ‘designer child’
Why does ‘formal transparency’ often still seem so opaque?
Many public organisations have been ‘formally transparent’ for centuries, yet the more detail they publish about their proceedings, the less we seem to understand about what they do. Are there new ways to fix this broken process?
Is it a game? a learning tool? a programming language?
Whatever it is, it’s been around for years, I’d never heard of it and it’s become a huge educational phenomenon: it’s been used to create over a million projects
Gave content away free, raised live show seat price 50% to $6,000: still sold out
TED risked everything by putting their precious content online for nothing, but it paid off, they are now bigger than ever: the future is live
Education, prepare to meet thy maker
If you’d kept an eye on this man over the years, you’d have had an inside track on many things, long before they became important. Now he’s turning his mind to the future of education
Wondering why the record player isn’t dead yet?
The demise of the CD has been under way for well over a decade, so why is its century-old predecessor still a thriving part of today’s music culture?
Everything we thought we knew about privacy needs rethinking
Could health authorities force us to publish every detail of our daily activities by insisting we all carry smartphones with monitoring apps revealing not just how long we slept, but where?
The valley’s angel scene is going crazy
It’s unrecognisable from just a few years ago: lots more angels, much bigger sums, many more investments
Are some things just too personal to share?
Your most private functions may soon not be quite so private
Who is todays greatest innovation visionary?
In the 60s and 70s, the title ‘Oracle of the electric age’ was given to one man
You may not be a Web designer, but…
It might just be useful to see the world from their perspective: this video does quite a good job of conveying their ultimate ‘nightmare experience’: the dreaded Design Review with the client
What is this thing called Transmedia?
And what really happened at 8pm on the 17th of November 1978?
Not ashamed of your product on day one?
Then maybe you should be ashamed of launching it way too late
Left Microsoft for Google: What’s startup catalyst Don Dodge doing now?
Here he is chairing a panel of top VCs on the ‘freemium’ business model [Video]
OLPC plans $75 kids’ tablet PC
One Laptop Per Child plans to have an open source $75 tablet PC with a semi-flexible plastic touch screen available in 2012.
Easy being green? Not if you make mobile handsets
It’s all the consumer’s fault (green mobile phone consciousness is only just warming up)
US dominates BBC list of net entrepreneurs who made it
Who’s rich and which companies dominate the internet.