Matt Kramer's Library tagged innovation →  View Popular

March 6th, 2009 in Productivity
4 Pocket-Sized Tools to Help You Generate Killer Ideas Any Time, Anywhere

20090306-ideas

The ability to generate creative, profitable, problem-solving ideas is growing in importance, especially with the global economy stuck in the doldrums. But how can you be creative on demand? Here are four pocket-sized card decks that you can take anywhere – to your next team meeting or to a quiet park where you can brainstorm free from distractions – to help you generate your next breakthrough idea:


knowbrainer-200pxKnowBrainer: If you are looking for a creativity tool that is powerful, portable, and low tech, then you ought to check out the KnowBrainer. This tool does an excellent job of leveraging the mind’s capabilities of association to a major advantage. Developer Gerald Haman has spent years amassing and assessing key words and questions that are the most effective at generating ideas, and he has incorporated them (along with evocative images and quotes) into this colorful, fun-to-use flip card deck. It contains sections that are designed to help you to:

* Clearly define your challenge and investigate your needs,
* Create ideas,
* Evaluate them using a number of criteria, and
* Put them into action

The KnowBrainer is built around Haman’s four-phase Accelerated Innovation process. It incorporates keywords, questions and concepts from the world’s leading new product design firms, Six Sigma quality tools, new books on marketing and the latest research on innovation process tools, is now in its third version. When you first see it, you may be tempted to dismiss the KnowBrainer as a simple card deck, but don’t let its low-tech “interface” fool you. This is one powerful and easy to use idea-generation tool!

freethegenieFree the Genie: Free the Genie is a new deck of 55 creative thinking cards that you can think of as your “personal genie” — a powerful brainstorming assistant that is available to you anytime, anywhere to help you unstick your thinking. This ideation tool i

www.lifehack.org/...r-ideas-any-time-anywhere.html - Preview

mindmapping innovation

June 11, 2009
Rajeev Motwani, Guide in the Creation of Google, Dies at 47
By MIGUEL HELFT

Rajeev Motwani, a Stanford computer science professor and an investor in technology start-ups who mentored many young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, including the founders of Google, died on Friday at his home in Atherton, Calif. He was 47.

The cause of death was being investigated, said Robert Foucrault, the San Mateo County coroner. Responding to a report of a drowning, police officers went to Mr. Motwani’s home and found him dead at the bottom of his backyard swimming pool Friday morning, said Lt. Mike Guerra of the Atherton Police Department. There was no evidence of a crime at the scene, he said.

Professor Motwani was best known for helping to guide Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, when the two were graduate students at Stanford in the mid-1990s. Professor Motwani, an expert in algorithms and the mathematical theory underlying computer science, helped Mr. Brin and Mr. Page explore the possibilities emerging from the analysis of the Web as a graph of interconnected pages.

“We spent a lot of our time thinking, talking, brainstorming,” Mr. Brin said Monday. Those conversations and Professor Motwani’s approach, he said, were “what enabled us to ultimately create something that turned out to be very useful for search.”

After Google’s founding, Professor Motwani became a member of its technical advisory council.

Professor Motwani’s work spanned various areas of computer science, including databases, data mining, Web search and information retrieval. He is recognized academically for his research on “randomized algorithms,” which are used as a kind of shortcut to solve problems that are so complex and involve so much data — for example, all the pages on the Web — that computing an exact answer would be impractical or impossible.

Professor Motwani helped explain when a randomized algorithm, which performs only a subset of the computations needed to obtain an exact answer, is sufficiently accurate.

Prof

www.nytimes.com/...11motwani.html - Preview

innovation

The race for clean-energy innovation

By Edward J. Markey | June 6, 2009

ON A RECENT congressional delegation to Hong Kong, I toured a factory that is developing a thin solar cell that can be put on windows to generate electricity from the sun with zero carbon emissions. I thought of 1366 Technologies, a company in Lexington that is also racing to get advanced solar technologies to market.

It may seem like your typical competition between two companies, but this race is about much more than the solar market. It is about the race for trillions of dollars in clean-energy investments. As President Obama says, "the nation that leads in 21st-century clean energy is the nation that will lead the 21st-century global economy."

And if we win the race, it could bring 150,000 new jobs and billions of dollars to Massachusetts.

American companies would get an edge with passage of the Waxman-Markey bill, the most sweeping energy legislation Congress has considered in a generation. The plan would end America's dangerous dependence on foreign oil, increase the amount of clean energy we produce, make our buildings, homes, cars, and trucks more efficient, and cut the harmful carbon pollution causing global warming.

The bill requires that 20 percent of our electricity in 2020 come from clean-energy sources like solar or wind, or from energy efficiency. It establishes "clean-energy innovation hubs" around the country to help researchers and inventors move their ideas from the lab to the market.

It also reduces carbon emissions from major US sources 83 percent by 2050 compared with 2005 levels, and saves consumers money at the pump by investing $20 billion to retool America's auto manufacturers to produce electric cars that don't use any gasoline.

The Waxman-Markey bill would invest more than $190 billion in clean-energy technologies that will go to the companies, research institutions, and entrepreneurs smart enough, agile enough, and innovative enough to devise the next great clean-energy technology.

Many of these cutting

www.boston.com/...ce_for_clean_energy_innovation - Preview

energy environment innovation

For Internet printer, path to profit was free

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist | June 7, 2009

At a meeting in 1999, Gwyn Jones pitched what he thought was a winning idea to the CEO of his Internet printing company: Why not offer first-time customers a box of 250 business cards, custom-printed just for them? And what if the business cards were free?

Jones and Robert Keane, CEO of Lexington-based VistaPrint Ltd., thought that if the deal could lure enough customers to their printing service, the volume would eventually drive their printing costs lower than any competitor's. While giving away business cards would cost the company about $20 an order at first (not including shipping, paid by the customer), if they could get to hundreds of thousands of orders, the cost would drop to about a buck or two.

"If the free offer could get customers to come," says Jones, a former VistaPrint vice president, "we'd get big and eclipse the other guys trying to do Internet-based printing start-ups."

It was exactly the same lose-money-on-every-order-and-make-it-up-on-volume strategy that torpedoed hundreds of dot-coms. Yet in VistaPrint's case, giving something away for nothing built a profitable company that today has 1,600 employees and is expected to generate $500 million in revenue this year. And Keane, who has expanded beyond business cards and letterhead into digital services like website hosting and e-mail marketing, now talks about trying to follow the path of great business growth stories like Staples, FedEx, and Intuit.

One of the most anticipated business books of the year is "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," by Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson. Out next month, it delves into some of the ways companies have built businesses around giving their products away. (Google, which sells billions of dollars of advertising around its many free Web-based services, is one example.)

So how did "freeconomics" - a term coined by Anderson - work for VistaPrint? Keane admits that he was concerned about the cost of setti

www.boston.com/..._cards_then_profit_on_reorders - Preview

innovation onlineapps

Justices to Weigh Issue of Patenting Business Methods
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide what sorts of business methods might be patented, an issue with the potential to reshape significant parts of the economy.

“This is the most important patent case in 50 years, in particular because there is so much damage and so much good the court could do,” said John F. Duffy, a law professor at George Washington University who submitted a brief in the appeals court in support of neither side.

“The newest areas of technology are most threatened by the issues at stake here,” Professor Duffy said. “The court taking this is likely to make a lot of people nervous, including software manufacturers and biotechnology companies.”

In October, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington significantly narrowed the processes eligible for patent protection, ruling that only those “tied to a particular machine or apparatus” or transforming “a particular article into a different state or thing” qualified.

The petitioners in the case, Bernard L. Bilski and Rand A. Warsaw, had sought to patent a method of hedging risks in the sale of commodities, including the risks associated with bad weather. The appeals court ruled against them, and it disavowed statements in earlier cases suggesting that business processes could be patented so long as they yielded useful, concrete and tangible results.

In urging the Supreme Court to hear the case, the petitioners said the appeals court’s decision put tens of thousands of patents at risk.

They added that the decision “threatens to stifle innovation in emerging technologies that drive today’s information-based economy.”

The appeals court attracted supporting briefs on both sides of the issue from many kinds of businesses, including management consulting, computer software, insurance and tax accounting firms.

One brief, from several financial services companies, urged the appeals court to be wary of protecting business processes no

www.nytimes.com/...02bizcourt.html - Preview

innovation

This June, let ideas bust out all over

By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist | May 31, 2009

If you want to understand real economic pain - and how it is alleviated - you have to rewind the tape a little more than two centuries.

Most people remember that when George Washington and his Continental Army drove the British from Boston in 1776, it was one of the first victories of the Revolution. It was also the start of "the most significant depression in Boston's history," says Bob Krim, executive director of the Boston History & Innovation Collaborative. "Eighty-five percent of the population left," and because of the war, the merchants of the city could no longer trade with Britain or the West Indies. The foundation of the city's industry crumbled overnight.

But within a decade, Boston had discovered a new business opportunity - shipping otter skins from the Pacific Northwest to China and importing products like silk and tea - and figured out how to dominate it. "Trade with China had been barred by the British, and it was such a long trip, no one thought it would be worth it," Krim says. "But these merchants had some seed capital, and they took the incredible risk of figuring out what could be sold in China."

Creating new industries is what we've done in these parts to deal with economic disruptions for more than 200 years. From textile mills to nanotubes, mutual funds to medical devices, the people of New England know, deep in our DNA, how to come up with the new ideas, products, and businesses that make economic rebounds possible.

As the irrepressible entrepreneur and investor Bill Warner puts it, we've gotten used to the idea that "after every downturn comes the inevitable recovery." (One month after Warner founded video-editing company Avid Technology Inc. in 1987, the stock market crashed; today, the Tewksbury company employs more than 2,000 people and has a market capitalization of more than $500 million.)

But even if you believe that innovation eventually propels that "inevitable recovery," the main thi

www.boston.com/...ne_let_ideas_bust_out_all_over - Preview

innovation

Start-up built on free software
So-called open source platforms keep costs down

By D.C. Denison, Globe Staff | May 26, 2009

When cofounder Jay Batson was putting together his start-up Acquia last year, he figured one advantage would help it stand out from all the other companies that manage Web content for business clients.

The software was free.

"Free is very disruptive," Batson said. "In a fragmented market, 'free' commands a lot of attention."

Batson's Andover company sells products, services, and technical support for Drupal, an open source software platform originally authored by company cofounder Dries Buytaert. Open source means it's built and maintained by a worldwide army of volunteer programmers, and unlike the pricey products offered by traditional software companies, is available for anybody to use at no cost. With Drupal, Acquia would be able to price its services without having to charge customers for any hefty software license fees.

It's a strategy that is gaining currency in a tight economy.

"Cost is definitely driving a lot of interest in open source," said Stephen Powers, an analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge. "It's a question I'm hearing all the time: Can we do this cheaper with open source?"

In a September 2008 survey conducted by Forrester Research, 56 percent of companies that use open source software named cost as the primary motivation. A survey by Framingham market intelligence firm IDC found that 10 to 24 percent of the software purchases made in 2008 by the companies it questioned went to open source, up from less than 10 percent in 2007.

Open source programs, which started to gain currency around the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, initially had difficulty attracting mainstream users because volunteer-maintained software was thought to be less reliable and less secure than products from blue chip technology providers like IBM and Microsoft. But over the past 10 years, as such open source programs as Apache, Linux, and MySql have been integrated into mainstream corp

www.boston.com/...tart_up_built_on_free_software - Preview

tools innovation

Rolodexes are ancient history, and you can send everything from your contact information to videos of the kids beaming from your smartphone with a touch of a button. So is the business card dead? Not by a long shot, said Boston workplace specialist Ann Ivey. Although virtual cards are the new handshake, paper still dominates. "Any time there is face-to-face interaction - and there's still plenty of that, even in the electronic age - it's useful to have a tangible business card," said Ivey.

The $1.2 billion business card industry has evolved from a formal, print shop product to anything goes, including high-tech cards embedded with computer chips that can be plugged in to a personal computer to download information. For the traditional paper business card, the do-it-yourself option is getting cheaper and easier, whether online or in a store: Staples, for example, offers 30-minute business cards, from design to print.

But cards need to list a lot more than name, address, and phone number. Multiple points of access, including Twitter and Facebook addresses, are a must. "Businessmen want their cards to have a 'sticky' factor. This is especially true in a tough economy," said Melissa Crowe, a vice president with Lexington-based VistaPrint.

Bruce Fenton, managing director of Atlantic Financial, a Boston capital management firm, proffers a multilanguage card: One side has English, and the other Arabic. He also has a English-Japanese version. "It shows a commitment to the region if you do a lot of work there," said Fenton.

Of course, any business card needs to be backed by a beefy presence in cyberspace, said marketing consultant Kellyann Dinoff. "In a world where 'Googling' is a legitimate verb, if your website doesn't sing, you might as well not exist - even with a fabulous business card."

— Cindy At

www.boston.com/...bright_ideas_businesscards - Preview

innovation

Software programmers get physical
Many actively seeking out old-fashioned electronic tinkering, calling it 'more real'

By D.C. Denison, Globe Staff | May 18, 2009

Soldering guns were holstered in their tabletop stands, ready for action, as Jimmie Rodgers demonstrated how to cut a resister off a small circuit board.

"Now we've got something to work with," he told a recent Saturday afternoon soldering workshop at Microsoft's sleek Startup Labs, 11 stories above the Cambridge bank of the Charles River.

Before long, thin wisps of gray smoke were rising from the workshop table as an intent group of students started connecting circuits with dabs of molten solder.

Workshop student Len Taing, who earns his living as a Web programmer, was smiling as he wrangled some errant red and yellow wires with a pair of needle-nose pliers.

"My normal job is way up in the clouds," he said. "This is so much more down to earth; this is really a great change."

It's a change that many programmers and software developers are actively seeking out, on their own time, as they flock to relatively old-fashioned electronic tinkering as an escape from jobs and careers that are predominantly virtual, binary, and online.

Workshop leader Rodgers, who works as a senior desktop administrator during the week, is not surprised.

"It's a way to get off the screen," he said, making a frame with his hands.

"You can do much more with this stuff than you can with a keyboard and mouse," he added, pointing to the large work table, littered with alligator clips, capacitors, rolls of soldering wire, plastic boxes of parts, and batteries. "This is more physical, more real."

The soldering sessions at Microsoft were part of a two-day Maker Revolution workshop held last month that also included sessions on hacking electronic toys, robot prototyping, and displays of interactive art.

A few blocks away on that same weekend, there was a Boston BarCamp "unconference" at MIT's Stata Center, where a hands-on, do-it-yourself aesthetic was also noticeable among

www.boston.com/...tware_programmers_get_physical - Preview

innovation

images.google.com/imgres - Preview

innovation

architectradure.blogspot.com/ - Preview

innovation

By Regine
on February 14, 2007 10:50 AM
Categories:

augmented reality
design
gadgets
games
interview
rfid
ubiquitous computing
wearable

Somehow related:
A visit to UCLA Department of Design | Media Arts, part 1
Images from a day at the Salone del Mobile in Milan
Interview with Jay Yan
Diritto Rovescio, Threads that weave art, design and mass creativity
Wanting to Be You
Radiographer of the day
Book Review - Digital by Design: Crafting Technology for Products and Environments
The Toaster Project
Recent articles:

Bring me home, please


0portraitcati.jpgWhen i asked her what she does or drink to have so much energy and creativity Cati Vaucelle simply told me that she is spending the nights playing World of Warcraft. Well, i'm sorry Cati, it doesn't work for us mere mortals! Hanging around with druids and having a stroll through Dun Morogh on the back of a tiger doesn't usually results in projects that i'd want to blog. And if Cati's avatar kills monsters and completes quests as fast as she engineers new projects then she might be one of the most formidable players around. One day she's working on a touch-sensitive dress for sensory therapy, the day after she announces that she's just finished collaborating with Hayes Raffle on a rubber stamp that children can press onto the page to record sounds into their drawings.

I don't know which label i should put on Cati Vaucelle: is she a researcher? an artist? a designer? Something in between?

I am a knowledge shopper. I studied philosophy and fine arts, applied computer science, psychology, and computational linguistics starting in Paris with a B.S. in mathematics and economics. At MIT I took classes in engineering and programming, recently graduating from Harvard University in product design and architecture. Juggling among degrees triples my inspiration. I feel empowered by applying this knowledge in my research. Now I define myself as a researcher, an inventor and an artist at the same time. I collaborate frequently

www.we-make-money-not-art.com/...interview-with-9.php - Preview

innovation

Charlestown teen wins $15G for invention
By Caitie Peterson | Saturday, May 16, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
Photo
Photo by John Wilcox

Min Zhong, a senior at Charlestown High School, claimed a $15,000 prize yesterday for cranking the concept of “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” emergency assistance to a whole new level.

Zhong’s award-winning invention is the “New Medical Alert System,” which allows emergency officials to gain entry to the homes of residents who summon medical help - even if their door is locked.

Zhong, who immigrated to the United States from China three years ago, won the first-place prize in Burns & Levinson LLP’s fourth annual Power of an Idea Scholarship Contest.

“I’ve always liked math and science and wanted to create something that made a difference,” Zhong said in her speech at the awards ceremony. “To me, this is an important invention that I hope will lead to more peace of mind to elderly and their families.”

Next year, Zhong will attend Tufts University, where she will study chemical engineering.
Ar

www.bostonherald.com/...view.bg - Preview

health innovation

TED Talks Now Mind Blowing in 40+ Languages
By MARSHALL KIRKPATRICK, ReadWriteWeb

TED, the Technology Education and Design conference made up of short talks by brilliant people from around the world, is now making its archives available with subtitles in more than 40 languages. This is the kind of news that could make a real impact in a lot of peoples' lives.

TED Talks are brain stretching, tear-jerking, 18 minute nuggets of emerging wisdom. The new translation project is sponsored by Nokia and uses the awesome volunteer-powered translation service DotSub.

Unfortunately the multi-lingual subtitles aren't available in the embedded TED video players. They are in DotSub's usual players, though that service uses an iframe. If you speak languages other than English, the rest of the DotSub site is quite worth a visit as well.

So far 306 translations have been completed, hopefully more will be performed soon. Bringing these TED videos to more people around the world is a big win for humanity. It is truly remarkable how TED has gone from a closed gathering for the global elite to becoming far, far more publicly available. Andy Carvin has some more details over at NPR.

Copy

www.nytimes.com/...ing-in-40-languages-12208.html - Preview

innovation

Keeping Mass. an innovation leader

By Drew Gilpin Faust and Jack M. Wilson | May 9, 2009

PRESIDENT Barack Obama recently enunciated a grand new vision for the role of science by pledging to devote more than 3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product to research and development and to exceed the levels of investment last achieved at the height of the space race. In doing so, he rejected the argument that investment in science is a luxury to be discarded in difficult times.

Achieving the president's goals - and expanding the local, regional, and national economies - will require greater, more innovative collaboration than ever before, particularly at this moment of economic and social uncertainty. It will also depend on active cooperation among scientists at research institutions like Harvard and the University of Massachusetts. Fortunately, universities throughout the state are already taking up that challenge.

For example, we recently launched the Commonwealth's newest initiative to transform scientific research into economic vitality. The new Venture Development Center at UMass-Boston will serve as a transfer station for exciting concepts born of collaborations between faculty and students, often at different institutions, enticing investment and incubating what might be the next "big idea." Simultaneously, this research and development facility will help train tomorrow's innovators.

The center is a tangible example of the powerful ecosystem of renewal and discovery at the foundation of our regional success and international standing. It also symbolizes what we already know: Massachusetts is well positioned to be a leading force in this new national vision for science, something that will benefit every citizen in the state.

Private higher education alone employs more than double the entire biotechnology sector in Massachusetts. There are 90,000 people in the Boston metropolitan area employed at private colleges and universities. When public institutions are added, that number swells to 104,000. That represe

www.boston.com/...ping_mass_an_innovation_leader - Preview

academic innovation

A Battle to Preserve a Visionary’s Bold Failure
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

In 1901, Nikola Tesla began work on a global system of giant towers meant to relay through the air not only news, stock reports and even pictures but also, unbeknown to investors such as J. Pierpont Morgan, free electricity for one and all.

It was the inventor’s biggest project, and his most audacious.

The first tower rose on rural Long Island and, by 1903, stood more than 18 stories tall. One midsummer night, it emitted a dull rumble and proceeded to hurl bolts of electricity into the sky. The blinding flashes, The New York Sun reported, “seemed to shoot off into the darkness on some mysterious errand.”

But the system failed for want of money, and at least partly for scientific viability. Tesla never finished his prototype tower and was forced to abandon its adjoining laboratory.

Today, a fight is looming over the ghostly remains of that site, called Wardenclyffe — what Tesla authorities call the only surviving workplace of the eccentric genius who dreamed countless big dreams while pioneering wireless communication and alternating current. The disagreement began recently after the property went up for sale in Shoreham, N.Y.

A science group on Long Island wants to turn the 16-acre site into a Tesla museum and education center, and hopes to get the land donated to that end. But the owner, the Agfa Corporation, says it must sell the property to raise money in hard economic times. The company’s real estate broker says the land, listed at $1.6 million, can “be delivered fully cleared and level,” a statement that has thrown the preservationists into action.

The ruins of Wardenclyffe include the tower’s foundation and the large brick laboratory, designed by Tesla’s friend Stanford White, the celebrated architect.

“It’s hugely important to protect this site,” said Marc J. Seifer, author of “Wizard,” a Tesla biography. “He’s an icon. He stands for what humans are supposed to do — honor nature while using high technology to harness its powers.”

www.nytimes.com/...05tesla.html - Preview

innovation

Michael Egan, 56, scientist devoted to Boston

By Jenna Nierstedt, Globe Correspondent | May 6, 2009

E. Michael Egan was committed to returning the favor to the city that raised him, provided him with an education, and netted him a successful scientific career.

After graduating from Boston area schools, Mr. Egan began a 30-year career as a biotechnology specialist, contributing to cutting-edge research for challenging human diseases, such as cancer, HIV, and Parkinson's.

Meanwhile, he brought up his children in the city and established himself as a steady donor to local arts groups, schools, and social causes.

Mr. Egan died Thursday of melanoma at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He was 56.

"What stands out was his devotion to Boston as a place," said his wife, Laura J. Sen of Brookline, citing his financial contributions to Boston Latin School, the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, and the Division of Developmental Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston.

Raised in Roslindale, Mr. Egan graduated from Boston Latin School in 1972. While there, he studied classical percussion at the Boston Conservatory of Music and was a member of the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Immediately after receiving a bachelor's degree in biology from Boston College in 1976, Mr. Egan began a seven-year stint as a researcher in the Division of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

In 1982, Mr. Egan married Sen, whom he had met at Boston College's O'Connell House Student Union while the two were resident assistants.

The couple resided in Brighton before moving to Brookline, where they brought up two children, Kathryn and Sean. "I like to say the only time my husband ever said no to me was when I asked to move to the suburbs," Sen said. "He was a city guy."

Mr. Egan earned a certificate of special studies in administration and management from Harvard University.

"His goal was to make a transition from being a scientist to working on the business side of biotechnology," Sen said. "That was h

www.boston.com/...56_scientist_devoted_to_boston - Preview

innovation

* Home /
* News /
* Health news - Boston Globe - health columns

The Boston Globe
Few hospitals go paperless using free VA software
Electronic record system helps W. Va.
PUSHING FOR AN OPEN-SOURCE SOLUTION 'This legislation [makes] health information technology a realistic option for all providers.' -- Senator Jay Rockefeller PUSHING FOR AN OPEN-SOURCE SOLUTION
"This legislation [makes] health information technology a realistic option for all providers." -- Senator Jay Rockefeller
By Lisa Wangsness
Globe Staff / May 4, 2009

* Email|
* Print|
* Reprints|
* Yahoo! Buzz|
* ShareThis

Text size – +

WASHINGTON - In a country where just 1.5 percent of US hospitals have fully computerized records, one of the poorest and least technologically advanced states has created a paperless records system for its state-run hospitals and nursing homes serving the indigent elderly and mentally ill.
Discuss
COMMENTS (23)

'This legislation [makes] health information technology a realistic option for all providers.'

PUSHING FOR AN OPEN-SOURCE SOLUTION

West Virginia did it on the cheap by using an electronic medical records system built by the Veterans Administration with taxpayer dollars, saving millions in software licensing fees charged by commercial software vendors. The VA software, known as VistA, is open-source software - its code is freely available to the public and is constantly being improved by users - and it includes important features, such as a bar-coding system to track drug dispensations, to help improve patient safety.

But very few US hospitals have taken advantage of it. Wealthier hospitals have opted to buy more expensive, custom systems from private vendors, while smaller and more rural hospitals often stick with paper records.

"I would think there would be a tremendous opportunity for using this as a platform, particularly for smaller hospitals that have a real challenge in coming up with the money for electronic medical records," said Dr. William Weeks, an associate profes

www.boston.com/...perless_using_free_va_software - Preview

innovation health

Tinker Away, Facebook Says
By BRAD STONE

TO understand the counterintuitive business wisdom infecting Silicon Valley these days, consider an imaginary corner supermarket, Joe’s Foods.

After establishing his store as a vibrant enterprise and a hive of neighborhood activity, Joe makes a strange decision: he props open the front door and invites everyone to come in, take the merchandise free of charge, and then give it away themselves.

All the extra foot traffic, Joe says, will make Joe’s Foods the social center of the community.

That is roughly comparable to what Facebook, the popular social network, did this past week. In a loud and proud public announcement, it said it didn’t care whether its members visited Facebook.com at all.

The company said it would provide a set of technology tools that will let other companies create programs that tap into the heart of the social network — the endless stream of photographs, status updates and comments that people post to the service. Saying it is unable to provide a range of access to the service from every possible gadget, Facebook expects developers to create Facebook programs that sit on computer desktops, run inside Web browsers and are tailored to a wide range of mobile devices like the iPhone.

“We believe we are giving people a better way to share more information in more places, and we actually expect it will allow Facebook to grow significantly,” said Ethan Beard, Facebook’s director of platform marketing.

The shift follows a similar strategy by Twitter, the microblogging service that from its inception has let third parties create the programs that let people see and post Twitter updates.

With each of these fashionable Web start-ups trying to become the essential platform for social dialogue on the Web, it has been a battle royal, and one of the most interesting and odd technology competitions since Microsoft and Netscape fell over each other to give away their browsers in the first browser wars.

The duel has also provoked a flurry of entrepreneurial ener

www.nytimes.com/...03stream.html - Preview

innovation socialnetworking

Board Ties at Apple and Google Are Scrutinized
By MIGUEL HELFT and BRAD STONE

SAN FRANCISCO — The Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry into whether the close ties between the boards of two of technology’s most prominent companies, Apple and Google, amount to a violation of antitrust laws, according to several people briefed on the inquiry.

Apple and Google share two directors, Eric E. Schmidt, chief executive of Google, and Arthur Levinson, former chief executive of Genentech. The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 prohibits a person’s presence on the board of two rival companies when it would reduce competition between them. The two companies increasingly compete in the cellphone and operating systems markets.

Antitrust experts say the provision against “interlocking directorates,” known as Section 8 of the act, is rarely enforced. Nevertheless, the agency has already notified Google and Apple of its interest in the matter, according to the people briefed on the inquiry, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because the inquiry was confidential.

F.T.C. officials declined to comment. Spokespeople for Apple and Google also declined to comment. A spokesman for Genentech declined to make Mr. Levinson available for comment.

The inquiry, which appears to be in its early stages, is the second antitrust examination involving Google to have surfaced in recent days. It suggests that despite the company’s closeness to the Obama administration, Google will not escape scrutiny from regulators.

Mr. Schmidt campaigned for then-Senator Barack Obama during his presidential campaign and advised the transition team and the administration on various matters. He was recently appointed to President Obama’s advisory council on science and technology.

Christine A. Varney, who was recently confirmed as the head of the antitrust division of the Justice Department, last year singled out Google as a probable source of future antitrust concerns because of its near monopoly on Internet search and advertising.

Some antitru

www.nytimes.com/...05apple.html - Preview

innovation