Recently in Innovation Category

Is your company a communications technology innovator? Here's an opportunity to get some recognition. I've just learned that the 2006 TMC Labs Innovation Awards deadline for Internet Telephony magazine is just days away, May 25, 2006.

Follow this link to go to the online application form.

Here's a good writeup from Tom Keating, TMC Labs founder, explaining what the award is all about:

What are the TMC Labs Innovation Awards?

The TMC Labs Innovation Awards honor products that demonstrate raw innovation, unique features, and significant contributions toward improving communications technology. While innovation is frequently a question of firsts, often it is taking an existing idea and improving upon it or looking at it from a slightly different perspective. Challenging established standards, and then introducing different approaches to achieve distinctive results certainly helps to define innovation within this industry.

The TMC Labs Innovation Awards would not be granted only to the "best" (or best-selling) products in each category, but instead to those demonstrating raw innovation, uniqueness, and representing a significant contribution to the industry. It is our intent that this will be TMC's most prestigious award.

In fact, TMC Labs chooses only a few select products that we consider truly innovative. The TMC Labs engineers have extensive knowledge of the communications, Internet telephony, and call center industries from testing products as well as meeting with vendors and attending tradeshows. As such, in the first annual TMC Labs Innovation Awards, we selected winners solely based on our own knowledge of innovative products in these industries. Now we have decided to formalize the process and have an online application for companies to submit what they feel is an innovative product. Of these applications, only a select few are chosen. The ones that are chosen are given an extensive and detailed write-up within one of our publications.

We should point out that not all the winners submitted an application; some of the winners were selected by the TMC Labs engineers without an application. However, with thousands of products out there, we cannot guarantee that we will examine your product without an application. Only by applying do you bring your company/product to our attention and guarantee that it will be considered for this award. We should also point out that we do not need to actually test the product for a vendor to apply for this award. TMC Labs does extensive research to determine what truly is "innovative."

We should mention that the TMC Labs Innovation Awards are published in two magazines: Internet Telephony, and Customer Inter@ction Solutions. Applicants may apply to both magazines, but when selecting the winners TMC Labs decides which magazine would be the best fit for the actual award write-up. It should be stated that the TMC Labs Innovation Award is the same exact prestigious award in both magazines.

We realize the difficulty in developing a first-class product that integrates several components into one unified product suite. With the convergence of voice, data, and various media types (fax, e-mail, chat) comes increasing complexity, often resulting in products that we consider to be engineering marvels. We tip our hats to the engineers and developers of the award winners.

AB -- 5/18/06

Maybe the idea of 'open source automobiles' is a bit of a stretch, but that's what occurred to me when I read an article today from Kyodo News International, "Toyota chief voices readiness to form alliance with other carmakers.'

What struck me as particularly interesting was a quote from Toyota Motor Corp. President Katsuaki Watanabe:

"It requires conducting mammoth capital outlays for automakers to innovate their technologies in the fields of the environment, safety and the telecommunications .... There is the adequate possibility that we will form various types of alliances with others, if an automaker faces difficulties in meeting these needs single-handedly."

That quote got me thinking about recent changes in thinking around intellectual property, enabled in part by the open source movement. In an open source project, you can potentially have developers and users from multiple competing companies collaborating on developing a foundational technology that will benefit all the players. What if similar thinking were to provoke automakers to collaborate on developing basic technologies in an open fashion, then building their own proprietary technologies on those platforms, similarly to the way Red Hat packages Linux, as an example? Just a thought.

This reminds me of the step IBM took last year in opening up 500 of its patents. IBM said at the time that its intention was to:

"... form the basis of an industry-wide 'patent commons' in which patents are used to establish a platform for further innovations in areas of broad interest to information technology developers and users....

"The patents included in this pledge relate to many aspects of software innovation. Several of the patents cover dynamic linking processes for operating systems. Another patent is valuable to file-export protocols. In total, the pledged patents cover a wide breadth, including patents on important interoperability features of operating systems and databases, as well as internet, user interface, and language processing technologies."

This kind of collaborative effort doesn't necessarily preclude companies' competing with one another in a market system.

AB -- 4/18/06

Here's some pretty good quick analysis from The Business (London) about Google's GDrive project, which was accidentally revealed last week in presentation notes published on the web with a Powerpoint presentation: "Google to be the world's hard drive."

The Business says Google's plan to provide universally-available remote storage for users' data harmonizes with Scott McNealy's "thin-client" vision and conflicts with Microsoft's PC-centric model of computing.

AB -- 3/14/06

An article we received from Healthday today says neuroscientists and bioengineers at MIT have used nanotechnology to partially restore sight in experimental hamsters by restoring neural pathways in their brains. (See "Nanotechnology May Repair Damaged Brains.")

Today's article says the experimenters injected the rodents with peptides, or protein fragments, to grow "an extremely tiny biodegradable scaffold that provides brain cells with a place to re-grow -- like a vine on a trellis -- in the damaged area of the brain." Scientists involved with the project hope this method can eventually be used in humans.

AB -- 3/14/06

Earlier today I wrote about Google's accidental revealing of its 'GDrive' plans. But I also noticed but didn't comment on a little nugget in the same CNN Money article I referenced ....

That extra tidbit was a reference to Microsoft's plans to shift away from its traditional "folder" metaphor for navigation over to a more "Web-like search" interface. I was not aware of this change in the works, but this seems like a good move to me. Although we Windows users have been trained for years in the drill-down and pogo-stick maneuvers necessary for Windows file navigation, it would be great to be set free from those shackles!

AB -- 3/7/06

According to an article from "The Business" of London, the new ultra-mobile PC Microsoft is expected to reveal this week will come with built-in VoIP capabilities. Observers believe Microsoft will introduce the new device at the CeBIT technology show going on this week in Hanover, Germany. The product is code named Origami.

AB -- 3/7/06

This article from CNNMoney says that Google accidentally released information about its plan to provide a mirroring service for users' hard drives -- a service referred to as "GDrive" by Google-watchers.

The article says bloggers picked it up from a slide presentation inadvertently published on Google's investor relations web site. (I believe it was Greg Linden who first discovered the presentation and notes, as related in his blog entry "In a world with infinite storage, bandwidth, and CPU power.")

The CNN article includes the following quote from the Google presentation: "With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including e-mails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)." In the presentation, CEO Eric Schmidt evidently said that Google's goal is to 'store 100% of consumer information.'

Although some have expressed privacy concerns over Google's plans to store more and more user information, to me this seems like an inevitable direction. I'm constantly astonished and annoyed that in 2006 I am still tied to one isolated computer at a time, that it is so hard to get machines to seamlessly share information and back everything up securely.

CNN's article says "Google could save users from potential computer data crashes by keeping a 'golden copy' of user data on Google's centralized computers and rely on the user's local hard drive simply for speedy access to one's data, the notes state."

AB -- 3/7/06

Microsoft announced Jan. 25, 2006, the launch of Microsoft Live Labs, indicating a big push to increase the pace of innovation in the company in the area of Internet products and services.

The news release's emphasis on Internet services, search technology, distributed computing, data mining, and "disruptive technologies" suggests to me that Microsoft is triggering a strong innovation effort to combat the Google threat to Microsoft's platform dominance -- as well as potential threats, I would argue, from less-obvious quarters, such as iPod and Salesforce.com -- and probably others not yet on the radar but sure to emerge in the future.

The Live Labs name is a reference to Microsoft's Windows Live offerings, a "set of personal Internet services and software" launched in beta in November 2005. Microsoft says Windows Live is "designed to bring together in one place all the relationships, information and interests people care about most, with enhanced safety and security features across their PC, devices and the Web." The Windows Live web site provides downloads for the beta offerings, which include applications for personal portals, web mail, security, favorites, customized mapping, mobile search, and the next-gen Windows Live Messenger enabled for voice and video communications. One of the missions of Live Labs is to improve and accelerate the Windows Live suite.

Yesterday's release describes Live Labs as an "agile environment for fast-tracking research from the lab into people’s hands" and "the incubation of disruptive technologies." Described as "a research partnership between MSN and Microsoft Research," Live Labs will draw on resources and personnel from both groups as well as academic research organizations. Microsoft is encouraging its Live Labs researchers to collaborate openly with the academic community and publish their findings. In addition, Microsoft is announcing increased funding for academic research efforts, especially in the areas of "data mining, discovery and analysis as they relate to Internet search."

AB -- 1/26/06

Vamsi Sitla, director of broadband and multimedia research for ABI Research, thinks that the need for differentiation in the HDTV industry will lead to much greater intelligence, either inside televisions or in the devices connected to them.

Quoted in a release today from ABI, "No Longer the 'Boob Tube': ABI Research Looks at Smart TV," Sitla sees within the industry two schools of thought about smarter TVs:

1. "One camp wants to focus on creating intelligence within the TV itself, making it network-ready, and incorporating storage or recording devices." Sitla cites LG Electronics, which is now incorporating digital video recorders into some of its LCD TVs.

2. "The other camp wants to focus intelligence in the devices which surround the TV and connect to it: Media Center PCs, recorders, residential gateways and the like." Sitla says this camp would prefer keeping the TV as more of a "dumb terminal" while upgrading and replacing the surrounding devices.

This connects somewhat with an idea I've had recently that convergence might be taking technology toward a world in which consumers will have a growing number of powerful multi-capable platforms that can do a lot of things for them. Think Windows, Mac and Linux. But also add Google, Appforce, iPod and the home media center. (Will have to expand on this idea in another entry.)

Discussing the HDTV market, ABI's release says that "including HDTVs, personal video recorders, DVD players, game consoles and set-top boxes (STBs), the global market for HDTV products should exceed US$25 billion this year."

AB -- 1/26/06

I've been reflecting on recent criticism the government has received for increased spying within the U.S. in connection with terrorism investigations (as well as other activities, such as secret prisons and rough interrogation tactics).

Here are some articles that appeared this week on TMCnet about web-based surveillance:

U.S. to Probe Contractor's Web Tracking

NSA Web Site Plants 'Cookies' on Computers

From a privacy perspective, I can understand why some observers are disturbed by these developments. But I was also thinking about the difficult position of those trying to govern and protect the populace in the face of brutal and merciless terrorist forces.

In the field of security, I've heard a metaphor that seems applicable to the fight against terrorism: When we build a higher wall, the bad guys make a taller ladder.

So in many situations, security involves a process of constant escalation.

Recently I attended a seminar about innovation in the era of homeland security. The main speaker was a former Bush-administration Department of Defense official who feels that the government is hampered by processes of planning and procurement that inhibit innovation.

As he spoke, I was reflecting that, in some ways, the terrorists have been in a better position to act as innovators. This idea rankles, because I like to think of innovation as a good thing and I hate to think of terrorists in any kind of positive light. But they have been able to "innovate" in some ways that are expensive and difficult to combat -- forming a worldwide insurgency embedded at low visibility in the population at large and causing great injury, death and economic loss, some would say at low cost to their own side.

I was also reflecting that it's hard to believe that real security can continue to be bought at the cost of building higher and higher walls. How does innovation enter in to homeland security efforts? Instead of continually building higher walls trying to stay ahead of those taller ladders, are there ways innovation can be applied, perhaps to create ladder-dissolvers or to disrupt the supply chain involved in ladder construction?

AB -- 12/30/05