TECHNOLOGY TIMELINE - BT

BT Reveals Insight into the Future
In the future we could be holidaying in space while robots tend our gardens back home - according to BT's latest technology timeline...

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Random words associative generator

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37 ways ... to innovate - new shoes today

37 ways is een nieuwe reeks van checklists en inspiratiebronnen voor productideeën of productverbetering. Succesvolle innovaties werden op een rij gezet en gelinkt aan onderliggende trends, principes of evoluties.
37 ways is zowel bruikbaar in individuele als groepsbrainstorm. Je kan de 37 ways systematisch doorlopen of je at random laten inspireren.
37 ways is een product in ontwikkeling. Online vind je altijd de laatste versie. Suggesties altijd welkom.
37 ways verschijnt op verzoek ook voor diensten en overheidsinnovaties. Tevens zijn er sets bestelbaar rond diverse sectoren: financial, marketing, food, green innovations.

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GENOMETRI - GENERATIVE DESIGN

Plants have genes, Animals have genes. Have you ever wondered if products have them? If products have genes, then the methods of design in nature may be applied to products. Genometri is a Singapore based design technology company that just does that. It has developed a generative design technology that allows designers to create 1000's of design variations based on their original design. It is able to explore a huge range of possibilities that is not possible other wise. Texture and color may also be explored. This technology gives designer unprecedented power of exploration creating variations that are significantly distinctive.

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AVIVA INFO ABOUT COLORS

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IMAGE ANNOTATION - MIT

Currently computers have difficult recognizing objects in images. While practical solutions exist for a few simple classes such as human faces or cars, the more general problem of recognizing all different classes of objects in the world (e.g. guitars, bottles, telephones) remains unsolved. Computer Vision researchers are currently investigating methods that can recognize and localize thousands of different object categories in complex scenes. A key component of these algorithms is the data used to train the computers' model of each object. Current approaches use collections of images laboriously gathered by hand. Our research explores how the billions of images available on the Internet can be used to train models for object recognition. With overwhelming amounts of data, many problems can be tackled with simple algorithms. We gathered from the web 79 million images. We are using this massive dataset to train a computer to recognize objects within an image and to understand the scenes depicted in photographs.

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CREATIVITY TEST - CREAX

The CREAX creativity test measures your creativity in 8 different areas and visualizes how you score compared to the others that took the test. Profiling your creativity, the CREAX Creativity Self-assessment test offers a profile of your level of creativity in eight areas and your personal score is compared with the global average score.

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eight intelligences

The Question is NOT,
"How smart am I?"
It's rather
HOW am I smart?

In 1985 the noted Harvard psychologist and educator Howard Gardner, proposed the theory of multiple intelligences based on several years of research investigating how we come to know what we know about our world. How do we learn, process, and understand information? What is the process by which we acquire knowledge? In a nutshell, “What makes us smart? What makes us intelligent?”

In this research, Gardner discovered that each of us possesses at least eight distinct areas of intelligence, eight ways we acquire knowledge, process information, learn and understand – way beyond the traditional IQ, which gives credit for only two, at best.

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PRODUCTION NAVIGATOR - TWENTE UNIVERSITY

ProductionNavigator is a new website that designers and engineers can use as a reference in the process of selecting production-techniques and their suppliers.

The selection online is a database that contains a large number of productiontechnique specifications. Productiontechniques are filtered from the database by entering a number of selection criteria. The more criteria are entered, the shorter the production-technique-list. Subsequently, information regarding suitable productiontechniques can be retrieved and productiontechniques from the same group can be compared with the specific criteria for that group.
(plastic shaping, composite shaping, machining etc.)

* The selection online can prevent that non-suitable productiontechniques are selected.

* Futhermore the selecion online can prevent that other –more- suitable productiontechniques are overlooked.

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MATERIAL EXPLORER - MATERIA

Materia is a knowledge centre for developments and innovations in materials, and their applications for architecture and design. With our Material Explorer we can offer you an advanced, user-friendly way of accessing the largest free materials knowledge base. There are no subscription fees or extra costs.

- search by keyword
- search by material group
- search by sensorial qualities
- search by technical qualities
- find manufacturers
- manage your favorite materials
- print your results in A4 format
- download material sheets supplied by manufacturers

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MORE INSPIRATION - CREAX

Innovations to inspire your thinking. MoreInspiration lets you discover innovative products and technologies from all possible domains.

Start page
Discover new inspiration that has been added to the site or submit an innovation you have spotted on the web!

Details on innovations
Get more information about what has changed and why it has been changed. Discuss it with your collegues or mail it to your friends.

Advanced search
Search for inspiration both inside and outside your own industry. See how and why innovations have come to be by using the Properties and the Functions.

Results
Use the clusters that have been defined to explore in detail or store and receive the results of the search on a regular basis by mail by using the alerting functionality

Favorites
Keep track of all items that inspire you and store them in one place.

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FELTRON ANNUAL REPORT

An accounting of the year passed in beautiful infographical form.

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WORD SIMILARITY

Given a input word, one can retrieve the words that are most similar to it. The similar words are grouped automatically into clusters. Each cluster is represented by a distinct color.

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GOOGLE SETS

How can Google Sets help?

Enter a few items from a set of things. Next, press Large Set or Small Set and Google Sets will try to predict other items in the set.

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STANFORD INFOMAP: SEMANTIC NETWORKS

Infomap automatically builds a thesaurus around the word you enter.

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PECHA KUCHA NIGHT

What is Pecha Kucha Night?

Pecha Kucha Night, devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham architecture), was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

But as we all know, give a mike to a designer (especially an architect) and you’ll be trapped for hours. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor. This is a† demand that seems to be global – as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 100 cities across the world. Find a location and join the conversation.

Pecha Kucha Brussels Vol. 02
When Sunday 20 January at 20:20

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LAST FM, UW PERSOONLIJKE RADIO

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PRIKBALLON: HANDIGE HANDEN

Hoe prototyping technieken gaan illustreren?

BRAINSTORMING FOR FUN AND PROFIT

10x10: 100 images

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COCD.net

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Flanders DC Inspiradar

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GUESS THE GOOGLE

This is so much fun and the creator is right - it is very addictive. Guess-the-Google is a game very you will see a number of images, and you then have 20 seconds to guess what keyword that was used to find them - based on Google Image Search.

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THE COMMONCRAFT SHOW

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Wikis in Plain English

The commoncraft show :
"Our product is explanation.We use a simple format and real-world stories to make sense of complex ideas. We're interpreters. We present your products and services in plain English using short, unique and understandable videos in a format we call Paperworks."

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CHRONOTEBOOK MUJI AWARD

Diary schedules are arranged in lines and grids, which are difficult to see and has little flexibility.
This notebook makes it clear, intuitive and easy to plan and see your daily schedules.

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PREFUSE

Prefuse is a set of software tools for creating rich interactive data visualizations. The original prefuse toolkit provides a visualization framework for the Java programming language. The prefuse flare toolkit provides visualization and animation tools for ActionScript and the Adobe Flash Player.

Prefuse supports a rich set of features for data modeling, visualization, and interaction. It provides optimized data structures for tables, graphs, and trees, a host of layout and visual encoding techniques, and support for animation, dynamic queries, integrated search, and database connectivity. Prefuse is written in Java, using the Java 2D graphics library, and is easily integrated into Java Swing applications or web applets. Prefuse is licensed under the terms of a BSD license, and can be freely used for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

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VIZTHINK CONFERENCE 2008

Our goal at VizThink is to bring together a broad cross section of the visual thinking community. We're bringing content from each of the visual arts disciplines together to create a unique mix of content. Here's just a small sampling of some of the topics you'll find at VizThink '08:

* Moving beyond bullet points...using storytelling for presentations
* Aligning individuals using visualization
* Visualization in 3D? When does it matter
* Facilitation using photographs
* Designing compelling and effective information graphics
* Virtual worlds: future or fad
* Creating a global visual language
* Organizing your world with visuals
* Using visuals for powerful presentations
* Storytelling through comics and graphic novels
* Visual techniques for analyzing data
* Visualization principles for software design
* Facilitation through live sketching
* Can there be a true language with grammar and structure that uses visuals?
* Visualization as a brainstorming tool

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INDEXED - JESSICA HAGY

Jessica uses charts, graphs and Venn diagrams to clarify her thinking.

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THE VISUALSSPEAK IMAGESET

The VisualsSpeak ImageSet has been designed for people who want to do more than simple icebreaker exercises. Its a tool that will take your strategic visioning work, team-building, diversity training or cross cultural communications work to a new level. And yes, it can be used for icebreaker and group energizer exercises as well.

People who use the VisualsSpeak ImageSet generally fall into one of the following categories.

Coaching / Consulting:

Anyone who sells their expertise or helps clients acheive results.

* Strategic planning, strategic visioning, strategic change, process improvement, organizational development, communications… and more

Facilitating:

Anyone who facilitates meetings or processes.

* Communication, conflict management, conflict resolution, strategic planning, strategic visioning, strategic change, organizing, diversity, cross-cultural skills…and more

Human Resources:

Anyone who looks after the needs of employees.

* Training, compliance, personal and professional growth, conflict management, conflict resolution, diversity training, cross-cultural skills…and more

Training:

Anyone who teaches, educates or trains clients, including workshop and seminar leaders.

* Team building, organizing, communication, diversity, cross-cultural skills, conflict management, conflict resolution, personal growth…and more

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SKETCHBOARD TECHNIQUE

The sketchboard is a low-fi technique that makes it possible for designers to explore and evaluate a range of interaction concepts while involving both business and technology partners. Unlike the process that results from wireframe-based design, the sketchboard quickly performs iterations on many possible solutions and then singles out the best user experience to document and build upon.

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EMOTIV PROJECT

So you can control a robot with your mind, and drive a train using your brain, but what about your thoughts controlling a video game? Meet Emotiv’s ‘Project Epoc’ - It’s basically a helmet with electrodes to monitor electromagnetic signals coming from your brain. Then, it interprets those signals to control the video game you're playing.

This system can also move objects based on a gamers thoughts, reflect facial expressions, and respond to the excitement or calm the gamer mentally exerts, the company said. Neat! Yes indeed, but it’s not available to the public yet and there’s no word on a release date. We can expect it to be pricey though.

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