Inspiring inventor kids

My wife and I were having our Friday late lunch early dinner and this guy wizzed past on a skateboard that had no deck! My wife gave me a look and I bolted out the door to track the guy down to see how this new contraption worked.... unfortunately he was a promoter (not the inventor) offering lessons on how to ride this deckless skateboard... however what was interesting is that two kids came over asking really good technical questions about the invention... one of them proudly stated that he was an inventor and working on a secret project... he said it with such pride that it made me wonder if the same nurturing was done in young people of invention as it is in celebrity or sports success, that there may be a bigger pool of both in the kids of today.

Mobile office goes beta

Those of you who saw the article in the Sydney Morning Herald may recall the headline "How the man in the van beat Microsoft". At the time the setup I was using was a proof of concept that allowed me to test the viability of using a van to combat cabin fever and get out and about when solving invention problems... well the outdoor furniture and bench seat have been replaced with a perspex desk and an executive chair... things are rather more comfortable... in software development parlance, the project is now beta but requiring some fine tuning... the desk is way too flimsy, there is a definite need for a power outlet and monitor mounting and some other obvious office amenities like a bin and some basic storage... oh and a great little idea I came across for a clear perspex display area above my desk that allows me to display pages from magazines and full page color print outs that can be changed and swapped for flashes of inspiration. Once things cook a bit more I will take some pictures to show you all the progress.

zkimmer online publication viewing

This video shows the newer version of the technology we are using to display online publications. Basically it is an adaptation of the the satellite imagery technology used in sites like Google Maps but adapted to the viewing of multi-page online publications. Everything from newspapers to photo albums to textbooks.

Facebook frustration

Ive been looking at Facebook for some time now investigating its various capabilities such as pages (fan pages), groups (centralized themed comments etc), and Personal pages/ walls. The goal is to see if any or all of these can be used to share information about inventions and business plans but at the same time encourage feedback and interaction. The promise of privacy and more open communication is also a big draw. For example I could share more detailed information with prospective investors than with the general public.

After many days investigation I keep running into brick walls. Facebook is so bent on being friend inclusive that it is painful to set up controlled access. The design of the privacy controls is always pushing you to be more open with information that it almost makes it impossible to create tightly confined access to private information. This also applies to people who want to share their life with friends but want to keep their life private from people just outside their (the friends) ring of friends.

Strangly, googlegroups is much better at doing this. The combination of info pages and email reply and post is very convenient and fast. Facebook forces you to go to your facebook page to respond to comments from friends... great for them and their branding but painful for us.

Also another big pain. Group comments and discussion items do not appear on your own wall! This means that you are unaware of activity in the groups you belong to and have to return to look for activity manually... this makes Facebook groups unusable... what shame... soooo, I'm going to try something really out there and experiment with using a Googlegroup as a personal web site!

Why? Because Im sick of not having interaction.

At the moment I am thinking of using a public group for my main pages and a private group (ie invitation only) for more in depth questions to answers. If you want to weigh in on the issue please make a comment below and suggest something better if you cvan think of it... am I missing something with Facebook?

What's next? zkimmer, Logarex and The Swappery

While the dust settles around the Uniloc case, lots of work is being done on 3 current projects:

1. zkimmer is now handling much bigger publications. For those of you who dont know zkimmer, basically it is a way of using googlemapsish satellite imagery technology to view magazines, textbooks, fine art and photos... the team just did our first 200 page file so text books look like they are now a solid proposition.
   
2. Logarex - the clouds are clearing on this project. It's a high risk long shot and possible follow up to Uniloc. Now that there is a little more time to focus some of the big issues regarding the log tables are starting to get broken down. Maybe fitting a Bluray disk on a USB stick is not impossible...
   
3. The swappery - the final pieces to this puzzle are falling into place. This project is being evaluated for patent opportunities but in the meantime I can say that the basic idea is to virtualize everyones libraries of CDs and LPs, and to leverage personal fair use/ and ownership protections to protect buyers and sellers of digital copies that are made available as part of the transaction of physical media. It's got some complexities, but the upside is a business that amounts to a gigantic vitual second hand CD store with a transaction income that exceeds the profit margin Apple gets for its iTunes.