Ric Richardson

From the Northern Star 2nd September 2014 Congrats Jacob  Link to original article  A SIMPLE idea for a portable hard drive to back up photos is proving a winner for teen inventor Jacob Clarke. The 17-year old student took out the innovation award at Ric Richardson's Innovation Pipeline event last week, beating five adult local inventors. The invention, Picstor, is a portable battery-powered hard drive to back up photographs and video. A keen nature photographer, Jacob came up with the idea while on a trip to Tasmania when he ran out of space on his SD cards. "At the moment all hard drives need a computer, so if you are in the wilderness there's no way you can backup your photos," Jacob explained. "This is the first portable hard drive with its own power source." Winning the prize means Jacob has the chance to patent and prepare his invention for manufacturing, with mentoring by seasoned professionals along the way.  "I think one of the reaso...

After demoing the Google Glass privacy shutter at Sydstart today, I built up enough confidence to bite the bullet and just go over to Google Australia and find someone to show the invention to. Luckily on the way out of the event I ran into Murray Hurps from Fishburners and he reminded me of the key people who have interacted with the Fishburners crew from Google. His advice "Talk to Alan Noble (Google Australia GM), but if you get the chance talk to Sally-Ann Williams first". So I jumped in the taxi and headed of to Google in Ultimo... went to reception and was greeted by a friendly young guy in a snazzy suit, with an ivy backdrop, cool looking rusted Google logo and a misting device putting a calming scent into the air. I asked him if they made him wear the suit, but he said Google lets you wear whatever you want.. he just thought that his dressing up was appropriate for his job. He subsequently did the rounds trying to get in contact with SallyAnn and amazingly...