Recommendation Engine

I just listened to a really interesting podcast by Peter Day of BBC Radio 4. It was a show called In Business. This week he described a new business called Platinum Blue. They have an amazing business model that sell software to help music companies predict whether their songs will be a hit by analysing the music mathematically and comparing it with "hit clusters" from the past. The record company can then pick artists and even tracks for singles if required. Is this the end of the A&R man ?

I thought this was a great use of the combination of musical understanding, mathematics and computing to completely change the music business. Now anyone with a commercial mind and a copy of this software could potential create a successful record label ! Pandora is doing it for the average person too, with personal recommendations based on your existing music tastes.

This may limit the innovativeness of the record companies and homogenise new music but it will improve the overall quality I suspect quite a bit.

The show also said the same techniques were being used in the movie industry by another firm, Epagogix. The potential of these kinds of expert systems is incredible. Even Google last week said it will start to use an understanding of our web habits to make recommendations. Looks like the Internet is moving up another gear.

Motion Sensing Technology replaces Voice recognition

I have been interested on and off in accelerometers for nearly ten years. They have been used in car airbags for a while now but we are finally seeing them being linked to computers to sense motion. Products like the Nintendo Wii and Motion Sensing Tablet PC result. I hate computer games generally but tried the Wii and loved it. Just think what the gaming experience will be like when Playstation 3 comes with a motion sensing pad. I think we are more likely to see motion sensing replace the keyboard than voice recognition now. The combination of mechanical engineering and computer will revolutionise how we exercise (see the Wii) to how we interact with all the machines in our lives, maybe non contact cars, computers and remote controls. It will be a more fulfilling and interactive experience all round.

Unlimited bandwidth, unlimited storage

The world is only a couple of years away from unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage. The coming together of these two technologies presents incredible business opportunities.

Completely new business models will be created based on all information being available to everyone everywhere all the time. Learning as we know will change completely. With everything immediately at our fingertips why bother to learn anything ?

It is as if our collective consciousness is expanding with the increasing ease of access to learning, opinion and knowledge.

The true skills will be the creation of new valuable knowledge, rather than the verbatim learning of existing knowledge.

The widely available blog is a symptom of this new desire to create additional knowledge which is available instantaneously to everyone.

Soon I am sure ipods will ship with more music and you can handle in a lifetime ! The deal with Apple Music now allows Apple Inc to ship iPods with music embedded. I just learned that the U2 iPod didn't have the music embedded but came with a voucher to download it from iTunes.

Pretty archaic, huh ! Not for much longer....

Sustainable Energy

There's a lot of talk around nowadays on the subjects of global warming and sustainable energy. Lots of new kinds of products like the Toyota Prius and ethanol are being touted as important tools in the fight against global warming.

In my view these technologies are relatively minor adjustments that help but do not address the problem of the underlying equation: Our use of energy continues to rise and our low-carbon producing methods are not increasing in tandem.

I looked around for an Innovation Junction solution to the global warming problem and the closest thing I could find was this article in Technology Review. Solar panels have yet to make the required paradigm leap forward in efficiency and in my view now a couple of technologies will have to come together to get us all of the grid and generated power efficiently. One of these could be smart optics, if we can filter, move and manage the light more efficiently maybe we can increase the conversion ratio up to a level which can compete with grid power.

Good luck Soliant !

Research needs to be focused on off the grid paradigm shifts in power generation or we will be left with nuclear as one of our few options for our growing energy requirements.