Sensors and GPS: A perfect storm ?

I learnt today that the iPhone contains an accelerometer. It got me thinking about all the new types of minature sensors that are becoming available, piezoelectric etc and how in conjunction with global positioning satellite technology and wi-fi we can represent all kinds of real-time information on a program like Google Earth. It's getting very close to the scenario painted in Snow Crash, a book by Neal Stephenson in which a program is able to display incredible amounts of location specific real time information. I am sure there is a killer app for all this confluence of information and connectivity in portable devices. I think we will see wireless sports training devices to improve our tennis stroke, football kick and maybe even improve our running gait to reduce risk of injury when running long distances.

Independent dating of IP

A cornerstone of innovation is intellectual property. One major headache is proving original authorship of ideas, music writing, patents and other IP. People often keep dated logbooks or post information back to themselves in sealed envelopes to prove dates of ownership. For tech this is important in the US where first to invent owns the IP rather than first to file as in the EU.

A new company called Codel is offering a service to independently log and date digital based intellectual property. It is even free for a limited amount of data. It's a great place to upload lab notebooks, written documents and music if you're that way inclined.

Each file receives a unique "fingerprint" the Codelmark on registration which can be used to independently verify the IP. I'm sure this service will prove very popular with musicians, writers and people creating IP for US filing.

Does the best technology always win the innovation battle ?

If not, why not ? We take the internal combustion engine for granted now as the dominant propulsion system for personal transport but it wasn't always guaranteed. We could have had electric battery powered buses, a successful trial was carried out in London in the early 20th Century. Another well know technological struggle where some people think the best technology lost is VHS over Betamax. From my reading the business model behind Betamax was different to VHS (Sony who made Betamax charged high licensing fees) and it made Betamax more expensive and it lost out as a result, despite being "technically" superior.

Today's winner takes all innovation world where most mobile phone companies make very little money compared to the number one player who generates good profits makes product failures even harder to deal with. The seemingly relentless rise of the iPod means again that the other companies will struggle to make good returns on their investments in mp3 players. This time Apple seem to have make the breakthrough by creating the link to software. The iPhone may enable them to dominate the all-in-one comms device which is now coming on the horizon by leveraging their position in itunes again.

Innovation in jet engines

This article nicely describes the current level of innovation in jet engines on the Dreamlines. I especially liked the hollow titanium blades and the temperature of the "cool" air. Airbus and Boeing are certainly trying to push the envelope. Thanks Space.com for an interesting piece.

Skype on Symbian via Fring

I've liked Skype for a long time. It's saved me a fortune. I've been debating buying a
skype phone so could take advantage of skype while on the move and then I found fring. One quick download later my phone was now a skype phone. I can pick between Wi-fi and 3G to use it and can make all my international calls with it.

This is real innovation. They found a gap between the models and will make money re-routing calls around operators to save termination charges.

Very impressive.

Flash Drives - At the innovation junction ?

Will we see a major change in the nature of computing now that flash drives are cheap enough to make long battery life laptops and no boot time a possibility ?

There is a lot of publicity about the major players introducing new flash drive laptops.

I personally think PDAs will get better.

The increased speed of boot and faster response time will be a real pleasure but will entrepreneurs be able to leverage the larger solid state storage for other ends ?

We'll see.