Best of the year 2007

HereInnovations of the year in my opinion

Consumer: iPhone, It's not perfect and the tariff is terrible but it shown the way to the next level of computing, shame on Nokia for not doing it first.

Science: Changing skin cells into embryonic stem cells, if this pans out it will solve a lot of problems, well done Harvard Stem Cell Institute

Industrial/Business: I had to think about this but I settled on the trend towards replacing hard drives with flash memory. This trend will accelerate into an avalanche next year.

I hope next year I get to nominate some real innovation in the cleantech area.

All the best for 2008.

Bin your oven

Its becoming increasingly obvious to the medical community that the way we cook our food on a daily basis is not exactly great for our health. Cooking meat at high temperatures for hours on end to create these roasts we love creates chemicals in the food that cause cancer apparently.

In 20 years people will shake their heads at how we used to cook meat and then wonder why cancer was rising. That is why I'm really please to see the Turbochef oven coming to the consumer market.

The patented Airspeed technology is the key apparently, Using air it cooks the food in a fraction of the time it used to take and the food looks pretty good too. Up to fifteen times faster. That Xmas turkey will be a lot less hassle in the future.

Soon all ovens will be this way. Click here to see the future of cooking.

Their premium pricing it right now, but when it comes down a bit I'll be in the queue.

Lifestyle or supernova ?

How do you find the right kind of high tech start-up to create/work for ?

There are a couple of common types:-

• Service: Take existing businesses to new distribution channels, eg the Internet and use it to take the service to a new level. eg Streetcar, zipcar, cars for hire by the hour. Perfect for the internet. Can be low risk but it's hard to find the business that you can hit out of the park. You can start these in your backroom.
  

• Underlying IP: eg Google, novel search technology or 23andme, novel medical technology. High risk but with strong defendable IP it's possible to hit these businesses out of the part. Generally you need VC or background investment from the inventor for years.
  

The underlying IP businesses can have big exits but are harder to make lifestyle businesses, the kind that earn a decent salary that enables you to do other things with your life.

Of course it's possible to move from one type to the other or merge the types and that is where the innovation junction comes in. If you can do that you might even have a Microsoft on your hands !

I personnally have tried both types and find the fast, furious nature of the product business to be my favourite.

I love working on the supernova type buiness, burning brightly for a short period of time and then moving onto the next one.

Armchair Astronomer

I'm a Founder Member of Slooh. The online observatory which to date has had an observatory in the Canary Islands. I've always loved the idea of being able to see sky objects that I couldn't otherwise observe and have been a big user.

It's made me into a bit of a night owl though because to date the only site was in the Canary Islands (I live in the UK). The site of course has a US focus. I'm really pleased that they are now opening sites in Australia and Chile to allow someone anywhere in the world to observe the night sky at any time.

This is true innovation because it will advance the already strong tradition of amateur astronomy and open the hobby to many more people, roll on 2008 !

The rise of the flat rate dataplan

When will voice plans be gone ? Not long now, Three's dataplan is 1GB, Vodafone a less generous 125MB, 1GB is plenty 125mb is nowhere near enough. Vodafone's network is more robust than three's so take your pick. Now you can get anonymous dataplans on pay as you go cards. So people can surf through their phones and be more untraceable since the connection is not tied to an address. Another headache for law enforcement.....

Innovation at the level of Cities

Can Cities innovate ?

Can a mayor like Bloomberg (NY) or Livingstone (London) enable innovation by their policies ?

Maybe we know that when a critical mass of infrastructure is put in place exciting things are can happen. eg Silicon Valley

But can Cities with fast transport links (eg Crossrail) and great leisure facilities (Olympic park), or new car policies (Congestion charge) create an environment which moves cities to the next level.

I think we are moving to new levels of cities where the ability of a city to satisfactorily enable up to 10m people to efficiently live together will enable it to take a lead over it's competitors.

As someone who struggles around London every day I look forward to better links and the benefits of living in a 21st century city.

The end of inclusive minutes

I've just taken an inclusive data plan from 3, my UK mobile network on my E61. 1GB per month.

It has completely changed the way I use my mobile phone. Voice is now completely secondary. Direct sync of calendar, direct podcast downloads and internet radio, real-time weather updates and GPS. I can't stop using the phone.

If the iphone was unlocked I'd pay the money to use it on 3. I really hope the new range of smart phones next year can compete with the iphone.

I think the phone is now moving from where the money is in the hardware and networks to the money is in the software just like in PCs. Who will be the Microsoft of the phone age ? Will it be symbian, Android or Windows mobile ? Maybe the platform will be irrelevant. It's going to be interesting to find out.