‘Inside Innovation’ launches at new Internet address

Please visit the new, improved “Inside Innovation with Colin Stewart” at its new location.

Now a vacation, but soon an expansion

The “Inside Innovation” blog has been dormant for a few weeks because of a vacation and a special project I’m working on.

Soon — probably in late September — it will be back with expanded format and new content. If you have enjoyed what you’ve seen here so far, you’ll like the new version even better.

Helping to reinvent the U.S. patent process

For more than 20 years, award-winning industrial designer Doug Patton has been fine-tuning his innovation process. Now he’s preparing to use it to help the U.S. patent office. …

READ about Doug Patton’s innovation process, the U.S. patent office, and a Bausch & Lomb eye-surgery machine

READ a summary of Doug Patton’s innovation process, with a comparison to Ideo’s better-known innovation process.

Toshiba’s copying success: Strategy for an innovative marketplace

If the ground is about to collapse beneath you, reach out your arms and grab onto something.

That strategy, which Toshiba America Business Solutions adopted 10-plus years ago, suggests lessons for any enterprise seeking to avoid becoming a victim of innovation.

Lesson 1 is to reach for something new. Toshiba made that strategic shift in response to technological changes that threatened to undercut its core market of office copiers. …

READ MORE, including …

– Innovator’s favorite reading (”Leadership” by Rudy Giuliani; “Moneyball” by Michael Lewis)

– Innovator’s quote (from Casey Stengel)

– Tips for innovators

– VIDEO: How copiers have learned to multi-task

AIDS fighters in the lab

Researchers in California, New York and Australia hope to help 20 million people in Africa with a new test.

With a boost from the world’s richest man, scientists in New York, London and Fullerton are teaming up to help 20 million of the world’s most desperate inhabitants.

They are developing a new type of blood test that can be used in a tent or even under a tree.

READ MORE …

including

– Innovator’s book:. “Sins of the Son”

– Innovation tips such as “Innovators are often extremely difficult to manage … as are most creative people.”

– Innovator’s quote: “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

MaMoCa turns people into animation

Start-up aims to improve on techniques of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘King Kong’ and ‘Pirates.’

“Do I look like King Kong to you?”

With that question, Gene Alexander was on his way to attracting $750,000 from local investors intrigued by a technology that transforms people’s movements into the motions of animated characters.

That transformation is crucial to modern animated movies and television shows because the traditional method of artists creating each frame by hand, even on a computer, has become far too expensive.

“If you saw me with our 3D camera technology and animation engine software, I’d look a whole lot scarier and a little bit hairier,” Alexander told the Fast Pitch competition of the Tech Coast Angels in Anaheim last year, where he was seeking investments for his company, MaMoCa Inc. of Santa Ana.

The words “scarier” and “hairier” were attention-getters, but the key factor came later in his pitch – cheaper. MaMoCa, which stands for “Markerless Motion Capture,” will cut the cost of “motion capture” by 90 percent, Alexander says.

The standard process for capturing an actor’s movements digitally is to attach 40 to 50 electronic or reflective markers on his body, then track the markers’ locations as the actor performs.

That technique recorded Andy Serkis’s movements when he performed as the digitally created Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” movies and then played the ape in “King Kong.”

MaMoCa’s system automates the process, replacing the markers with a projected grid of light. As an actor moves through the grid, the system’s computer and cameras track the movements of 40,000 to 50,000 points where the grid’s lines cross.

READ MORE

including:

– Innovator’s books (geometry, science fiction)

– Innovator’s tips

– Innovator’s quote (”What would Wonko do?”) and an explanation of it.

VIDEO: See markerless motion-capture technology in action.

iMonitorEnergy.com: Controlling indoor climate from afar

Mark Moore knows what you’ve done to the office thermostat.Yes, you.

You felt warm, he says, so you turned down the thermostat and made all your co-workers cold.

The controls are locked in a plastic case? That didn’t stop you. You straightened out a paper clip and snaked it through a vent to change the setting.

Moore is a 30-year veteran of the heating and air-conditioning business with a unique perspective. From his company’s high-tech control room in Lake Forest, he can see the temperature at each vent and each thermostat in 564 buildings in Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties.

At iMonitorEnergy.com’s headquarters, he can’t actually see you fiddling with the controls, but he can visualize the results – shivering workers and rising electricity bills.

“It’s the woman who’s going through menopause. Or it’s the guy who’s running around, carrying boxes, getting hot.” That worker turns down the thermostat, Moore says. “Then people start putting heaters under their desks because they’re cold.”

To combat such problems, Moore combines psychology with technical expertise.

(READ MORE)

Video: Visit the control room, get a lesson in self-restraint

Cell phones’ new talent — take a photo, find a Web link

Using a computer mouse to point and click on an Internet link has become a routine way to find information online.

Now get ready to point and click in the real world, using a cell phone camera.

That’s the vision of Evryx Technologies, a Glendale-based company founded by engineers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. …

Using sophisticated image-recognition software, Evryx has created a system called Snap2Link that lets people connect to Web sites by using cell phones to click on specific 2D images and some 3D objects in the real world.

(READ MORE)

Try it out: Take a cell-phone photo of the Mega Millions logo on a lottery ticket and send it to us@snap2link.net. You’ll get a link by return e-mail that will suggest numbers for you to enter on the Mega Millions ticket.

Video: See how it works

GluMetrics: Refining glucose monitors to save thousands of lives

William Markle is in a race, but doesn’t want anyone to know how fast he’s going or how far he’s gone.

Until he’s ready to cross the finish line, that is.

The race is a competition to create a device that will continuously measure glucose in the bloodstream, especially for patients in hospitals’ intensive care units. Markle is chief executive officer of GluMetrics Inc. of Irvine, which is developing such a device. …

The bigger winner will be thousands of patients whose lives can be saved if doctors can control blood glucose more accurately, minute by minute, without relying on nurses making their rounds every 60 minutes or so to take pin-prick blood samples.

(READ MORE)

Also:

Innovator’s recommended reading –”Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore (”A bit dated but still a great roadmap for launching new products into a high-tech space.”) (BUY THE BOOK)

Tech that won’t happen soon

Four forecasts of problems technology won’t soon solve

Ho-hum.

The refrigerator that knows when to order fresh milk for you online.

The remote control that coordinates your music and video for every room in the house.

The vacuum cleaner that obeys your verbal commands.

Those are the kinds of gee-whiz predictions that journalists can describe breathlessly after high-tech conferences. I could have written that sort of column after attending last month’s Southern California Summit on Semiconductors and Communications in Newport Beach.

Instead, I came away from it with much gloomier predictions for the next five to 10 years. The predictions are my own, but they’re mostly based on what high-tech experts said at the conference and elsewhere.

Here are my four forecasts, which I hope are wrong:

Electronics in the living room will remain an uncoordinated mess.

(READ MORE)