My Memphis
Nice video about “my Memphis”:
What separates extraordinary and average people?
Malcolm Gladwell  has come out with some interesting concepts. And, he has a new book out called Outliers
Recession and Innovation
“There are two main differences in social innovation during difficult financial times,” Katz said. “First, the need for true social innovation is never more acute than when things are not humming along in the global economy. Second, there is increased oversight on social innovators to be ruthlessly efficient and profit-driven.”
Worldchanging: Recession and Innovation
Personal Pod Public Transport
Here is an interesting concept for public transportation. The pod is more private than trains and can carry a small group of people all at once. Instead of waiting on a train, you just jump into the first available pod and take off to your destination. This incarnation of the concept is called “Ultra Light Transit”. Check out the video.
Adjustable Glasses
Glasses have been invented that can be adjusted to any prescription.  The lenses are filled with a liquid that can be adjusted, allowing the prescription to be adjusted as needed. These glasses can help bring affordable glasses to millions that were not able to afford them.
What if it were possible, he thought, to make a pair of glasses which, instead of requiring an optician, could be “tuned” by the wearer to correct his or her own vision? Might it be possible to bring affordable spectacles to millions who would never otherwise have them?
More than two decades after posing that question, Silver now feels he has the answer. The British inventor has embarked on a quest that is breathtakingly ambitious, but which he insists is achievable – to offer glasses to a billion of the world’s poorest people by 2020.
Some 30,000 pairs of his spectacles have already been distributed in 15 countries, but to Silver that is very small beer. Within the next year the now-retired professor and his team plan to launch a trial in India which will, they hope, distribute 1 million pairs of glasses.
The target, within a few years, is 100 million pairs annually. With the global need for basic sight-correction, by his own detailed research, estimated at more than half the world’s population, Silver sees no reason to stop at a billion.
If the scale of his ambition is dazzling, at the heart of his plan is an invention which is engagingly simple.
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.
Vertical Farming
Here is a Discovery video on “vertical farming” a concept for farming food and raising livestock in skyscrapers.
The Dream Machine
This is a pretty impressive advancement in mind-computer interfaces. Their technology can actually read and interpret the visual cortex, reconstructing what you are seeing. This would apply to actual visual images coming thorough the eye, or things you “see” in a dream.
Dream Recorder: New Technology Could Display Your Dreams on Screen:
“In a nutshell, the device converts electrical signals sent to the visual cortex into images that can be viewed on a computer screen. In their experiment, they showed test subjects the six letters in the word neuron and succeeded in reconstructing the word on screen by measuring their brain activity.”
I'm Will, a Principal within the Innovation group of a Fortune 100 company. I am a corporate entrepreneur and Innovation expert.
