ArabStartups. Best Of What's New 2009. The standards by which we judge the year's greatest innovations are simple.
The objects don't necessarily need to be beautiful (although some, like the all-glass TKTS building in Times Square, certainly are). They don't have to be eco-friendly (although the packaging made of biodegradable fungus certainly is). They don't even have to be difficult to build (with all due respect to the telescope designed to find Earth-like planets). They just have to push past what we thought was possible just twelve months ago. And the following 100 innovations have all blown us away, beginning with the headliner, our product of the year: something so simple yet so smart, with the ability to improve countless lives.
Please enjoy the full list here on our special Best of What's New site, arranged by category, each with its own Grand Award Winner and packed with additional videos and photos. Obama offers millions in Muslim technology fund. The White House Friday highlighted a new multi-million-dollar technology fund for Muslim nations, following a pledge made by President Barack Obama in his landmark speech to the Islamic world. The White House said the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) had issued a call for proposals for the fund, which will provide financing of between 25 and 150 million dollars for selected projects and funds. The Global Technology and Innovation Fund will "catalyze and facilitate private sector investments" throughout Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the White House said in a statement.
Eligible projects would advance economic opportunity and create jobs in areas like technology, education, telecoms, media, business services and clean technology, the White House said. OPIC said sample projects could help foster the development of new computer technology or telecommunications businesses, or widen access to broadband Internet services. Final selections will be announced next June. Human rights can be innovative. But does it need to be? « Justic.
Twitter Fast Growing Beyond Its Messaging Roots. Thanks to its open-ended design and a thriving user community, Twitter is fast outgrowing its roots as a simple, easy-to-use messaging service.
Enterprising hackers are creating apps for sharing music and videos, to help you quit smoking and lose weight — spontaneously extending the text-based service into one of the web’s most fertile (and least likely) application platforms. Hardware hackers have set up household appliances to send status alerts over Twitter, like a washing machine that tweets when the spin cycle is through, or a home security system that tweets whenever it senses movement inside the house. Others have incorporated Twitter into their DIY home automation systems.
Forgot to turn off the lights? Send a tweet to flip the switch by remote control. Unboxed - It’s No Time to Forget About Innovation. Technology Review: 10 Emerging Technologies 2008. Modeling Surprise Much of modern life depends on forecasts: where the next hurricane will make landfall, how the stock market will react to falling home prices, who will win the next primary.
While existing computer models predict many things fairly accurately, surprises still crop up, and we probably can't eliminate them. Probabilistic Chips Krishna Palem thinks a little uncertainty in chips could extend battery life in mobile devices--and maybe the duration of Moore's Law, too. NanoRadio Alex Zettl's tiny radios, built from nanotubes, could improve everything from cell phones to medical diagnostics.
Wireless Power Physicist Marin Soljacic is working toward a world of wireless electricity. Atomic Magnetometers John Kitching's tiny magnetic-field sensors will take MRI where it's never gone before. Offline Web Applications Adobe's Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop. Graphene Transistors Connectomics.