Crowdsourcing. Conferences. The EcoDrain Cuts Water Heater Use by 40% A hot shower is relaxing, but is also a huge waste of energy: we heat our water with massive amounts of natural gas, oil or electricity, then transport the heated water to our tubs for a few seconds of sudsing, before washing it down the drain full of raw, wasted heat and energy! What if we could recapture this untapped source of wasted energy by transferring the heat from that shower waste-water to cold incoming water? The EcoDrain, a simple heat exchange unit, does just that, saving water heater use by up to 40%. Showering is “likely your most energy-intensive daily household activity. Although hidden on your energy bill, heating water for showers represents a significant portion of the total.” The EcoDrain is a simple heat exchange unit with no moving parts that is “easy to install” and needs no maintenance. “Hot waste fluids represent a massive and often untapped source of clean energy,” say the EcoDrain folks, and we couldn’t agree more.
. + EcoDrain. Amp;T Selects Palo Alto, Plano and Israel for Innovation Center Locations; Ramps Participant Selection as Initial Projects Get Underway. Calling on the venture community and developers to bring their ideas, AT&T today extended collaboration opportunities and resources designed to quickly advance those ideas from inception to commercial applications. AT&T* announced plans to work with Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs and Ericsson, to locate innovation centers in Palo Alto, CA, Plano, TX, and Ra'anana, near Tel Aviv, Israel.
Cisco and Juniper Networks also plan to participate in the centers as infrastructure providers and collaborators. The centers will provide an environment for developers to collaborate with AT&T and its innovators, its host suppliers and other developers. Initial projects are already underway in temporary facilities, and AT&T and its industry collaborators are engaged in a series of fast-pitch reviews to select additional projects. Through the speed-dating format, AT&T plans to review as many as 400 proposals a year. “We're collaborating to co-create applications,” said Hill. Online AT&T Innovation Center Portal. How the stimulating smell of wasabi can save lives. The Japanese are renowned for developing some of the most innovative gadgets and new technologies in the world.
Now one company has developed a new type of smoke alarm for deaf people. It uses the pungent smell of wasabi, a common ingredient in sushi. Roland Buerk reports from Tokyo. Transcript Roland Buerk: Anyone who has eaten sushi will know all about the flavour it can have - a very mustardy, peppery, horseradish. And this is what they came up with. (Presses button on fire alarm) (Alarm makes siren sound and emits wasabi extract) Roland Buerk: Now, it really is a very strong, horseradishy, almost garlicy smell that catches your nose and the back of your throat. Chigusa Shimokawa: Yes of course. Roland Buerk: How quickly does it wake you up?
Chigusa Shimokawa: Most people will wake up within one or two minutes. How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation. “Be yourself.” It’s one of the rules of social media. If you’re blogging, tweeting or Facebooking for business, be real—or you won’t be followed. Yet, how do you pull off “authentic” while maintaining the company brand message?
It’s tough enough for a small business. What if you’re #2 on Business Week‘s best global brands list, with nearly 400,000 employees across 170 countries? At IBM, it’s about losing control. “We don’t have a corporate blog or a corporate Twitter ID because we want the ‘IBMers’ in aggregate to be the corporate blog and the corporate Twitter ID,” says Adam Christensen, social media communications at IBM Corporation. “We represent our brand online the way it always has been, which is employees first. Op-Ed Columnist - Invent, Invent, Invent.