Crashing AQ Is a Bad Idea
Gustavo De Las Casa makes the case for open source warfare taking off after crashing a hierarchical network.
P2P Venture Capitalism
I really like Chris Dixon’s model of a VC as a consultancy with dollars. That’s pretty cool and his new firm looks like fun. But Chris does the future of venture capitalism a disservice by calling his model peer to peer. It’s not.
$10 DIY Cellphone Microscope
The DIY design is the brainchild of Aydogan Ozcan, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and member of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. He did it all with some software he wrote and about $10 in off-the-shelf parts, reports the New York Times.
There’s actually no lens to speak of, as the magnification is handled entirely by software, holograms and electronics. This, Ozcan says, is what’s at the heart of the device’s portability and affordability. Better still, this means that a future system based on this design could have the ability to diagnose and research even better than a traditional microscope in the field. Said Bahram Jalali, an applied physicist and professor of electrical engineering at U.C.L.A in an interview with the New York Times, the beauty of the design is in its lack of mechanical scanning.
Idea: Twitter Group Buys
Here’s an app, designed to strengthen the relationship between customer and producer/retailer, that can be built pretty quickly on the Twitter platform.
Simple: add a process that enables consumers talking about – ideally complaining about – the pricing of a particular product to request special group-buy pricing. Build a bot that seeks out “$” hashtags, and alerts commercial clients when a certain threshold is reached. Participating Tweeters are DM’ed a code for a discount.
Builds buzz, producer’s move product. Consumers win. Middle man gets some small cash flow. Works especially well in software.
Collective Technology Experiences
There’s value in the 2 inch by 2 inch mobile revolution. But there’s more if you can take that data during a common experience and visualize it in a way that enhances the collective experience. For example: a graduation or sporting event.
Purdue is taking advantage of this in the classroom in the form of Hotseat.