Good Thinking

June 10, 2005 The great architect Louis Kahn once said, "A room is not a room without natural light. Natural light gives mood to space by the nuances of light in the time of the day and the seasons of the year as it enters and modifies the space." The ambience of a sunlight-deprived room can now be significantly enhanced thanks to an ingenious new sunlight-transportation technology developed by Swedish company Parans. The novel approach overcomes the provision of natural light to rooms in a building that would otherwise be deprived by collecting sunlight with outdoor light-collecting SkyPort panels, transporting the light by fibre-optic cable known as SunWire and delivered to the required spaces via light emitting luminaries known as Bjork.  Read More

June 6, 2005--At the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Conference which opened in Toronto (Canada) yesterday, Knovel, a leading provider of Web-based information services for engineers, scientists and librarians, announced the availability of the next generation Knovel Library, a streamlined full-text science and technical reference and online database with new powerful and intuitive search and productivity tools. Knovel's new Web-based platform is the third generation of the Knovel service which transforms information into actionable intelligence by integrating software tools with content. Very cool! Highly recommended.  Read More

June 2, 2005 Mazda has developed the world’s first direct spot joining technology to join steel and aluminum. Mazda has applied for more than 20 patents related to this process which was first employed in 2003 in the development of the Mazda RX-8 sports car that used friction heat to join separate aluminum sheets. The technology has evolved, and will be used to join the trunk lid and bolt retainer for the all-new Mazda MX-5 sports car that is scheduled to go on sale in Q4. The technology contributed significantly to Mazda’s vehicle weight reduction “gram strategy” program during the development of the MX-5 sports car, as well as lowering costs.  Read More

May 26, 2005 ExacTile and GuessLess are two ingenious new inventions that make tiling much easier and advanced tiling far more accessible to the Do-It-Yourself marketplace. Both products reduce tile wastage, significantly cut the time required in laying tiles and enable far more complex patterns to be layed. The Intellectual Property on both tools is being offered for sale by Portugeuse innovation company Bdi.  Read More

May 6, 2005 The 500 year-old book publishing industry looks set for some digital shake-ups given our story on Momento's high-quality, one-off coffee table books and now this latest offer from Xerox. Xerox Corporation is kicking off the Xerox Aspiring Authors fiction contest designed to stop the cycle of rejection letters that keep so many from seeing their work in print. The grand-prize-winning novelist will receive 100 published copies of his or her story, US$5,000 in cash, and a possible opportunity to launch a new literary career. In addition, Xerox will demonstrate the power of on-demand book-publishing technology - which makes it cost-effective to digitally print books in quantities of one to 1,000 - by printing a free paperback copy of every novel entered.  Read More

May 6, 2005 The landmark film "The Corporation" has moved beyond the realm of documentary filmmaking to become the toolkit of an emerging movement that is questioning the very foundation of "business as usual" for corporations around the world. It is also it moving beyond mere analysis of the problem, to become part of a case study on the social impact of documentaries. An interesting and important on-line debate will take place on May 7 to bring people together to question "what happens next?" The three arguments to be debated are reform, regulate or rewrite - should we REFORM (make corporations run better, reward good management, make better business practices good business), REGULATE (introduce more democratic governmental controls and hold corporations accountable for their planetary misdeeds or REWRITE (change the legal constitution and eradicate corporate personhood). This is an important debate as it could influence the very fabric of our society. Be there!  Read More

May 5, 2005 It’s the world's most dynamic e-business marketing, design and consulting agency. It provides distinctive clients with groundbreaking business strategies and cutting-edge designs to aggressively and creatively compete in the ever-changing economy. Their consulting ideas will entice and excite you. Their professional design solutions will give you the confidence to succeed. And their web site will make you think they know what they're doing. Their office is really modern and they've got nice computers and stuff. If you ever saw it, you'd say "Wow, cool office. These guys are legit." They have really smart people who are always thinking up totally cool stuff. They have a meeting room with a big, round, expensive table and when you hire them, they spend lots of time sitting around the table having meetings. Their female staff members are all hot, so, even if there's nothing to meet about, they'll sit and flirt with them, and charge you for the time. When one of their new-age marketing gurus or design experts or consultants has an idea, the rest of them look at him or her with serious expressions and write stuff down on paper. They also have one of those dry-erase boards on the wall, and take turns making flow-charts and brain-storming and talking about "injecting creativity into market positioning," and cool stuff like that. It’s the hottest new company in the digital space and every Gizmag reader will instantaneously recognise it. And their name is ...  Read More

May 4, 2005 A new web-based service that offers personalised single-copy high-quality coffee-table books could give the humble book a new life in the digital age. Books have been the principle medium of knowledge distribution for five hundred years until the coming of the internet and the digital distribution of words, sound, images and video. With the arrival of the Digital Age, the book has lost some of its allure, being seen as low-tech in a high-tech age although it remains the most user-friendly of all mediums. In offering everybody the ability to produce a one-off or very-short-run book of premium quality at a cost-effective price, Australian-based Momento has redefined the short-run book publishing market and opened up myriad new and exciting publishing opportunities. Already the service is being used by companies, photographers and artists as short-run portfolios, as special “this is your life”gifts for loved ones and retiring employees, baby books and the overwhelming favourite … wedding albums. The coming launch of the service to professionals will also enable photographers and communications companies to offer sizes up to A3, leather binding … and professional value-added services.  Read More

May 2, 2005 The Rolex watch company is calling for entries from around the world for the 2006 Rolex Awards – the 30th anniversary of this international, biennial initiative. Enterprising individuals of any age, nationality or background are invited to apply to the 12th cycle of this philanthropic programme that was created in 1976 to support groundbreaking projects in science and medicine; technology and innovation; exploration and discovery; the environment and cultural heritage.  Read More