Zeno Boy Dolls

At 17 inches tall and 6 pounds, an artificial boy named Zeno is the culmination of five years of work by David Hanson and a small group of engineers, designers and programmers at his company, Hanson Robotics. They believe there’s an emerging business in the design and sale of lifelike robotic companions, or social robots. Unlike clearly artificial robotic toys, Zeno is an interactive learning companion, a synthetic pal who can engage in conversation and convey human emotion through a face made of a skinlike, patented material Hanson calls frubber. He plans to make little Zenos available to consumers within the next three years for $200 to $300.

Company blog can be a great way to get your message out

Blogs are becoming popular in the business world. Experts believe that the trend will continue and that companies should at least monitor blogs to learn what’s being said about their products and services. That being said, why not share your thoughts through a CEO blog or company blog that’s visible to your customers, clients and others who might become inspired by your entrepreneurial wisdom? If you have the time and inclination to start your own blog, the result could be increased business visibility, excited audiences and added revenue. Here are 10 things to consider before beginning your blog.

• Determine what you have to offer. You have learned plenty of lessons along the way, some of them the hard way. You could use your blog to shed light on the complexities of running a small business, which can add to your credibility and create added exposure for your company. 
• Decide whether your blog will be a marketing tool. Blogs are both far-reaching and cheap to produce and maintain. They might not be a substitute for traditional marketing materials like press releases and direct mail.
• Define your editorial vision. There’s a lot of work to do before you start your blog. First, shape the editorial policy. How often will you publish? What will be the tone of your messages? What kind of content will you include? 
• Consider the content. Your blog might include industry trends, hot topic news, interviews with other industry leaders, your position on industry issues, innovations in your industry or company, book and article reviews, case studies, shared experiences and lessons learned, and links and downloads to related subjects that might be important to your readers.
• Share your thought leadership. If you want to be a leader, you need to get others to buy into your ideas. That means writing about the sound tactics you’ve used to position, promote and reinforce your credibility within your company and, more importantly, within your marketplace. Everyone loves to get valuable information for free, and if you’re willing and able to provide it, that can only mean good exposure for you and your business. 
• Be a credible source. Remember that as soon as you put something in writing, it lives forever. So be careful about what you write. If you want to stray from your personal experiences and opinions, consider devoting a section of your blog to breaking industry news, vital facts and key findings. 
• Decide who will be the writer. Will you be the blog’s sole writer, or can your team and staff also make contributions? If a team is producing your blog, you may want to consider holding weekly editorial meetings to brainstorm ideas and give out writing assignments. 
• Choose your partnerships wisely. You’ll want to consider which outside sources you want to share links with. Doing so is a great way to create cross traffic and to ultimately increase traffic to your blog. Consider who your customers are and what other blogs they might be interested in.
• Learn how to engage your readers. Your blog’s success will depend on the number of readers you have, and increasing their numbers is a matter of motivating them to come back time and again. You may want to provide access via links to recent topics, highlights, sub-topics and monthly archives. A little humor never hurts, either. 
• Know what matters to your readers. This kind of blog is all about sharing what you know, including your experiences and knowledge, with a wider audience. Do this, and do it well, and they’ll come back to read your future good ideas.

You’ll Always Be Watched

Li Runsen, best known for leading Project Golden Shield, China’s intensive effort to strengthen police control over the Internet, took an additional title: director for China Security and Surveillance Technology, a fast-growing company that installs and sometimes operates surveillance systems for Chinese police agencies, jails and banks. Hedge fund money from the United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behavior-recognition software designed to spot the beginnings of a street protest and notify police. Yikes! The ties between China’s surveillance sector and American capital markets are starting to draw Washington’s attention. So what’s scary? A recent report in The New York Times about the development of surveillance systems in China by another company, China Public Security Technology, which, like China Security and Surveillance, incorporated itself in the United States to make it easier to sell shares to Western investors.

Wall Street executives also defend the industry as necessary to keep the peace at a time of rapid change in China. They point out that New York has begun experimenting with surveillance cameras in Lower Manhattan in places like convenience stores and automated teller machines. Over the last year, American hedge funds have put more than $150 million into Chinese surveillance companies. Executives of Chinese surveillance companies say they are helping their government reduce street crime, preserve social stability and prevent terrorism. They note that London has a more sophisticated surveillance system, although the Chinese system will soon be far more extensive.

China Security and Surveillance has been aggressively raising money in the United States, including $110 million in convertible loans so far this year from the Citadel Group. The company has used the money to acquire or make a deal to buy 10 of the 50 largest surveillance companies in China. China Security and Surveillance is involved in some of the most controversial areas of public security. The government is trying to clamp down on users of the cafes in order to discourage pornography and prostitution. Critics say the surveillance is aimed at catching democracy advocates, Falun Gong adherents and others the Communist Party regards as threatening, noting that rules for nightclubs are less rigorous. Here’s another great article on surveillance in America. The term “Revolution” will be eliminated in all Chinese dictionaries..

Who needs a car when you can fly your way to work

After 30 years of research, a California company unveiled plans for a $90,000 hovercraft called the M200G Volantor. Moller’s machine can fly up to 100 mph at 10 feet off the ground. The disk-shaped craft runs off of ethanol and is an ultra-low emissions vehicle. It predicts making about 250 a year. Start saving for one now! The price is down from its $1 mil predecessor. The firm said the craft is relatively quiet, registering about 85 decibels from 30 feet away. Though a whisper compared to a jet taking off, 85 dbs. is the threshold for hearing loss if exposed to it for a period of time. Sign me up!

Requirement To Start Company: Laptop and Good Idea

In the old days, the entrepreneurial avenues that were open to minors could have been a paper route, mowing the lawns in your neighborhood, or a lemonade stand. But thanks to cheap bandwidth, online advertising, broadband access, and the ability to spread ideas through blogs or social networks, younger and younger people with little funding and few connections have been starting Internet-related companies in recent years.

In ninth grade, Zaid Farooqui cofounded Web design company Cyquester Technologies and hired an employee in India for $400 a month. In tenth grade, Steven Bao sold a Facebook program to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and started the Facebook Developers Meetups in Boston this summer. Entrepreneurs who launch companies in puberty are anomalies, but the Web has lowered the bar for people with skills and ideas. People don’t need a development team or a big budget - they just need a good idea and a laptop.

Y Combinator, started by entrepreneurs in 2005, introduces founders to investors, and doles out funds to the budding moguls who participate in its weekly dinners, giving striving entrepreneurs a community. Typically, the firm provides startups $5,000, plus $5,000 per founder, in exchange for a 6% stake in each company. The average entrepreneur in a Y Combinator session is 25, and he or she does not need an advanced degree, connections, or work experience. Jessica Livingston, a cofounder, said that there’s a trend of younger people launching startups.  “It was cheaper to start one, and you don’t need to ask permission” from investors, she said.

Take A Good Look At Your Industry And See What Needs Some Innovating

Mature companies understand that to compete today they need to innovate. But finding sources of innovation while still paying attention to the current business can be a struggle. The good news, says Harvard Business School professor Lynda M. Applegate, is that one of the forces that threatens established companies can also be a source of salvation: disruptive change.This excerpt from a recent presentation encourages executives to leverage disruptive change as a platform for innovation. Innovation is not an option today. This interest in innovation is confirmed by an IBM study in 2006 that asked over 750 CEOs of the world’s largest and most respected firms, “What’s the extent of change that you need to make in the next 2 years?” The answer surprised them. They knew that innovation was important, but 65% of the CEOs said they were planning significant change over the next 2 years, and another 22% said they planned to implement moderate change. Clearly, jumpstarting innovation is a critical business imperative. Executives realize that radical change is needed, and they do not feel equipped to make those changes. Almost 50% of the CEOs surveyed in the IBM study said the source of innovation was from changes in the business environment. Disruptions in the business environment cause economic shifts that destabilize industries, companies, and even countries.

What are some of the disruptors that innovators are exploiting to create value? As you review the list below, take a moment to stop and think: What are some of the disruptive changes in your industry that might serve as the source of innovation for you and your company? Each topic can pose as an opportunity or as a threat.

Technology: What are the key emerging technologies, and how are they being used inside and outside your industry, company, and region to create proprietary advantage?

Business Models: Are there new business models emerging that you can adopt or adapt to deliver radical improvements in the way you and others do business? Can you expand not just your “share of market” but also your “share of wallet” by adding new business models? Can you expand into adjacent businesses by either taking over activities that used to be done by someone else in your industry, expanding into new markets, or adding new products?

Industry Dynamics: Are there fragmented industries where significant value can be delivered through consolidation?

Globalization: What’s happening in another part of the world that you could adopt or adapt in your environment? What are the proprietary advantages that you have based on your access to people, information, materials, or capital?

Offshoring and Outsourcing: Are there opportunities to create value by outsourcing or offshoring activities that you currently perform inside your organization?

Different Approaches
Entrepreneurs often view disruptive change as a source of opportunity. When they see a disrupted business environment—whether that disruption is from new technologies, new business models, or new regulations—they ask, “How can I leverage these changes to create value?” Established companies often approach innovation and disruption much differently. Having worked hard to align strategy and organization to support the current business, they develop tunnel vision, encouraging employees, customers, suppliers, and partners to work together to deliver today’s business results. As a result, executives in established firms often frame disruption as a threat. When they see changes happening, they work to defend their existing business model and ask, “How can I insulate against these disruptive threats and preserve my current business model?”

As disruptive technologies, business models, regulatory environments, and societal norms destabilize markets, industries, and organizations, executives are finding that incremental innovation is not enough. The good news is that these disruptive shifts are the perfect place to search for opportunities. The key is knowing where to look, how to interpret what you see, and then how to manage uncertainty as you exploit opportunity.

A Tool For Online Communities To Share Financial Advice

It used to be taboo to talk about money at social gatherings, but in an age where people boast about their relationships and post embarrassing photos on online, it was only a matter of time before social-networking websites began cropping up to offer financial advice. People are looking to online communities for motivation, intelligence, to see where they are compared to their peers and a lot of traditional finance has missed the boat in terms of the community aspect. Social-investment sites take the sheen off “expert,” allowing people to compare their investments or trade advice and opinions. Social-lending companies let people appeal to other people, rather than their banks, when they need a loan.
“I know a lot about the mistakes people make at a young age, and I think it’s a great concept,” said Cary Carbonaro, president of a traditional financial planning firm. “If I’m in debt, I can go talk to other people in debt or ask someone who is my peer and not embarrass myself.”

Of course, there are obvious questions, ranging from privacy and security risks to the dubious benefits of leveraging the financial “expertise” of the masses. Start-ups need to gain the trust of users, assuring them that the software is hacker-proof and that their detailed financial information won’t end up in the hands of marketers. Nevertheless, internet entrepreneurs are betting that financial advice from a disinterested crowd with various levels of expertise may be as good or better than professionals who work on commission or work for a particular bank. For the true exhibitionist, a new network of personal finance bloggers has sprouted up, keeping profiles on NetWorthIQ, which offers people a public forum in which to chronicle the ups and downs of their assets.

Find That Bully From High School

Searching for a someone who owes you money or a long lost classmate? Rather than scouring the entire Internet, these search engines troll only Web sites that are rich with personal information. The results they provide are individual profiles coupled with links to where users can find more details. The goal is to cut through the clutter that Google and other general-purpose search engines sometimes offer when users enter the name of a friend, co-worker or celebrity.In addition, the information the search engines provide isn’t always reliable.

The results occasionally include fake profiles or profiles of people who are only tangentially related to a query. Rather than scouring the entire Internet, these search engines look only at Web sites rich with personal information, like Wikipedia, MySpace, LinkedIn and Friendster. Lists of keywords, or tags, that the engines automatically generate for individuals, based on what’s online about them, are sometimes unflattering. Someone who has written about child abuse, for example, may be linked with the tag “pedophile.” Policies for removing inaccurate or embarrassing material vary. Spock allows users to vote down an image or tag so that it isn’t as prominent. Go ahead, find someone…

Spock ( www.spock.com)

Wink ( www.wink.com)

Zoominfo ( www.zoominfo.com)

Just don’t get too carried away: Stalking is a serious crime in every state.

Now Teachers Throughout The US Can Help Each Other Out

Yahoo Inc. is developing a free online service designed to make it easier for educators to create, find and share lesson plans, worksheets and ideas. The product, Yahoo for Teachers, is a sort of social network that allows teachers to collaborate on course work and store information that they find online and want to showcase in class. Teachers have long complained about a lack of time to prepare for class and of the difficulty in collaborating with colleagues, even those just down the hall. Curriculum requirements that vary by state have also complicated the issue.

Yahoo for Teachers will be accessible from teachers.yahoo.com, which features a brief description of the service, video tour and announcement that the site will soon be open to the public. The service allows teachers to create and store lesson plans, worksheets and projects online rather than preparing class materials using a Word document, for example. Teachers can also search lesson plans posted by others and leave comments. For Yahoo, focusing on teachers is a departure from its usual mass-market business strategy and may signal a new willingness to cater to more-specialized users. Brillant idea!

A good night’s sleep just takes too long.

Scientists may soon be able to cut those eight wasted hours down to three or four. The technique, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), involves an electromagnetic coil that emits pulses of skull-penetrating, neuron-activating magnetic energy. Depending on where the wand is and how fast it pulses, TMS can play all kinds of tricks. It can make a thumb twitch, create the illusion of a flash of light, or even treat depression. Hmm…. could it make you rob a bank?

Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin set out to see if TMS could switch on certain sleep phases. Working with 16 sleeping men, Tononi and his team located a spot on the skull that they could zap to induce the brain waves characteristic of deep, non-REM sleep. Although Tononi’s volunteers got only a few minutes of artificial sleep—not enough for the volunteers to draw meaningful subjective conclusions about sleep quality—previous studies have indicated that TMS applied at certain frequencies during sleep can improve memory. Imagine 15 hour workdays if this became the norm.

The Secret of Vizio’s Success

If you don’t know Vizio yet, you will very soon. The LCD TV maker has quickly staked out a place in the flat-panel market and has elbowed aside some of the biggest names in electronics in the process. For all the clout and brand recognition that accompanies names like Sony and Samsung, it was Vizio, a virtual unknown a year ago, that topped all LCD TV makers in the second quarter of this year in televisions shipped to retailers. Vizio sold 606,402 TVs in North America in the second quarter, a 76% jump from the previous quarter. Former market leader Samsung dropped to second place. But the company that took the biggest dive was Sony.

The biggest reason for Vizio’s sudden rise is its distribution strategy. At the beginning of the second quarter, the company expanded its list of retailers to include Wal-Mart Stores, Sears, Kmart and Circuit City, providing a huge boost to its shipment total. The company started by selling TVs only through warehouse stores Costco Wholesale and Sam’s Clubs. In addition, the quality of Vizio LCDs looks very similar to the Sonys and Samsungs on the store floor–and the price is significantly lower. Much of the sales have been word-of-mouth endorsements. Vizio has done little in the way of advertising. But that’s about to change come this fall.The company is prepping for a big marketing push when the new National Football League season kicks off next month. The ad campaign attracted a big-name spokesman, too: last year’s league MVP, LaDanian Tomlinson of the San Diego Chargers. The advertising, of course, will be done in true Vizio style: the budget will be less than 1% of overall spending. Vizio’s strategy essentially revolves around trying to have the cheapest TVs in the mid- to high price range.

Sleep Studies Show Why People Still Feel Tired After A Full Night’s Rest

People who spend more pre-bedtime hours using the Internet or watching television are more likely to report that they don’t get enough sleep, even though they sleep almost as long as people who spend fewer pre-bedtime hours in front of a computer or television screen, survey findings show.

“While many people use electronic media, such as the Internet, it should be noted that the longer media use before sleep can trigger (self-perceived) insufficient sleep,” lead researcher Dr. Nakamori Suganuma, of Osaka University, Japan, told Reuters Health.After testing a total of 5,875 Japanese respondents, nearly half of the respondents associated their lack of sleep with electronic media use before bedtime. Those reporting longer electronic media use were also more likely to report insufficient sleep.

It’s time for game companies to target a whole new demographic.

You might think the face of one of the hottest areas in gaming right now is a young male in his 20s. You’d be suprised!  The epitome of the new-era gamer is a woman in her late 30s or early 40s who plays on an average PC. While young men dominate the gaming industry as a whole, casual games are one of the fastest-growing parts of the industry and attracting a whole new demographic.

You can find signs of the revolution everywhere. One of the fastest-growing parts of the game industry is centered on so-called casual online games, PC-based titles that users can generally start playing in minutes and usually don’t require the mastery of some combination of multiple buttons to enjoy. The list of top-selling games for consoles or handhelds are dominated by family and non-traditional titles. The market for casual games is still a fraction of the total game industry, but it’s growing considerably faster. Among the consumers who buy casual online games, 74% are women. More than half of the people playing casual online games are older than 35.

“You will be able to browse into the sky like never before”

After turning millions of Internet users into virtual explorers of the world with Google Earth, the Internet search giant is now hoping to turn many of them into virtual stargazers. Google is unveiling within Google Earth today a new service called Sky that will allow users to fly around and zoom in, exposing increasingly detailed imagery of some 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies. The Sky imagery was stitched together from more than one million photographs from scientific and academic sources, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology and the NASA-financed Hubble. Google said that it developed the project strictly because some of its engineers were interested in it, and that it had no plans to make money from it for now.Microsoft has a research project called the World Wide Telescope that offers similar capabilities to Sky. The project was once headed by Jim Gray, the veteran Microsoft researcher who disappeared this year after a sailing trip off San Francisco Bay.

He’s Done This And That And This

Marc Andreessen, the man who helped develop the first commercial Web browser, is still referred to in some circles as the poster boy of the Internet age. They remember him as the smiling, baby-faced kid from Wisconsin who appeared on a 1996 cover of Time magazine barefoot, sitting on a throne. Andreessen hasn’t allowed himself to be frozen in time or relegated to has-been status. He’s still moving and shaking, and reaping the financial rewards.Last month, Hewlett-Packard Co. shelled out $1.6 billion for the company he co-founded as a follow-up to Netscape Communications Corp. Also in July, his third Web software operation that business partner Gina Bianchini runs, landed $44 million in its first round of venture funding. Though he was late to the blogging party, his online diary he launched in June has quickly built a readership among entrepreneurs and financiers interested in the inner workings of Silicon Valley.As Friendster, MySpace and other social-networking websites tussled for consumers’ affections, Andreessen and Bianchini decided to make software tools that let people create their own social networks and other Web applications. Its called Ning, which means “peace” in Chinese. A social network, which can be public or private, is a place online where people meet around a topic or interest and make comments, share photos and post videos. “The best time to be an entrepreneur was in ‘93, ‘94 and ‘95,” Andreessen said. “But this is a good time because the Internet is a huge global medium.” He also joined the board of Harmonic Communications, a software company that tracked and measured advertising. He’s also an author. He’s also this and that and this….