The deadline to submit ideas and take part in the Big Bang Challenge, organized by AstraZeneca with the cooperation of Forética, in search of business ideas that will make our planet a better place is approaching… but there still is time.

You can publish your idea at www.bigbangchallenge.com until July 15, 2011, inclusive.
The prize is 18,000€, which will cover your initial costs as you start up your project.

There’s still time to participate! 20 ideas will make it through to the next round, 15 will be selected because of their number of valid votes, and 5 ideas will be chosen by the ideas4all team, Forética and AstraZeneca.

Here is all the information you need: www.bigbangchallenge.com
What are you waiting for!

This idea is sure to bring a smile to your face, because of its sheer simplicity, and the improvement it brings to an everyday object such as a washing machine.

By opening a compartment on the interior of the washing machine, a separate drum becomes available to wash another set of clothes during the same wash. You can wash socks, underwear, and especially delicate clothing that we often need to wash separately.

This idea was one of the winners of the Red Dot award: Design concept 2010

Brilliant idea!

Maria Mazariegos from ideas4all

ideas4all shows its commitment towards social networks with its new header, which includes a specific space for networks, making them immediately visible and easy to use, as part of a gradual and ongoing web redesign, especially centered around the top of the page.

We are looking for a smooth layout, where grey continues to be the predominating color, combined with touches of energetic orange.

Most relevant recent changes:
We’re clearing our header and changing the buttons “I have an idea” and “I Share a problem”. We have made them bigger and hope they are more visible and attractive.

One highlight is the access to our YouTube channel, with its own menu and access to all videos. We’ve also re-arranged other elements. You will now find buttons on the top of the screen linking to Twitter Connect and Facebook Connect, along with buttons linking to our main profiles in Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

In the ‘About Us’ drop-down menu, sections and sub-sections have been regrouped.

We have also added a direct link to our blog, taking you directly to the English or Spanish version, depending on your personal configuration. In the highlighted items on the right, we are still committed to our second Twitter account, @topideas4all, which is yielding excellent results in your one-on-one dialogue with companies.

We have a new highlighted problem in our homepage: Which category would you include in ideas4all to classify ideas? Now, you can participate with your own ideas.

We want you to tell us which category, or categories, you feel are missing when you publish your ideas. You may have thought that you couldn’t quite find the right category for an idea you wanted to publish in the past. Thanks to this new highlighted problem, you can share your solutions. We will keep them very much in mind in order to improve ideas4all, and might very well include your new categories.

Enter here to publish your solutions.

For this extremely functional idea, designer Ivan Erkic decided to clip one end of a spoon to the edge of a glass, and then do the same with all other pieces of cutlery. The design turned out to be the winner of 2010’s Kitchen Tools awards.

Via Directoalpaladar

Maria Mazariegos from ideas4all

Writing with your eyes sounds close to impossible, but it isn’t. Not any more, at least, thanks to the development of EyeWriter, a device that follows eye movement, and interprets it as commands and text.

Its origin is rather curious, as it was first created to fight ALS, a disease that causes partial or complete body paralysis. This condition was suffered by activist and graffiti artist Temptone, resulting in complete paralysis, and allowing him only to move his eyes. The search began for a system that would allow him to use his eyes to write.

A new beginning, full of hope, which could help many more people, with different types of limitations.

Maria Mazariegos from ideas4all

After witnessing disasters such as the terrible oil spill in BP’s platform in the Gulf of Mexico, it is very interesting to see how this field of research evolves with innovative ideas that can become viable solutions for such situations.

Today I bring you a concept that has already won the Lotus prize in 2010.

It is called Oil Cleaning Guard, a vehicle-container designed to keep oil spills or floating elements from spreading over the sea’s surface. It also includes a storage system that allows it to retrieve spilled material and filter the water until it is clean. Each vehicle can be attached to another, in order to build a wall or circle to isolate contamination.

To top it all off, and making this invention even more surprising, designers have included a sound frequency system that drives birds and fish away from the affected area.

Let’s all hope more concepts like this come to life.

Via Trendhunter

Maria Mazariegos from ideas4all

You may not know that 65% of pedestrians that are run over and hit a car’s hood either die or suffer serious injury.

This statistic has driven CellBond, a British company that specializes in the design of structures for impact absorption, to join forces with researchers from Anglia Ruskin University to develop a new design for car hoods that can reduce head impact trauma by 50-60%.

For this new design, they have created an aluminum grid that folds inwards, absorbing impact while keeping the pedestrian from being hit by a rigid surface.

Although a well-known car manufacturer seems to be interested in this new design, we will still have to wait to see it on cars in the streets.

An idea that can save lives is always a good idea.

Via Cooking Ideas

Maria Mazariegos from ideas4all

Given we spend at least 8 hours a day at work, it’s very important to feel comfortable, in a pleasant environment that motivates us and helps us do our job.

In this new Challenge, sponsored by AF Steelcase, the leading brand in office equipment and workspaces, we’re looking for ideas that will help improve the spaces we work in, ideas that are applicable to offices, studies, and any space used for work.

You can participate by publishing your ideas from June 1 to 30.

The 5 best ideas, selected by the ideas4all team, will be rewarded with 5 AF Steelcase “Think” chairs.

Here is all the information you need.