Here at ideas4all we always say a good idea needn’t be a complicated one, or one that requires much elaboration or specialized knowledge. A good idea can sometimes emerge as the answer to a simple, everyday need.

Here is an idea that is as simple as it is practical: an object called P-Hook.

The idea is a hook that works as a book marker, with a small ring that stands out, allowing us to quickly find the book and page we are looking for. It is especially useful in large libraries or for those old magazine collections with hundreds of marked pages.

The P-Hook is for sale at 7$ per box, each including 12 hooks. You can buy it here. It’s so simple and practical that you may be wondering, why didn’t I think of it?

In celebrating the first anniversary of Rtve.es, and in order to stimulate greater participation from users, the International Awards for Innovation in Audiovisuals and Internet have recently been organized and presented for the first time.

Their main objective is to reward audiovisual innovation on the internet through video creation in Spanish, especially intended for broadcast on the internet. The idea is to discover and promote new emergent talent on the internet, using new audiovisual languages and formats for this new medium.

You can take part in these three categories: Fiction, Non Fiction and Educational. Although video is the star format, external functionalities, characteristics and content can be included to enrich or complement the video.

The deadline to submit works is September 30th 2009. The management of Interactive Media at RTVE will carry out an initial selection filtering through all submitted pieces, after which a jury will announce a winner for each category, who will receive 8,000 euros in cash and RTVE’s promise that it will broadcast the winner’s piece and the names of the authors.

The Award ceremony will be part of FICOD 2009, the International Forum for Digital Content, taking place in Madrid in November 2009.
During the presentation of the awards, which took place on May 29th 2009 at the Casa de América in Madrid, various members of the jury gave their point of view regarding the new content and communication tools now challenging traditional media. Director, screenwriter and film producer Alex de la Iglesia declared: “Television and film are going to die, and their assassin is Internet”.

The creation of an European Space for Higher Education is giving an impulse to various initiatives attempting to ease the transition from university learning to a more competitive teaching model, focusing on innovation and creativity.

However, it is teachers and teaching groups that, within a teaching environment, are truly responsible for stimulating the teaching community and improving its quality.

From that perspective, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) promotes various initiatives for its professors that support innovative teaching, while paying special attention to training with new teaching methods from the European Space for Higher Education. One of these initiatives is the organization of the Awards for Teaching Excellence, Innovative Teaching and Teaching Innovation Groups (TIG).

Two prizes will be awarded within the category for “Teaching Excellence”, recognizing the work of those UPM professors who have carried out their teaching methods for, at least, twenty years. There will be 10,000 euros for each of the two prizes.

The objective of the “Innovative Teaching” category is to distinguish those professors who have stood out in the development of innovative teaching activities uninterruptedly during the past five years, rewarding them with eight 3,000 euro prizes.

The deadline for these two award categories passed on May 25th 2009, but registration is still open in a third category:

Four prizes are being awarded to Innovative Teaching Groups (ITG) at UPM, for groups working on innovative teaching projects organized by UPM or outside of the university, for the publication of results obtained in scientific journals, assistance to conventions, seminars, etc…, deadline for registration for these awards is September 7th 2009.

Activities valued for the awards are, among others, the promotion of teaching centered around the student, the support of active teaching methods, curricular development, the creation and coordination of teaching groups, teaching programs, student support, taking full advantage of the possibilities offered by TIG, Research and Development projects and all activities promoting internationalization.

It now seems that the traditional image of a mediterranean village, with its whitewashed walls, was much more beneficial to the planet than we had thought, according to an article published in The Times.

At the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, 1997’s Physics Nobel Prize winner, and current Secretary of Energy in the United States, Steven Chu, said a much more effective policy against climate change than we might think at first sight would be to paint the surface of buildings, rooftops and roads white or, at least, in light colors.

If buildings were to reflect more solar light, and therefore absorb less radiation, there would be less warming.

In fact, Chu guarantees that, should this measure be adopted globally, the reduction in CO2 emissions would be equivalent to a global prohibition on cars for eleven years.

As an example, Chu mentioned the work of Art Rosenfeld, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, in California (of which Chu is a former director), and currently a member of the California Energy Commission, whose work has made this initiative be taken into account in the urbanism laws of said State.

According to estimates made by Rosenfeld and other scientists at the lab, if the world’s 100 largest cities were to put this simple idea into practice, we would avoid warming equivalent to 44 trillion tons of carbon dioxide.

In fact, light-colored surfaces reflect approximately 80% of radiation, while dark surfaces reflect only 20%, meaning they absorb large quantities of radiation. One of the advantages of this measure is an important reduction in the use of air conditioning in buildings with light-colored walls and roofs.

The Ideas Institute for Business Creation and Development is an initiative of the Polytechnic University of Valencia to promote university entrepreneurship, supporting Spanish talent and innovation, and strengthening business and technological frameworks in Spain.

The main objective of the IDEAS Institute is the development of an entrepreneurial culture, revitalizing the university community and fostering the creation and support of new business by backing the creation and growth of technology-based innovative companies and spin-offs at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

This initiative has been recognized by the European Business Awards in its latest edition, under the Entrepreneurship Promotion Award category.

These awards, promoted by the European Commission for Business and Industry, began in 2005, when it became apparent that the future and growth of the economy in the European Union depended greatly on small and medium enterprises. Various initiatives have emerged from this idea, such as the European SME Week, and other awards.

The specific objectives of these awards are to:
Identify and recognize activities and measures that have been successful in supporting companies and business initiatives.
Show and share examples of the best initiatives in business policy and practice.
Increase awareness of the role of entrepreneurs in society.
Stimulate and inspire possible entrepreneurs.

Over 350 national, regional and local authorities, including towns, cities and regions, as well as private and public associations bridging between public government and entrepreneurs, educational programs and business organizations from 25 countries competed in the national round of the European Business Awards 2008/2009. The jury selected 47 finalists including a wide spectrum of projects which are being very successful in supporting businesses and entrepreneurial initiative throughout Europe. The winners were made public at a ceremony which took place in Prague closing the First European Small and Medium Enterprise Week (European SME Week).

Click here for further information.

Surely one of the most annoying parts in laptops, as well as one of the most failure-prone, is the ventilator. Some computers make such noise when switched on that the ventilator won’t let us hear the computer’s audio.

The most important principle in the maintenance of any device or machine is: “the lesser the number of mobile parts, the lesser the number of repairs, and the longer the useful life”.

And that is the basis for the research carried out by Alexander Mamishev, in an attempt to perfect solar wind generation technology to be implemented, fundamentally, in laptop computers.

In fact, as can be read in FayerWayer, a company called Tessera has recently presented a prototype allowing for sufficient and efficient refrigeration using this exclusive concept. It basically consists in the movement of air, making gas ions move from a charged panel to another grounded panel.

The principle is not new and has already been used in other fields, but the challenge of adapting its size and power supply to laptops is an idea that could revolutionize the world of electronic devices and, in particular, that of portable computers.

Less loss through friction and approximately a 50% decrease in energy consumption are factors that make this solution a new opportunity for sustainable innovation. Other aspects that may be inconvenient have to be refined, such as the need for a special transformer for the computer’s 12 volt power supply.

In any case, the prototype shows it is possible and viable. All that is left is to find a commercial and profitable solution for its use, now that laptop computers have reached such competitive prices.

I am a Google fan I must confess, I use Gmail, iGoogle, Google calendar, Google alerts, Google earth, I remember the excitement the first time I looked for our house and there it was, I use the dictionary, the Google translator, maps mash ups, Picasa to organize pictures and scanned images, and recently the new version of Picasa to share photos without inundating friends emails with megabytes, although it is still very poor, I even used to see what my mood was, although not anymore, using the little gem that changes colors to tell you how stressed you are, I believe it was done by the manner of my typing and exercising pressure on the keyboard and it was always right

However I believe there are many things that could be improved in the different products and services, especially in Google analytics and more transparency in the selection of Google ads and their payment per whatever policies in Adsense and Google Ads, there was a time when I did send Google some improvement comments and ideas and participated in some new beta functionalities but with no dialog form the company so I stopped doing it. But I will talk about 2 in this post.

1-First I am going to mention which was the most important product improvement for search engine that was needed in my opinion up to last year, it was the fact that when you searched by date it did not work. The time frame was not relevant in the algorithm of the searcher up at least December 2008, dates-time were not considered properly when it had to prioritize weights to show you on the screen the most relevant information found, at least that had been my experience so far, if I had asked for Ana Maria Llopis 2008 in December of last year I would have found data form 2007, 2004, etc in no ordered manner. I mentioned this in November at Le Web in Paris raising a Public question to Marissa Meyer, key strategic executive in product and services, when would this be solved and she said it would be solved shortly. I mentioned this in a lunch to Bernardo Hernandez Head of Google Maps last month. But … I was pleasantly surprised today because when I tried the same search Ana Maria Llopis 2009 only relevant 2009 appeared in the first 4-5 pages of results, so it works, hence sometime in between December and May there has been a relevant change in this direction.

And I say partially in the title because my talk this month in Teruel at an entrepreneur’s conference appears in page 8 and it should appear due to its recentness on page 2 and this is because still relevancy and authority of the appearance is behind the relevance of recent date immediacy. So it still needs working on it

2- And the second aspect is the Google 10 to the 100 Contest for ideas. WE still have no answer from Google when the winners will be announced their commitment was for January of 2009 and still every month there is a delay on dates of publishing, it could be that the number on entries has been overwhelming but they should have planned for it adequately. Maybe no idea seems to them that could change the world enough but we need news so far it seems that it’s a Sine Diem announcement event. At the beginning they said it would be April but now no date is announced for the good news to the winning team.

So this are the two Asignaturas Pendientes I wanted to surface (Critical Pending Assignments) as we say in Spanish among the very many other that you all could have detected as well.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a non-profit organization which globally promotes art, science and multidisciplinary mechanics and engineering, and other related disciplines. ASME’s main mission is to encourage and help all those practicing engineering for the greater good.

One of its initiatives is the ASME Student Design Competition, which is organized every year with the objective of creating a platform from which students in ASME associated centers may fulfill all their potential, encouraging their initiative and ability to innovate. With this in mind, every year a new challenge or problem is presented for which those students, preferably working in teams, are to find a viable and efficient solution.

They are to design, construct and be able to operate a prototype carrying out an activity related to the challenge at hand. The challenge for the 2009 edition, the deadline for which passed in February, consisted in designing a vehicle for a mission to Mars. Regional winners will be announced on June 30th 2009 and will go on to compete in the international phase of the competition. Winning projects of these two phases will be exhibited at the 2009 ASME Student Professional Development Conference, taking place in November 2009 in Florida.

The challenge for the 2010 edition has already been launched with the title EARTH SAVER: Autonomous Material Sorter. The idea is to design, construct and test an autonomous system capable of classifying and storing typically recyclable materials such as metal, plastic and glass in separate, highly sensitive containers.

Cash prizes for the local phase go from 500 dollars for the first prize to 150 dollars for third place. In the final, the winner of the first prize will receive up to 4,000 dollars. Finalists will also have their expenses paid to assist the final.

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry has announced it will organize various events brought together under the European Week for Small and Medium Enterprises, convinced that the best way to overcome the financial crisis is to favor and stimulate small and medium enterprises to increase their creativity, flexibility and capacity for problem-solving.

The program’s main objective is to promote entrepreneurship and to bring a better business understanding to a collective which, thanks to its innovative ideas, can give rise to future entrepreneurs and employers that may contribute to overcome the crisis, thus creating a solid technological and financial future.

Over 1,000 events, organized in 35 countries during the week from May 6th to 14th, have promoted the idea that bright minds are capable of detecting new needs and, above all, new business ideas that will help preserve, and even create, workplaces.

It is also a chance to give entrepreneurs information, advice, support and ideas on different levels (European, national, regional, or local), which will be of much help in launching new projects or business ideas. At ideas4all, we support initiative and entrepreneurship, which is why we organized a free coaching session with Ana María Llopis, on May 27th, through Twitter account @i4allcoaching.

As part of the European SME Week’s opening ceremony, the European Entrepreneurship Video Awards were given. You can watch the winning videos here.

The winners of the European Enterprise Awards were also announced during the closing ceremony. These awards recognize and reward the most outstanding initiatives supporting entrepreneurship on a regional level.

This international award recognizes the courage and efforts of those who try to innovate all over the world, applying technology for the benefit of humanity.

The planet’s most critical and pressing problems hardly ever find a solution in profitable business or highly lucrative initiatives. What’s more, they demand new ideas and technologies which require an effort in researching and hard, tireless work to develop and implement them.

The objective of the Tech Awards is precisely to support all those who are improving living conditions through the use of technology in areas such as education, equality, the environment, health and economic development. In fact, these are the categories for prize nominations.

Individuals, organizations or companies, be they profit-oriented or not, can all apply for the award. Participation for the award is through nomination, but self-nomination is allowed. Although the deadline for the 2009 edition of the award has passed, nominations for the 2010 edition can be submitted.

The Tech Awards program began in 2000, and was inspired in the Millennium Objectives published by United Nations, a document which also defines the award’s five categories.

Among the prize-winners for the 2008 edition are the Cheetah Conservation Fund, Marc Koska, Star Syringe or DESI Power: Decentralised Energy Systems India.

Winners receive a 50,000 dollar cash prize, and one winner is named from each of the five categories for a total of $250,000 in cash prizes to support their initiatives and a trophy is given at the Gala in the Tech Museum at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, in San Jose, California in november 19th, 2009.