Make Magazine has taken a look at DIY gliders with built in cameras. I see these as disruptive to the UAV market, since a UAV (unless it is used as launch platform) serves as a flying sensor system. In these cases, improved retail camera optics often provide "good enough" results for surveillance while the small form factor makes RC planes very difficult to detect.
And the technology on the DIY microplane front is improving! Last year, the Raw Feed pointed out an RC plane that fed images to Virtual reality goggles.
So, two questions come to mind:
1. You are a major UAV manufacturer, devoted to making big, expensive UAVs. Where is the value in the micro UAV supply chain? If not in the planes, maybe it is in the sensors, or in the data, or in methods of controlling an airborne fleet of microplanes.
2. Is it time for one UAV manufacturer to become the Linksys of microplanes, selling mid-sized easily deployed fleets packed with specs (such as simple representations total coverage and resolution) that make it easy to evaluate the strengths/ weaknesses of the product?
3. What countermeasures are required in order to prevent misuse of micro-UAV surveillance planes? Does it need to involve form detection or would it be better to just detect airborne cellphone/ wireless data transmission? How would you do this?
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NewLaunches points to Kaplan's new SAT prep offering for the iPod. This really joins an array of "small study" solutions, from cell phone services that administer pop quizzes to study guides for the PSP. The iPod, however, is the biggest of the "small electronics" platforms and it is used by a wider study-oriented school age demographic.
This product will probably succeed despite the limitations of the iPod. You can;t input answers, for example. And the screen on the smaller iPods is not going to display a great deal of information at once. Here is the question: do the limitations of the medium (the iPod) result in an improved product by preventing designers from overbuilding a solution or will consumers use this product despite these limitations because an inconvenient but familiar platform that has already been adapted (deeply embedded) in the spectrum of daily habits is far better than the prospect of learning to use and carrying around one more device?
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NewLaunches also points to John Sheperd-Brown, the Father of the ATM machine:
The ATM, what a perfect combination of consumer tradeoffs (get: all hours access to money, give: any sort of service) provided through an entirely new business model (vending machines). ATMs are remarkable, though, because they were promoted by the very entities (Banks) that should have considered them a disruptive threat!
Is there a lesson here? Maybe. At the very least, let's spend la bit ess time talking, big picture style, about disrupting our client's core "business" and a bit more time seeing whether it is possible to increase efficiency by disrupting one or more components in the supply chain or existing core business processes.
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CoolHunting looks at The Rise and Fall jeans company in Brooklyn, NY. Why is this getting mentioned here? Because it appears that- thanks to the high value of information (ie. knowing something that other people don't know about or doing something that other people at the top of a curve don't do) low end disruption is finding its place even in the rapid world of fashion cycles:
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Information Aesthetics links to the Air New Zealand page, where some programmers have installed a widget that let's a user see how far he/she can go for a chosen sum of money:
Farecast provides a similar (more wide-ranging) form of this service. I'm really fan of Farecast and I wish that they'd launch services in India. I see both Farecast and Air New Zealand moving from order fulfillment to decision assistance, which is a very interesting direction. Tons of companies will enter this area in the next ten years and most of them will screw it up, either by driving user interfaces that are too complex, or by unduly restricting user freedom. Farecast is great because it offers intuitive user interfaces (slider bars, mostly) around only a few variables (how much do you want to spend, when do you want to leave, how long is your trip) but generates informative results in the process. Most importantly, Farecast does not attempt to make decisions for us but rather helps us model our decision outcomes. I could see a dating site that worked this way, allowing us to model different search outcomes depending on our changing requirements. Even better, employers could really use a better way of visualizing the impact of the requirement that they list in jobs wanted ads. Is it time for someone to start "JobCast?" I think yes.
Two views of Farecast:
And the technology on the DIY microplane front is improving! Last year, the Raw Feed pointed out an RC plane that fed images to Virtual reality goggles.
So, two questions come to mind:
1. You are a major UAV manufacturer, devoted to making big, expensive UAVs. Where is the value in the micro UAV supply chain? If not in the planes, maybe it is in the sensors, or in the data, or in methods of controlling an airborne fleet of microplanes.
2. Is it time for one UAV manufacturer to become the Linksys of microplanes, selling mid-sized easily deployed fleets packed with specs (such as simple representations total coverage and resolution) that make it easy to evaluate the strengths/ weaknesses of the product?
3. What countermeasures are required in order to prevent misuse of micro-UAV surveillance planes? Does it need to involve form detection or would it be better to just detect airborne cellphone/ wireless data transmission? How would you do this?
=========================================================================
NewLaunches points to Kaplan's new SAT prep offering for the iPod. This really joins an array of "small study" solutions, from cell phone services that administer pop quizzes to study guides for the PSP. The iPod, however, is the biggest of the "small electronics" platforms and it is used by a wider study-oriented school age demographic.
This product will probably succeed despite the limitations of the iPod. You can;t input answers, for example. And the screen on the smaller iPods is not going to display a great deal of information at once. Here is the question: do the limitations of the medium (the iPod) result in an improved product by preventing designers from overbuilding a solution or will consumers use this product despite these limitations because an inconvenient but familiar platform that has already been adapted (deeply embedded) in the spectrum of daily habits is far better than the prospect of learning to use and carrying around one more device?
==========================================================================
NewLaunches also points to John Sheperd-Brown, the Father of the ATM machine:
Inspiration had struck Mr Shepherd-Barron, now 82, while he was in the bath (that’s where most of us do some serious thinking!). "It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the UK. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash" quotes Mr. Barron.
The ATM, what a perfect combination of consumer tradeoffs (get: all hours access to money, give: any sort of service) provided through an entirely new business model (vending machines). ATMs are remarkable, though, because they were promoted by the very entities (Banks) that should have considered them a disruptive threat!
Is there a lesson here? Maybe. At the very least, let's spend la bit ess time talking, big picture style, about disrupting our client's core "business" and a bit more time seeing whether it is possible to increase efficiency by disrupting one or more components in the supply chain or existing core business processes.
==========================================================================
CoolHunting looks at The Rise and Fall jeans company in Brooklyn, NY. Why is this getting mentioned here? Because it appears that- thanks to the high value of information (ie. knowing something that other people don't know about or doing something that other people at the top of a curve don't do) low end disruption is finding its place even in the rapid world of fashion cycles:
Since gaining a following that includes megastore Urban Outfitters for their tees, Brooklyn-based line The Rise and Fall made their first foray into denim that's refreshingly low-frill. Slim and straight, rather than skin-tight, it's a pair of jeans that's comely and comfortable yet utilitarian. "We have them made here in the USA and they're sort of a reaction to all of the ridiculously overdone denim out there now," co-founder Joshua Cohen recently told CH.
Unbelievably, they retail for less than $70 bucks. Similar to the Cheap Monday philosophy, that's saying something in a world where a person's jeans often run higher than their car payment.
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Information Aesthetics links to the Air New Zealand page, where some programmers have installed a widget that let's a user see how far he/she can go for a chosen sum of money:
Farecast provides a similar (more wide-ranging) form of this service. I'm really fan of Farecast and I wish that they'd launch services in India. I see both Farecast and Air New Zealand moving from order fulfillment to decision assistance, which is a very interesting direction. Tons of companies will enter this area in the next ten years and most of them will screw it up, either by driving user interfaces that are too complex, or by unduly restricting user freedom. Farecast is great because it offers intuitive user interfaces (slider bars, mostly) around only a few variables (how much do you want to spend, when do you want to leave, how long is your trip) but generates informative results in the process. Most importantly, Farecast does not attempt to make decisions for us but rather helps us model our decision outcomes. I could see a dating site that worked this way, allowing us to model different search outcomes depending on our changing requirements. Even better, employers could really use a better way of visualizing the impact of the requirement that they list in jobs wanted ads. Is it time for someone to start "JobCast?" I think yes.
Two views of Farecast:
