Two days ago I visited the talk by Damian von Stauffenberg from MicroRate on "Kapitalmarkt und Mikrofinanz-Sektor - Trends, Chancen und Perspektiven fuer Kommerzbanken". I believe, I was the only one who did not represent a large bank or was a VC or owner of an enormous company, sitting among the listeners.
The talk and the following article from Die Presse all speak about Microfinancing Institutions (MFIs) for 3rd World countries. I believe that there is also a big opportunity for MFIs for 1st World countries through Redwired Ideas! Die Presse article over Mikro-Kredite:
All of us are creative and have ideas and everyone needs ideas!
Redwired - Ideas: A new forum in Redwired, where users can post any ideas they have and create discussion and brainstorming circles around these ideas to make them happen!
The most talked about and best rated Ideas will then transform into Redwired - Projects and these projects will be financially supported through a micro-financing model!
Redwired Ideas will try to harness the power of crowds ("Crowdsourcing") and through the creativity and talent that is among all of us will seek to find ideas that can change the world of everyone of us.
We are currently in touch with the HTL Wolfsberg, the Lavanttal Haus - Entwicklungagentur Kaernten, a financial organization in Carinthia, as well as Iqbal Quadir from the Legatum Center for Development & Enterpreneurship, who has led similiar initiatives (Power to the People, Microloans,…) and has given the motivation for this new project and shown interest to help.
It has been two weeks since I wrote my last blog, I cant believe it! The last week flew by! 4 days of last week almost seemed like one day!
Tuesday morning I flew to California, where I visited the Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) from Volkswagen of America! There is a 3 hour time difference between Boston and California. The next day I spent the entire day at the lab and met with all project leaders and all engineers of the entire lab. The ERL and Palo Alto were great places to see! - more to come on that!
Wednesday night, I flew back to Boston on a so-called "Red-Eye" flight, departing at 11pm and arriving in Boston at 8am on
Thursday. This day also my 15 OLPC laptops arrived! They are amazing - again, more to come on that, as well! Same day, I packed all my things and flew to Austria at 7:45pm.
Gladly, I finally arrived in Graz on Friday, at 2pm, having spent the past two nights in planes instead of a bed.
Since then, time has flown again and today is already Tuesday and I am now in Eisenstadt, close to Vienna, where I met with INITS yesterday. Furthermore, I visited ICEP and listend to the talk by Damian von Stauffenberg von MicroRate zu "Kapitalmarkt und Mikrofinanz-Sektor - Trends, Chancen und Perspektiven fuer Kommerzbanken" - more on that, as well! ;_)
Other things to come: I took another INvenTERVIEW, with David Merill, from the Media Lab, at MIT, who I collaborated with on his PhD thesis working on Siftables, throught this years i-teams class - soon to be posted on this blog! ;_)
Again, I got some cool links for youthat I came across, over the past weeks:
PS:
The OST* featured a short paragraph about me and the 2fast4u exhibition in Hickory, North Carolina. * TheOffice of Science & Technology (OST) is "Building bridges of knowledge and expertise between Austria and North America" - this is the mission of the OST at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC.The OST is the strategic interface in the sciences, research, and research policy between Austria and North America.
Der Vortrag hat sich durch die i-Teams Vorlesung am MIT ergeben, in der versucht wird neue Technologien auf den Markt zu bringen. Spannend, hm? Siftables koennten alles moegliche sein in der Zukunft, vom Spielzeug bis zum neuen iPod/iPhone! Es ist unsere Aufgabe das herauszufinden!
Weiters traf ich Joost Bonsen, letzte Woche, Mitwirker bei HowToons, einer unglaubich tollen Idee!: Comics fuer Kids, bei denen man gleichzeitig etwas bastelt, mit ganz einfach zugaenglichen Gegenstaenden! Was fuer ein Abenteuer!
Beschreibung zum Selbstbau eines U-Bootes aus einer Plastik-Flasche!
Wahrscheinlich wird es ein in Deutsch uebersetztes Komik fuer mich geben, aber ich wuerde euch da gerne miteinbeziehen, welches Komik es denn werden soll (siehe www.howtoons.com) - schreibt mir einfach ein Comment!
Gut, dann hier nur noch ein paar interessante links, die ich so ueber die letzten Tage hinweg entdeckt habe:
Join Siggraph in Los Angeles in August for the highest quality, most timely educational experiences the community has to offer, presented by the most powerful and most engaging leaders in computer graphics and interactive techniques.
SIGGRAPH 2008 is evolving along with the computer graphics and interactive techniques community. They are dissolving the borders between traditional SIGGRAPH programs to create a more fluid, interdisciplinary conference. They are offering presenters more flexible options for sharing their work.
http://www.wired.com/promo/infinitiex/
WIRED’s vision of a new World’s Fair, WIRED NextFest is a four-day festival of innovative products and technologies that are transforming our world. NextFest features more than 160 interactive exhibits from leading scientists and researchers around the world. Experience the future of communication, design, entertainment, exploration, health, play, robots, transportation, security, and green living. Visitors of all ages are welcome.
3. Negroponte on the soon to be $50 Laptop
Electronics are getting obese! Read the full article!
Deb Roy, Professor am MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, setzt auf geballte Technik. Und auf die Video-Beobachtung seines zweijährigen Sohnes: Ganz gleich, ob Roy Junior Bauklötze stapelt, mit seiner Mama ein Buch anschaut oder trotzig herumspringt - in den Zimmerdecken installierte Kameras halten alles fest, rund um die Uhr. Mikrofone zeichnen jeden Ton auf, den der Knirps von sich gibt. Dies alles ist Teil eines wissenschaftlichen Projektes zum Thema Spracherwerb. Aus den Aufnahmen - rund 400000 Stunden in drei Jahren - soll eine riesige Datenbank entstehen. Ziel: Entwicklung von Robotern, die die Sprachentwicklung von Kindern nachvollziehen lassen. (quellegeo40/D/EU) ek
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2006/05/17/mits-speech-recognition-baby http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_kmafp/is_200605/ai_n16379261
Cyberschool ist der größte, österreichweite SchülerInnen-Wettbewerb im Bereich Internet, Mobile und Multimedia, in dessen Rahmen man Know-how in Form von praktischen Projekten umsetzen und präsentieren kann. Mehr dazu…!
A lot of the content on the site is aimed at the 11 – 19 age group. Some really cool software for kids!
VII. Scratch
Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.
Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.
Scratch is available free of charge, go to Download.
Currently available for Mac OSX and Windows
To find more about the ideas underlying Scratch, visit this page for Educators.
VIII. Khronos Projector
Khronos Projector [a video time-warping machine with a tangible deformable screen] by Alvaro Cassinelli
The Khronos Projector is an interactive-art installation allowing people to explore pre-recorded movie content in an entirely new way. A classic video-tape allows a simple control of the reproducing process (stop, backward, forward, and elementary control on the reproduction speed). Modern digital players add little more than the possibility to perform random temporal jumps between image frames.
The goal of the Khronos Projector is to go beyond these forms of exclusive temporal control, by giving the user an entirely new dimension to play with: by touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time. By actually touching a deformable projection screen, shaking it or curling it, separate “islands of time” as well as “temporal waves” are created within the visible frame. This is done by interactively reshaping a two-dimensional spatio-temporal surface that “cuts” the spatio-temporal volume of data generated by a movie.
IX. Diesel Show: Underwater Magic
Fashion show of SS’08 Preview Collection at Pitti Uomo. Journey through time and liquid space to a futuristic world of bioluminescence, giant mechanic cephalopods, futuristic aquanauts and mysterious galactic polips. Witness the first catwalk show with real models showing with holographic models.
