Fresh Takes on Innovation

The city of Solothurn is an inconspicuous small Swiss town and within easy biking distance from the BrainStore headquarters in Biel. To explore it, Brains (as the employees of BrainStore are called) can from now on leave their bikes in the garage. Taking a tour on www.touchtown.ch comes as close as one get to actually strolling downtown Solothurn on a sunny day!

Using the latest image-rendering technology this virtual tour is nothing like you have experienced before: it does not only allow city strollers to enjoy every corner of Downtown Solothurn by the clicks of your mouse – no – it takes you inside many shops, bars, restaurants, hotels and even churches!

If you are planning a stay in town or an evening out, this website constitutes a real and valuable innovation: before you make your reservations you can check out the restaurant or the hotel of your choice and decide on your favourite room and table.

Imagine a phone made from cotton. Soft, pliable and light , yet never compromising on power or performance. The Soft Phone concept by designer Qian Jiang takes what we know about electronic cellulose structures and squeezes every last ounce of performance out of it. Literally!

The is a series of discs with electronic fabric stretched in between. The interface uses a combination of tactile gestures like squeezing to hang-up and touch which detects a deformation on the surface to register input. The fibers are fine enough and optically clear allowing light energy to pass thru to display simple contextual menus. Whenever you need a full QWERTY just unfurl the collapsible structure. The cell antenna, battery, camera, and micro electronics are contained inside a tiny clip which itself is made of soft, squeezable, stress-reducing silica.

source: yankoDesign

Teaching economics to high school students can be tedious for both teacher and student. But these days are over: The Swiss National Bank, responsible for the money policy in Switzerland, has recently launched a website called www.iconomix.ch that offers a wide range of interactive, fun and exciting materials for teachers and students.

The National Bank has created a fabulous interactive teaching site here with tons of interesting materials that are not only available for teachers and students, but for anyone who wants to know how markets operate, how risks can be minimised, how prices are established, or, even more basic, why societies use money to pay for goods. Some materials are worksheets, but there are also very detailed simulations, games and group tasks to keep you going for ages. Enjoy!

BrainStore has been involved in naming the website. The winner name, “iconomix” is the German way you would write the word “economics” phonetically. It also reminds young people of characters from the very popular “Asterix” cartoons.

Everybody knows: Training your brain will help you staying flexible and creative for a lifetime! On this gamesforthebrain.com you will find a variety of games that will help you stimulate your brain in no time!

For example:

Drag

Mahjongg Solitaire

Find Alice’s mistakes

Try it out and make those neurons grow!

The Japanese are known for their unusual and creative ideas. This one is somewhat between completely nuts and just fabulous: Aya Tsukioka, an experimental fashion designer, has invented a special series of clothing that helps people disguise themselves when in danger. For example, a woman can turn a skirt into a big piece of cloth that looks like a vending machine and that can be hastily put over ones head when being pursued by a stalker in the street. Children can use a special school bag to transform themselves into a fire hydrant.

The fact that such ideas were greeted with straight faces, or even appeared at all, underscores Japanese society’s fondness for oddball ideas and inventions

writes the New York Times, in an article accompanied by a slideshow of these inventions. Thank you for sending us this article, Katie Kontrath (www.getfreshminds.com).

Each year, the Swiss Idea and Innovation Association awards people or organisations with the “Idea Oscar”. Their outstanding achievement consists in the production of spectacular as well as sustainable ideas. Their innovation initiative will have made a difference and will have led to the creation of new jobs.

If you are looking for a new idea why not let yourself be inspired by the idea generator? It’s a funny new widget by the team at MonkeyBusiness Labs. Fill in or generate 3 words by pushing the double arrow button. Feel the inspiration and perhaps come up with a new idea!

Try it

Everybody knows that a short but effective mid-day nap will help you to enhance workforce and productivity for the rest of the work day.

Born from the realization that individuals can significantly increase their energy with a brief daytime rest, MetroNaps committed themselves to the development of professional power nap products and services.

After researching and testing at the Carnegie Mellon University a new relaxing “machine” was born, called the EnergyPod. The EnergyPod is an elegant yet simple device that counters the problem of employee’s daytime fatigue. Each EnergyPod is equipped with built-in music loaded onto an internal memory card. Sound is played through speakers or headphones.

MetroNaps also developed the Enhanced Energy Seminar, that teaches employees effective sleep techniques to boost personal and professional productivity. The seminars are divided in categories:

• Night Time Sleep: Getting a better night sleep by optimizing sleep routines and the bedroom environment.
• Day Time Rest: Boost energy during the workday by recharging with a quick nap.
• Jet Lag Management: Learn valuable tips for staying productive while traveling.

I could need one of these, what about you?

This is propably the most high tech bar in the whole world. The IBar finds out which drink you’re having by using sensors that calculate the glass shape and then link it to the content of the glass. So if you drink a prosecco, the IBar will recognize that because you won’t usually have a whiskey on the rocks in a similarly shaped glass.

So what’s happening, I ask myself, if you’re drinking a cosmopolitan… How will the bar recognize that you’re not having a Martini? Will the IBar identify it because of the customer’s gender? Men don’t usually drink cosmopolitans, or do they now? What if the guest is a gay man or a female whiskey amateur?

But experts say that within a few years we’ll be using it to pay for our drink by simply placing a credit card on it. They also say the interactive device will be able to upload pics and videos from your mobile to show off to other bar guests in the same way. Plus punters will be able to flick through food menues, special drinks offers and jukebox tracks on the multitouch bar surface.

The first ever iBar was this week installed at London’s swanky Soho nightclub 24.

The MindLab is a specially designed room to stimulate the process of brainstorming. All walls are made of white boards which you can write on, then wipe clean and rewrite. The ultimate room for creating new ideas, no matter how much space you need and no matter how you prefer to create your ideas. If your inputs extend the vertical, no problem, write on the ceiling of the MindLab. If you want to crawl around and take your brain for a walk, no problem, start your red line in the corner on the floor. Whatever your strategies are in brainstorming, with the MindLab it’s possible.