Here’s something different - Nike and Apple announced a partnership today. Apparently they’ve developed a shoe-based sensor that enables you to track the duration, distance, pace, and calories burned of your run.

I could see this enabling a particularly cool software feature. If your songs have the BPM (beats per minute) metadata entered, and your iPod knows the frequency of your steps, then your music could sync to your workout. Better yet, you could configure your music to pick up the pace and push you during your workout. That would be pretty sweet!

-jimmy, awaiting a workout coach software update for his nano.

I was alerted to a very interesting article on Wired. Following in some of the traditions of the Homebrew Computer Club (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_Computer_Club), a new club, the Homebrew Mobile Phone club has arisen in Silicon Valley to brainstorm about mobile phone technology and think through how the mobile phone might evolve in the future.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70929-0.html?tw=wn_story_mailer

I believe that one day, mobile phones will be quite similar to PCs as modular, rather than interdependent architectures. While PCs are easily upgradable these days, through the swapping in and out of hardware (i.e. cards, hard drives, memory, processors, etc…) in a modular fashion, mobile phones remain interdependent architectures with most everything hardwired and soldered together (with the exception of the SIM and memory cards). Some day, I believe that mobile phones will also have modular, swappable components, allowing consumers to buy new components and put them into their phone as desired. Any thoughts on this? Share your comments…

Dell just disclosed that it will (finally!) offer customers a choice of Intel or AMD microprocessors. While we focus on innovation - and heating up competition in the microprocessor space always makes for plenty of that - it’s worth pausing a moment to think of the complexity this transition introduces for Dell and its OEM partners. New mainboards will need to be designed, new bills-of-materials will need to be negotiated and priced, and additional boxes will need to be build. That’s no small task for Dell-sized volumes! (More at El Reg.)

-jimmy

Hey everyone!

Well, the academic year is winding down, along with our Innovation Club activities.

Last event of the year -> ‘Exploring the City Car’ IdeaExchange -> 5-16-05
Tomorrow, as the last official event of the year, the Innovation Club is proud to host the ‘Exploring the City Car’ IdeaExchange. As part of this semester’s ‘Smart Cities’ I-Lab, the IdeaExchange will feature attendees brainstorming about the future of urban transportation and we are honored to have the IdeaExchange sponsored by General Motors in partnership with the MIT Media Lab.

Recent Events
The ‘City Car’ IdeaExchange caps off a busy couple of weeks for the Innovation Club, during which we hosted numerous events.

On Thursday, April 27th, we hosted Tan Rao, Co-founder and CEO, Radiospire Networks. Tan delivered a presentation about emerging opportunities in the Wireless Home.

On Tuesday, May 9th, we co-hosted, along with the Net Impact Club, Elizabeth Johansen from IDEO. Elizabeth delivered a presentation about IDEO’s plans for social impact design.

On Wednesday, May 10th, we co-hosted, along with the Marketing Club, Dave Balter, Founder and CEO, BzzAgent, and co-author of “Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing”. Dave delivered a presentation on the evolution of ‘Word-of-Mouth’ marketing.

On Thursday, May 11th, we hosted Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, VP of Technical Strategy and Innovation, IBM. Dr. Wladawsky-Berger delivered a presentation on the state of innovation in the 21st century.

Looking Ahead
After our last Organizers Meeting this Wednesday, the Innovation Club will move into Summer mode and begin to plan the 2006-2007 academic year. Upcoming events and ‘drawing board’ ideas include:

-Distributing a number of Blackberry 8700g and 7100 handheld devices to Club members in our first Technology Testbed

-Planning a broader range of Innovation Lab projects for the next year. After successfully concluding the Hitachi and Smart Cities Innovation Lab projects this year, we hope to kick off several more hands-on, practical experience projects with other Media Lab sponsors and industry leaders next year

-Planning a broader range of Technology Testbed, Speaker Series, and IdeaExchange speaker events and projects for the next year. Much of the summer will be spent building relationships with corporate partners and we hope to be able to announce a wide range of exciting initiatives in September

That’s about it for now. Lots of excitement ahead for the club. Please don’t hesitate to contact us at innovationclub-exec@mit.edu with any questions or ideas

http://www.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2006/04/03/story11.html

Mass High Tech has an article about an IM-based dating site that breaks a lot of the traditional molds for how dating sites should work. The premise is that women invite men to a flirtation round/game and that the rest is more or less a game of flirtation over IM.

And, of course, it comes from MIT - specifically brough to you by the hero of “Bringing down the House” - Semyon Dukach. I’ll tell you all how good it is, if I ever get invited that is.

–Anthony J.
scouring the internet at large for innovation

Our upcoming speaker, Dr. Irving Berger, the VP of IBM, has written extensively on the subject of employment in a ever-changing competitive world. Since many Americans feel as though the majority of technical jobs are being outsourced to India and China, parents are unsure of which fields to encourage their children to pursue. Should children start focusing on engineering and science, only to have their future jobs outsourced?

First of all, Dr. Berger points out that there are more jobs today in IT, then there were before the tech bubble. Furthermore, he contends that the differentiating factor between jobs outsourced and domestic jobs, is innovation. The jobs which will stay in the States are ones in which will be occupied by highly diversified, horizontally integrated, managers who understand the technology and project requirements.

His bio and comments can be found here:
http://irvingwb.typepad.com/blog/2006/05/jobs_skills_and.html

Please join me on Wednesday as we welcome one of our society’s most forward thinking innovators, Dr. Irving Berger.

-Kirk

We’ve had some interesting news from the search world recently. We had the crack-induced MSFT-YHOO partnership rumors last week. We had Amazon dropping Google in favor of someone closer to home. Then we had the launch of MSFT’s adCenter (press release here) and more news of Yahoo’s new ads system. (Some more in the NYTimes piece.) I still need to do a more detailed investigation, and will keep an eye out for YHOO’s May 17th analyst presentation, but at first glance Yahoo’s system is more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Taking a step back, what’s going on in sponsored search? Here’s a very high level overview, especially for you students who might be interviewing with Internet firms in just a few months. Ten years ago, we saw the emergence of banner-ads and premium listings on portals. They were sold as campaigns in negotiated ad-buys. Overture (GoTo.com, now part of Yahoo) was one of the first to introduce an innovative keyword auction model. This opened up the keyword market to anyone who wished to bid on one, and it made keyword-based adverting far more efficient. But the early Overture model used first price auctions, which are neither stable nor efficient. First price auctions beget all sorts of “strategic” bidding that in turn produces a lot of price volatility.

Today, Google and Yahoo! appear to be using a “generalized second price” auction model for keyword sponsors. (There are some differences between the firms’ auction mechanisms. For example, Google incorporates historical ad click through rates into its calculation when it ranks bids for a particular keyword.) GSP auctions are more efficient and stable than first price auctions, but interesting there is still a theoretical auction model called Vickrey-Clarke-Groves that is more efficient than the today’s GSP-based search ads. The curious thing is that the cost of switching from GSP to VCG is huge for an incumbent. At the same time, the revenue gain an entrant could gain from VCG may not be sufficient to take on dominant players. (One interesting question is what mechanism is Redmond using with adCenter.)

One dominant trend today is a dramatic expansion of the keyword universe. Not only are the number of keywords (presumably) increasing, but the dimensionality of keywords is growing. Five years ago, if you were a Mom-and-Pop Chinese restaurant in the Mission, you’d have been crazy to advertise in “chinese food” searches. Soon, you will be able to pay money to advertise on “chinese food” searches from users in the 94110 zipcode at lunch time and in the evening. As search engines get to know their users, the ads they deliver to users are worth more to both the advertisers and the users. (I imagine that one day soon, my visits to Autoblog will be greeted with regular ads from Carlsen Porsche detailing recent additions to inventory in Midnight Blue Metallic.)

For those who want to know more about online search, I highly recommend Ben Edelman’s publications, especially “Internet Advertising and the Generalized Second Price Auction: Selling Billions of Dollars Worth of Keywords” and “Strategic Bidder Behavior in Sponsored Search Auctions”.

Advertising Age points out an interesting futuristic concept unveiled this week at O’Hare airport in Chicago. Replacing the bland and boring billboard advertisements that you walk past along your route through the airport will now be interactive video screens sponsored by Accenture. The concept seems drawn right from “Minority Report” and blends the converging technologies of communications and advertising. In fact, the idea-man behind both projects is one and the same — Dale Herigstad of Schematic. He worked closely with the Accenture Technology Labs on the interface and has been influential in emerging technologies for interactive advertising.

Harpreet, a current member of the MIT Innovation Club, is an alumnus of the Accenture Technology Labs and can certainly speak to the interesting work coming out of Chicago these days. He’s an extremely interesting member of the Club who we hope will share his vision in upcoming posts!

I’ll be heading through O’Hare this evening, I’ll see if I can get a few minutes on the new screen to test it out!

Club Update
Hey everyone! My name is Alex Slawsby and I’m one of the two Innovation Club co-Presidents.

The past few weeks have been extremely busy as the MIT academic year draws to a close and the Innovation Club turns its attention to both the final events of the year as well as preparing for a high-energy 2006-2007 academic year.

Innovation Club Speaker Series Update
Bala Venkatrao, our Vice President for IdeaExchanges and Speaker events, has been quite busy, along with Harpreet Marwaha and my co-President, Kirk Hourdajian, in lining up several additional speakers to wrap-up the year. One of the most exciting things about the Innovation Club is the fact that our events and projects feature innovative individuals and companies both large and small. Indeed, next week, we have speakers from both a technology industry giant and a new venture, on tap.

As noted in the calendar, we have two confirmed speakers visiting next week: Dave Balter, CEO of BzzAgent and Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, VP of Innovation and Strategy at IBM, confirmed for May 10^th and May 11^th respectively.

Upon a deep background in Marketing and Psychology, our first speaker, Dave Balter, founded BzzAgent in 2001 to drive the “World-of-Mouth” marketing revolution. As noted by the BzzAgent site, “Word-of-Mouth” is “shared opinion about a product or service between two or more people.” An overview of the process:

BzzAgent works with companies to develop a “BzzCampaign” that is posted on a central site and volunteers, the “BzzAgents”, scroll through the site to find Campaigns in which they are interested. When the BzzAgents find Campaigns of interest, they sign-up, and receive a kit in the mail which includes product samples and a custom guide. Ultimately, the BzzAgents are then left to form their own opinions about the product and are encouraged to “spread the word.” Finally, the BzzAgents file central “BzzReports”, describing their activities and receive points that they can redeem for awards.

We found BzzAgent’s strategy and business model to be of great interest to both the Innovation Club and the Marketing Club and the two Clubs are honored that Dave will take some time from his busy schedule to join us next week on May 10th.

We could bring few speakers to campus more aligned with the Innovation Club mission than Dr. Wladawsky-Berger – he is one of IBM’s emerging technologies and innovation gurus. Dr. Wladawsky-Berger joined IBM in 1970, the architect of technology transfer programs as well as IBM initiatives in high-performance computing. In later years, he was the head of IBM’s large systems software and UNIX system divisions. Since the mid-1990s, he designed IBM’s Internet strategy and led the Company’s Linux, Next Generation Internet, Grid computing, and ‘On Demand’ efforts. Dr. Wladawsky-Berger is truly a distinguished figure in the history of IBM and we are honored to have him visit on May 11^th.

Technology Testbed Update
As Trond’s post mentions, we are very excited to announce the launch of our first Technology Testbed for 2006-2007. Yesterday, we informed the MIT Sloan MBA Community about our Blackberry Testbed – over the next week or so, we will distribute 25 Blackberry 8700g handheld devices to MBA students chosen by Research-In-Motion (RIM). Those students will receive a free device and free, unlimited, voice and data service through the summer and into the academic year.

In addition to getting a cutting-edge, 2.75G EDGE-based mobile device with a beautiful screen, great web browsing capability, Google Maps, Google Talk, instant messaging, and other capabilities, the IClub members participating in the Testbed will be able to give direct feedback to RIM on the product and test out new applications and other RIM devices.

As can be expected, we’ve had a tremendous response from our classmates and while only 25 will get the opportunity to engage in this Testbed, we have several additional Testbeds in mind for 2006-2007 and hope to get everyone in on the technology. In particular, we’ve already heard from a number of incoming first-year MBA students (Class of 2008) and while we can’t get them involved quite yet, we hope they’ll bring that energy into the Innovation Club in the fall.

Sponsorship Update
From our Idea Exchanges to Speaker Series to Technology Testbeds to Innovation Labs, our events and projects could not be possible without corporate sponsors and host companies. ProductGenesis, our first sponsor, has been a wonderful ally of the Innovation Club for several years and we are so grateful for their time, advice, brainstorming, and all-around support. We expect to engage more deeply with Product Genesis clients in 2006-2007.

Of course, I cannot say enough about Research-In-Motion for their willingness to donate devices, service plans, and a Blackberry Enterprise Server to the Innovation Club. We truly believe that the Innovation Club creates significant, unique value for industry leaders – we match the top technologically-savvy and passionate business school students in the world with companies to help them test out products and think through product and corporate strategy. That, combined with the tremendous talent and resources on the MIT campus, enables us to offer a value proposition that cannot be found anywhere else.

Going forward, we hope to add many more companies to our sponsor list. Over the past few weeks, we have begun to build relationships with many MIT MediaLab sponsors and technology industry leaders, including British Telecom, Cingular, Cisco, Dell, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Good Technology, Texas Instruments, and Logitech. We hope to work with many of these companies over the summer to firm up project, activity, and event plans for next fall and spring.

Signing off for now…
This is already a LONG blog entry and I’ve barely scratched the surface. We are working hard on all aspects of the Innovation Club, including this new website, our marketing strategy, our flagship Innovation Labs, and exciting plans for MBA Orientation in the fall. I am also hoping to launch an independent research project in large enterprise innovation next year. In my next entry, I will shed some more light on these activities. In meantime, we would love to hear from anyone interested in innovation and would be happy to put you on our email list.

Best wishes…

My name is Trond Wuellner, and I’m one of the Vice Presidents in the MIT Innovation Club. As a feature on our recently updated website, many of us involved in the club will be contributing our thoughts on innovative topics of interest through this blog. I begin today with my first contribution and look forward to establishing lines of communication on just about any new innovative topic. My personal agenda is to get the word out about the new things going on at MIT that may otherwise fall under the radar. If you have suggestions or just want to start a dialog, drop me a line at: trondw(at)mit.edu. I’m kicking this off with a little self-promotion for the club — I think what we’re trying is pretty interesting, shout if you disagree!

For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of being involved with the MIT Innovation Club is the opportunity to participate in Tech Testbeds. Right now, we’re in the process of rolling out a trial-use test of the newest RIM Blackberry, and I’ve been lucky (or unlucky rather) enough to get my hands on one of the first ones that showed up. I’ve been using the device for just over two weeks now and have started forming a good impression of it. I’m going to save my specific comments for another time, instead I’ll focus on a few features that I would love to see added:

• I’m a Mac user and really don’t care for Exchange - forward through Gmail is good by me - but I can’t really do calendar or contacts sync very well this way
• That said, I would love to be able to subscribe to iCal or Google Calendar XML feeds from the calendar tool
• On a similar topic, Plaxo for Contacts?
• Google Talk is awesome on the Blackberry — how much more bandwidth would I need for voice? Skype?
• Bluetooth sync and file transfer? I’d love to eliminate another cable from my desk
• I’m not one to take advantage of the 9,000 bookmarks that Firefox comes pre-installed with, but give me more than 6 by default! Can I grab my del.icio.us links? Those tagged with “BlackBerry?”
• Can I have a physical switch for the keyboard lock? Like on my iPod?

Anyone out there who can get a way to pull iCal feeds from the web down to the BB would make my day!

Next time, I’m going to talk a little about BioFuels and a project going on here at MIT that I think has some real potential. I’ll even see if I can get a moment with Vinod Khosla at the MIT Energy Conference next week to corroborate!