 |
A team from the University of California, Davis, recently took the U.S. grand prize for software design in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup technology competition and is in the international showdown in Poland. Team Mobilife beat more than 22,000 U.S. students in the eighth annual competition, designed to inspire young people to innovate technologies to solve the [...]
If design is not part of your initial development plan, you’re doomed By Mike Drummond In the vast catalog of horribly designed products, one modern electronic consumer good stands out for its clunky ergonomics, poor performance and exorbitant pricing. We’re talking, of course, about the Newton, a personal digital assistant from none other than trendsetter [...]
Plug It In For years many homeowners and apartment dwellers have been stuck with only one electrical outlet per room, restricting the placement of big-screen TVs and other consumer electronics. Electra-Base is a new product that removes the guesswork in electrical wiring. The product was designed for older homes, apartments, basements, cinder block and wood [...]
Q. As a college student who is inventing new technologies and products on campus as part of my coursework, can I be assigned a patent, or does the patent have to go to the school? A. It depends. University research and intellectual property policies are perhaps as numerous and varied as the number and variety [...]
Name your poison with this little number – clogged arteries and/or lung cancer. The “cheese-filter cigarette” comes courtesy of Stuart M. Stebbings … from Wisconsin (natch!). Patent No. 3,234,948, issued Feb. 15, 1996, reads in part: “… it is preferred to use a hard cheese as exemplified by Parmesan, Romano or Swiss cheese. But “aged [...]
Making the World Safer, One Prophylactic at a Time Editor’s note: First Person is a periodic feature written by inventors, for inventors. By William Mistler I invented the O-RING Condom – the main product of my start-up company of the same name. As a former assistant engineering professor at Penn State University some years ago [...]
A Quest to Commercialize a Workbench By Mike Drummond Joe Adams invented a tool stand that he believes … no, that’s not the right word … that he knows would save auto shops and mechanics millions of dollars a year. The Adamstand is a lightweight, portable, durable stand with all kinds of attachments and surface [...]
(Hint: Use a More Expensive Tool) By Jack Lander One of the main problems small suppliers have when trying to sell to large retailers is the inability to produce product at a cost low enough to leave a profit. What to do? Take another look at your tooling. Nearly every process that is machine-intensive, rather [...]
Who Should Own Patents – Professors or Universities? At the Association of University Technology Managers annual meeting earlier this year, two medical innovators unveiled a draft of the “Academic Inventors’ Bill of Rights.” Although billed as a “collaborative work in progress,” the initiative highlights ongoing tension between academic and student inventors on one side, and [...]
How to Master the Art of Closing By Bill McHenry Editor’s note: Bill McHenry is president and CEO of Widgeteer Inc., which sells and markets household products. He’s also the owner of Entrepreneur Sales and Marketing, a business development company that specializes in all aspects of the sales and marketing. His customers range in size [...]
