For Inventors

Too often, many would-be entrepreneurs spend all of their time planning their corporate structure, getting all of the necessary permits, licenses, bank accounts, and doing all of the other minutiae of business before they actually figure out whether or not they actually have a product or service that someone will pay for. read more »

Clothing That Lights Up When You Do

You may wonder where Philips Electronics, the company that makes reliable TV's, close shaving razors, and innovative light bulbs, is going these days, now that it's been recognized as a fashion innovator by Time Magazine. Experimenting with futuristic concepts, Philips is enlisting the public's involvement, an innovative strategy designed to beat the invention failure rate.

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Apple's iPhone

Alas! Apple's iPhone gets its due. The celebrated Time Magazine Invention of the Year Award has gone to the pocket size, wonder technology platform that does everything but cook your eggs! Of course, if you happen to be boiling them, you can set the iPhone alarm to tell you when the eggs are done! read more »

 

Can bikers help solve our energy problems? They are being challenged to do so by the Innovate Or Die invention contest, sponsored by Specialized Bicycles and Google Inc. Innovate or Die is the first-ever invention contest for the most ingenious bike that uses human pedalling to power something besides the bike itself.

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Better hurry to get your invention ideas to Electrolux, because the deadline is November 1, and the contest was just announced on October 18, 2007! Your challenge is to create useful devices that solve specific challenges in Second Life: what's at stake is up to 100,000 Linden Dollars (L$s)!

 

The very popular Popular Science Magazine is calling for submissions for the next world changing invention... not an invention, as they call it, "born in the R& D labs of universities and corporations," but ones just like most of ours, born while taking a shower or shopping at your local hardware store.

Ten inventions will be awarded prizes in a variety of categories, plus there will be a Student Award Category this year, the second year of the PopSci Invention Awards.

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Surface Reactions Impact Many Industries

So far this week, the 2007 Nobel Prizes have been awarded to the "fathers" of certain modern technologies, specifically the recipients of the Nobel Prize for Medicine and the Nobel Prize for Physics. Today's announcement of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Chemistry winner is no exception: Gerhard Ertl, of the Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin, Germany, is a father of the science of surface chemistry. Let's see what developments his seminal work has led to....

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Giant Magnetoresistance

The two winners of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics -- Albert Fert, of the Université Paris-Sud in Orsay, France, and Peter Grünberg, of the Institute of Solid State Research at the Jülich Research Center in Germany - made their contributions to the computer age as far back as 1988. Now that the smallest commercially available hard drive is an IPod, the inventors that led to its development, and many yet to come, have received the grand prix of awards. read more »

© The Nobel Committee for Physiology Illustration: Annika Röhl

The 2007 Nobel Prize winners in medicine -- Mario R. Capecchi, 70, of the University of Utah; Oliver Smithies, 82, of the University of North Carolina; and Sir Martin J. Evans, 66, of Cardiff University in Wales - worked independently, but their genetics research overlapped greatly. Many other geneticists contributed to the state of the art, but the discoveries of Capecchi, Smithies, and Evans are considered watershed.

In layman's terms, what exactly did these Nobel Prize winners do? read more »

Functionalized Nanoporous Thin Film

R&D Magazine has sponsored the "Oscars of Inventions" for 45 years. These research and design awards are coveted by government as well as private industry inventors. The 100 winners selected by R&D Magazine for 2007 are stunning innovations - resourceful, effective, inspiring. A significant portion of the 2007 awards are homeland security/military innovations; others are environmental, health, and there's even innovations for kids, like a must-have-Holiday-toy robot! Here are my picks for the top 10 inventions from R & D Magazine's list of the best of 2007: read more »

Inventor Jim Lowrance

Our Guest Blogger, Jim Lowrence, is an inventor who successfully marketed, licensed and sold his inventions to stores like Wal-Mart and Bass Pro Stores . Jim now helps other inventors through his inventor consulting business, as well as work as a self-employed salesman.

Jim wanted to share his invention story and the things he learned along the way with the inventors at InventorSpot.com in a series of articles. Here's his second article on patents: read more »

Most inventors dream of licensing their inventions to big companies and then sitting back and collecting their royalties. But for entrepreneurial inventors, the invention or idea is but a part of a large business plan. Maybe Jim Newton, founder of Tech Shop, didn't have a grand business plan when he started his own dream shop just a year ago, but he sure does now!

Read about what Jim Newton has created and about how he approaches his inventions... read more »

Inventor Jim Lowrance

Our Guest Blogger, Jim Lowrence, is an inventor who successfully marketed, licensed and sold his inventions to stores like Wal-Mart and Bass Pro Stores . Jim now helps other inventors through his inventor consulting business, as well as work as a self-employed salesman.

Jim wanted to share his invention story and the things he learned along the way with the inventors at InventorSpot.com in a series of articles. Here's his first article: read more »

It's been proven. Schools can be green and fabulous.

A new state-of-the-art school, T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia, has won the Green Innovations Award in the Best Institutional Project category at the Virginia Sustainable Building Network's annual meeting. read more »

Just wanted to remind our readers that Episode 8 (the Season Finale) of the reality television show American Inventor will be showing tomorrow night ( Wednesday, August 1, 2007) at 9 pm est and 8 pm central time on ABC. read more »

Yes, I absolutely recommend that every inventor who's decided to go out on his own with his invention spy on other companies. Spy on all the businesses that have great products, great service and great reputations, and figure out what they're doing right. Put your detective hat on, smoke a pipe, do whatever it is that gets your own product and ego out of the way while you discover what makes other companies successful. read more »

Invented anything “green” lately? Good! How about showing the rest of us what your eco-creation can do on Trippin’ The Green Fantastic. Trippin the Green Fantastic is a new environmental TV series coming to the Science Channel in the late fall. The show is a team effort between the Science Channel and Peace Point Entertainment Group. The goal: to find inventors who have made life a little greener with their eco-inventions. read more »

Good evening, all. I'm back after a hiatus last week due to some family issues, but, rest assured, I'm ready to blog tonight. So tonight we have our six finalists and, finally, it's up to America to vote! We've heard what the judged have to say and now we get to give our two cents on who we think deserves the $1,000,000. I don't know about the rest of you, but this is what I've been waiting for all season! Get your dialing fingers ready! Tonight is the night. read more »

Just wanted to remind our readers that Episode 7 of the reality television show American Inventor will be showing tomorrow night ( Wednesday, July 25, 2007) at 9 pm est and 8 pm central time. Seth will be back to cover the all important voting night.
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One Touch™ Can Opener This year's International Design Excellent Awards (IDEA), published in the July 20, 2007 edition of Business Week, have been awarded to 81 product designs. Some of the top awardees were clearly designed with boomers, seniors, and disabled persons in mind. The One-Touch™ Can Opener was originally designed for seniors, but this Gold Medal winner from Hong Kong is in demand by all age groups. Tell you why.... Press the shiny green button and this gizmo walks around the can by itself! read more »