New Ideas and Trends

The Create the Future Design Contest has been pushing talented inventors to dream up incredible and innovative products since 2002, and there’s still time for you to get your idea in this heated competition!

In the games industry, Valve is widely known as an innovator - and one of the most beloved organizations to boot. One of their biggest focus of late is bio-feedback: control of digital devices through one's own body. To that end, they're toying with some pretty absurd concepts...including using sweat. 

While the "Party of No" desperately seeks something to say yes to, their fight to rebrand themselves is met by aggressive social media opposition by the Redditors. While bookmarking sites the likes of Digg have withered on the digital vine over the past few years, Reddit seems to be not only the one with staying power, but the one whose "up" or "down" votes can sway public opinion quickly.

Sure, I came across this one very close to its deadline, but if you have a brilliant new way for diabetics to consume the insulin they need, send it to the Ignite: Diabetes Challenge for a chance to win $5,000.

Date rape is a serious issue, and it affects people of all ages and both genders. For the past couple of decades, women have been warned about the risks of leaving their drinks unattended at parties and bars. The result of not closely guarding a drink could be an unpleasant drug trip, and undesired sexual relations. While women can of course try and keep an eye on their beverages, those that really want to find a way to slip a date rape drug into a drink have developed sneaky ways of accomplishing their mission. It is for this reason that DrinkSavy has chosen to focus on creating products that help men and women alike detect date rape drugs in their drinks.

Pelican Imaging, inventor of array camera technology for mobile devices,  recently announced a $20M investment by cellphone manufacturer Nokia. A representative of Nokia Growth Partners noted, "Pelican Imaging's computational camera solutions are at the cutting edge of mobile camera technologies. We believe they're positioned to lead the next wave in video and image capture; they're a great addition to our portfolio of innovators in the imaging space." If this is any indication, we may see Lytro-style camera technology on smartphones in the very near future.

Choosing a name for your product can be one of the most agonizing and challenging things that you will do when it comes to your business.  If you choose wrong, the result can be that your product fails miserably.

Zapier has a new API status board that helps you keep track of almost 200 popular web services, giving you a central location to keep an eye on your cloud services, making sure your own web app does not go down without you knowing it.

Quicker than George Orwell's ink could dry on the page, "1984" introduced the world to a whole new level of paranoia that's kept us looking over our shoulders for the last sixty years or so. From the "Red scare" of the 1950s to Presidents justifying unjustifiable wars in the 21st Century, to the Patriot Acts's reduction of citizen rights -- right up to today's CCTV cameras surveilling us à la 'Person of Interest,' Big Brother has carved out a permanent foothold in our society.

When you are getting ready to launch your business, you will need many things in place. One of the most important pieces is financing. Most entrepreneurs have already borrowed funds from friends and family, and may have a small amount of financing from a financial institution as well as their own hard earned money.