innovation

editor's notebook SAN FRANCISCO--I had the good fortune this past weekend of attending Compostmodern, a two-day conference here devoted to exploring different ways in which designers can help create a sustainable future. And I'd like to mention a few of the tech- and Internet-related highlights--some of which are new, some of which you, like me, may have missed the first time around. There's a variety of supercool stuff here, so read on.

Organized by the San Francisco chapter of AIGA (one of the country's premier professional groups for designers)--and sponsored by Adobe and other companies, … Read more

LAS VEGAS--"OMG, stop everything, there's no need to invent anything else," was what we said when we got to the eCoupled stand at CES. And when you see these photos and video, we're sure you'll agree.

Fulton Innovation--don't worry, we hadn't heard of them either--was out here in Vegas demonstrating wireless charging tech that has blown our tiny, gambling-addled minds. Its fabulous packaging uses induction power to create, among lots of other things, some of the most amazing cereal boxes we've ever seen that can illuminate in stages to create an … Read more

Tech, media, and telecom companies in emerging markets and those considered "digital innovators" are among the world's tops in providing value to their investors, according to a new study from the Boston Consulting Group.

Out today, the report "Swimming Against the Tide: How Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Companies Can Prosper in the New Economic Reality" found that seven of the top 10 telecom performers, five of the top 10 media performers, and four of the top 10 technology performers are in India, Taiwan, Mexico, China, and other emerging markets. But global companies tuned into the … Read more

It's only been around about 50 years, but information technology has already affected almost the entire landscape of human activity. How science is pursued, how products are designed, how commerce and supply chains work, how businesses are run, how human beings communicate with one another--there's almost no arena in which IT isn't a critical enabler.

Given this, it may sound peevish to say IT has, at the same time, been hide-bound and conventional. But IT has been conventional. Oh, sure. We've had our moments--modernizing supply chains starting in the 1970s, the PC and distributed computing blooms … Read more

A trademark lawsuit filed against Apple by a Web advertising firm over the term "iAds" was quietly settled in July.

No one has disclosed exactly how the case was resolved but Apple now owns the "iAds" trademark, and last week a company peripherally involved in the suit posted a note to the Web that said Apple paid a "seven-figure settlement."

At Apple's iOS 4 event on April 8, CEO Steve Jobs announced Apple's iAds program. A month later, Innovate Media, an online ad agency headquartered near Los Angeles, filed a trademark suit … Read more

Anyone who tracks billable time will appreciate Grindstone 2, a personal time-tracking and managing tool from Epiforge Software. Whatever it is you're working on, Grindstone 2 can keep track of it for you in the background, while you work, and generate a variety of reports and billing options when you're done.

Grindstone 2's main interface, the Task List, is divided into two panes, one on top of the other: the Task Pane and the Time Pane. The Task Pane is where you create, modify, and track tasks; the Time Pane manages the saved time from your tasks. … Read more

MENLO PARK, Calif.--If you've never seen a robot climb straight up an entirely flat vertical wall, I dare you not to be impressed the first time you do.

That was my certainly experience when I watched a wall-climbing robot do its thing at SRI International here the other day. Indeed, my host, who had been with me through several product and project demonstrations over about three hours, noticed how excited I was by watching this little device go straight up the wall, and, I think, began to wonder if I was actually interested in any of the other … Read more

A new organization led by major CEOs is hoping to make the U.S. more competitive around the world by putting the focus on education.

Announced by President Obama yesterday as part of his "Educate to Innovate" campaign, Change the Equation is a nonprofit group whose goal is to improve education in the key areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Founded by former Intel Chairman Craig Barrett and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns among other chief executives, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corporation, the group's membership includes 100 key industry … Read more

It's easy enough to print a Web page by simply going to the File menu of your browser and selecting Print, but what you see on your screen is not always what you get on paper. Free HTML to PDF Converter solves this problem by converting Web pages to PDF or image files. It's a simple program, but one that has the potential to be tremendously useful.

The converter's interface is plain and intuitive. Users simply enter the URL of the Web page they want to convert and select whether they want to convert to a PDF … Read more