Archive for October, 2008

Yves Rossy is the first man to possess the climb performance ability of an airplane using only his body movements to steer: the Icare’s dream reality !

Mikkel Viesergaard has hit upon a very simple idea called the Life Straw. Life Straw is a product that filters out 100% of the bacteria and 99% of the viruses from tainted drinking water for those whose lives are typically in underdeveloped countries.The straw is used like an ordinary straw with the exception of a filter designed to remove “toxins” to humans that typically induce diarrhea. Harmful bacteria and viruses are a medical concern because they’re killing 6,000 people per day. I’m betting this number does not influence other diseases that are a result of not having fresh water or those conditions where dehydration causes someone to be susceptible to other diseases.

The products range from $4US to $15US and allow a family to drink for a year out of one straw. The personal model filters a minimum of 700 liters or 84 gallons, while the family version filters a minimum of 15,000 liters or 3962 gallons of water.

Pretty incredible. So the next time you’re trying to be creative, realize the answer might be in your hands.

Check out our blog on the Snake Well Technology: a similar conclusion.

Some facts from the Life Straw website:

• More than one billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water – i.e. around 1/6th of the world’s population. (Source: Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council)

• The average distance that women in Africa and Asia walk to collect water is 6 km. (Source: Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council)

• The average weight of water that women in Africa and Asia carry on their heads can be anything up to 20kg – the equivalent of your airport luggage allowance. (Source: Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council)

• Diarrhea kills over 1.8 million people per year and chronic diarrhea is a leading killer of people with AIDS. (Source: World Health Organization)

• In Africa, diarrhea is four times more common among children with HIV and seven times more common among adults with HIV than their HIV-negative household members. (Source: Mermin J, et al.)

• Diarrhea affects up to 90% of HIV patients. (Source: Bartlett JG, et al.)
  

• Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among HIV-infected children.(Source: PEPFAR)

• “In a study among HIV-infected persons in Uganda, use of safe water decreased diarrhea-type illness by 36 percent”. (The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief)

Q. Why do old men wear shorts, black socks and loafers?

Because over the course of their lives, they learned that what mattered so much in their early days eventually didn’t really hold much meaning when they were older.

The wisdom of age, to some degree, is not about learning more; it’s about realizing what’s important and what’s not. At some point, maturity drives us to realize, “It doesn’t matter.” And in the grand scheme of life, many trivial things don’t.

What everyday opportunities are you ignoring that could teach you the lessons of pushing the extraneous aside and living life in a way that black socks and loafers actually don’t matter. (I just hope by the time I get to this point in my life, there are technologies that I can set that will never let this happen to me.)

For the past year I’ve taken my mountain bike to a local dirt path, put on my helmet and then started riding. One day, I stopped to read the sign that was the marker for a particular entrance. (The text is retyped below.)

Historic New York
The Erie Canal – Canvass White

When work on the Erie Canal began in 1817, little was known about canal engineering, and construction depended on the ingenuity of many persons. Canvass White (1798-1834), a surveyor, greatly facilitated canal construction by perfecting hydraulic cement. White discovered in 1818, near Chittenango, a “meagre limestone” that could be used to form a mortar which hardened under water. His discovery of this abundant, easily prepared, waterproof cement immensely improved construction techniques.

The Erie was a practical school for acquiring engineering knowledge. Resourceful contractors, surveyers and local workmen planned the canal through a wilderness. They drove stakes, bored holes, felled trees, pulled stumps, blasted rocks and dug in swamps. They built canal banks, towpaths, waste weirs, culverts, aqueducts, locks and gates.

When they finished in 1825, they had constructed a 363-mile canal across the state. It was considered the foremost engineering achievement of the time. Western New York flourished with new, cheap transportation. The canal insured the place of New York City as the nation’s greatest port and city, and it hastened development of the Mid-West.

The modernized State Barge Canal System, consisting of the Erie, Champlain, Oswego and Cayuga-Seneca Canals, was completed in 1919.

What I loved is that this is a true example of how innovation is always all around us, even on history’s time line.

White saw a challenge and  figured out how to make hydraulic cement which I’ve got to believe not only change the canal building but changed building forever. Boiled down, innovation happens often when everyday normal people are doing everyday normal work.

The next time someone pushes for complete equality, consider this quote by Coach Jon Gruden. “I do treat people differently, yeah, because I’ve yet to meet two people who are the same.”

No two employees, vendors, customers, bosses, or anyone else are the same. He’s right on the money.

Maybe today was just different in that I noticed something that I don’t normally remember. When the mail arrived, there was a copy of a catalog from a company that I’ve traditionally only known online. This is a type of software company.

The catalog hit me for two reasons. The first was that it was paper and the second, I found items in it that I would never have noticed if not for the paper version.

Sure I’d been to the site many times and have actually purchased products on at least a half dozen occasions, but that does not mean a customer knows what you offer just because you’ve got 50,000,000,000,000 items in your database. What it means is that through a search or through an ad, your customer/visitor finds you for a specific reason. Then, if your site is good enough to move people through different pages and towards other items, they take in the data and possibly purchase.

This one catalog had me flipping through pages. So 1989, but in a good way.

In fact, I found a software package I may never have taken the time to notice. It’s called Timeliner XE, a software program that generates time lines specifically targeted to those involved in teaching.  However, it also could be used for other purposes.

Here’s how it works. You set up a time line or use an existing template to start a visual. You pick the type of visual and then start adding dates and references. As you add the information, the time line appears and in doing so, gives a different perspective to the data. If you need a search engine, the software opens up Google without leaving the program, and you can input what you like as you see it. All this happens while the software generates your reference files for later use. This means you don’t have to go back and ask, “What page did I find that photo on?” It’s stored for ease of use and so, in academia, you don’t get called for plagiarizing.

The whole package is only $99.00.

I was introduced to this “find,” simply because the company opted for a different way of selling its products and services. In this case, it was an older approach to selling…paper!

Next time you think you’re being so fancy selling your product, try using some older technologies. They might enlighten your customer.

Also, check out Timeliner’s video demo. You might find it useful.

“Why study the stars? They all look the same to me.”

Ascribed to an apprentice of Galileo

Makes one wonder how often assumptions are made that in retrospect, are self limiting.

HP has set up a  nifty little site that helps you set up a new fax machine.  Yeh, I know, what’s a fax? Unfortunately there are people who still want faxes.  I prefer to send everything as a PDF image so that it’s digital.

Check out the site at:  HP FAX TESTER