Camera phones are pretty much the standard now with video and still pictures up to 2-3 megapixels fairly common. But the phone is still the dominant partner in this relationship. Cell phone images are still low resolution and suffer from poor lenses and lighting. So how about integrating a cell phone into a digital camera instead? Let’s look at the problem from the opposite perspective to come up with something new…we’ve got digital cameras on the market now that have GPS and Wifi – so why not one with cell phone capability too? Companies like Canon, Nikon, Kodak, etc should partner with a phone company and provider to market the first ever cell phone camera. The product would be a full functioning 10MP digital camera with a 3x zoom lens, built in flash, and lots of in-camera image retouching features AND a cellphone TOO. Now we can just have 1 gadget to carry instead of two.
Monthly Archives: November 2008
New Product Idea – Video Game: Great Battles in History First Person Shooter
If you have an interest in FPS video games, you know all the great ones such as Call of Duty, Halo, Counterstrike, Doom, etc. They range from current and past realistic wartime scenarios, to futuristic ‘bug hunts’. Sometimes they even mix up the two a little. But how about a game where you can play across the great battles of history? This doesn’t have to be a time travel story or science fiction – just a game where each scene instead of building the next, is a different historical battlefield. For example, you can play a modern urban street battle set in the middle east, then a Vietnam era jungle battle, then a WWII battle in Europe or on a Pacific island, and then a trench battle in WWI, and finally perhaps even a Civil War battle. Weapons would need to be historically correct and for you could unlock weapons that you can take from era to era. Such a game would have great replay value, unlimited opportunities for level design, and appeal to lots of people of different ages. It might even be educational!
ICON A5 Light Sport Aircraft
With an array of new VLJs (Very Light Jets) like the Cessna Citation Mustang, this Light Sport Aircraft caught my attention due to its unique portability and interior/exterior design sophistication. The ICON A5 is like a cross between jet-ski and float plane. It can be trailered to the lake for launching and takeoff and then stored in a oversized garage. The folding wings remind me of the solar electric sailplane and the interior is sports car like. You can find out more about this unique aircraft at www.iconaircraft.com.
Global Collaborative Design Project for Caterham’s Next Sports Car
Caterham and Splitwheel are teaming up to develop a new sports car designed online with user input. The project will engage Caterham’s enthusiast owners and fan base or anyone else who wants to logon. Similar to efforts in other industries, the Caterham project attempts to design a car by leveraging a vast network of automotive engineering and design enthusiasts and professionals. This topic of distributed network product development can happen internally but also externally to a company like in Caterham’s small company case. In some ways, this model is very close to Prahalad’s R=G priniciple for innovation or Professor Eric von Hippel’s Lead User innovation. That is, use the power of the internet to solicit input from a global network of knowledge. Cars however are pretty traditional objects with limited room for revolutionary innovation so it will be interesting to see if anything significant comes of this… At the very least, it’s a worthy attempt to open up the product development process of an automobile – one of the world’s more purposeful automobiles.
