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C.K. Prahalad died on April 16th, age 68. I didn't even know he had died, until I read it in a recent issue of the Economist. Prahalad was known for his development of the core competency concept -- but will most be remembered for his ideas of the bottom of the pyramid -- and how profit motive could help lift the world's poor from poverty. His ideas have shaped -- and will continue to shape -- the strategies of businesses the world over, and give hope to those in developing countries who aspire for more. in reference to: "He taught the world’s biggest companies to think of themselves anew, as a “portfolio of competencies” rather than as a “portfolio of businesses”. He taught everyone to see the developing world not as an also-ran but as a vortex of innovation and creativity. The world of management theory has more than its fair share of charlatans, but C.K. Prahalad was the genuine article." - Schumpeter: The guru of the bottom of the pyramid | The Economist ( vie...

OK, so they're still LEDs, but this new form of LED is so much better than your daddy's. While very efficient, today's LEDs can produce various wavelengths of light only when they hit the coating of the bulbs that house them, excite the atoms they encounter (usually phosphorus for white light) and of course, lose energy as heat. Not so with quantum-dot lighting. Quantum-dot lighting works by employing quantum-dots (semiconducting material a few nanometers in diameter) of various sizes, that get excited by a light source and radiate wavelengths corresponding to their size. The white light produced by quantum-dots is far superior to current LEDs -- approaching that of full spectrum light. That should be a great selling point for people who simply can't get over the "cold" light produced by today's LEDs and CFLs. On top of being more visually pleasing, quantum-dot lighting is about 50% more efficient than current LEDs. in reference to: Quantum dot - Wiki...

MilkyWay@Home, the distributed computing project using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform, is now the fastest computing project on that platform -- and probably the second fastest public distributed computing program, behind Folding@Home. MilkyWay@Home, using volunteer computing power from home users across the planet, has achieved 1,382 TFlops, as of January 12. Just for context -- that's just behind Jaguar, the Cray XT5 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that has performed at 1,759 TFlops and uses 224,162 Opteron cores -- compared to the 45 thousand users volunteering on MilkyWay@Home. For more on the MilkyWay@Home project, click here . in reference to: PCs around the world unite to map the Milky Way ( view on Google Sidewiki )

IBM has created graphene transistors in the lab that operate at 100 GHz. That's 10 faster than today's fastest silcon transistors. Made from sheets of carbon just an atom-thick, the graphene transistors can be produced using existing semiconductor manufacturing processes. How awesome would it be to have one of those humming away in your home computer? Just wait a few more years, they're coming. in reference to: Technology Review: Graphene Transistors that Can Work at Blistering Speeds ( view on Google Sidewiki )

Freescale Semiconductor has demoed a cool and affordable tablet, recently. No manufacturers have been named, but they can't be far behind. Check out the specs below: in reference to: * Size: 200mm by 128mm by 14.9cm and weighing 376 grams; no need for fan or heat sink * Processor: Freescale i.MX515 applications processor provides high performance and low power * ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz * OpenVG & OpenGL/ES graphics cores * HD video decoder hardware * Memory: 512 MB DDR2 * Display: 7-inch (1024 by 600) touch screen * Storage: 4-64 GB internal storage; removable micro SD * Connectivity: 3G modem (option) 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, RF4CE (option) * Ports: USB 2.0 and USB mini (also for charging), audio in/audio out, SIM card * Audio: speaker, microphone * Camera: 3 Megapixel (video recording up to VGA @ 30fps) * Battery: 1900mAh, USB charging * Sensors: the MMA8450Q three-axis accelerometer and an ambient light ...

When he was just 14-years-old, William Kamkwamba from Malawi, dropped out of school because his family could no longer afford to send him to school. With just a science text book, Kamkwamba decided to build a windmill, for electricity, to power his home and pump water. The people of his village thought he was crazy. But from parts salvaged from junk, a windmill emerged. That has since been replaced by another Kamkwamba built. Now 22-years-old, Kamkwamba is attending university on a scholarship, and plans to go back home and bring electricity to his entire country. Simply amazing. So, what you done today?

Joshua Silver started on a remarkable quest in 1985 -- provide vision for the world's poor that desperately needed glasses, but couldn't afford to eat, let alone pay for prescription lenses. It would take the physicist of Oxford's Department of Atomic and Laser Physics, over a decade to create a solution that is both cheap and easily adaptive -- allowing the curvature of the lenses to change without specialized knowledge or equipment. The solution: tough plastic lenses holding membranes containing fluid, which can be adjusted by adding or removing fluid using a syringe attached to the arms of the spectacles. To add or remove fluid, a dial is turned on the spectacles. Already, 30,000 pairs of spectacles have been distributed in a trial to the poor in Africa and Asia. Silver has ambitions of helping the UN achieve its Vision 20/20 programme by distributing 1 million more next year and ramping up to 100 million per year in a few years. By 2020, there could be over a bi...

Another nail in the coffin comes from Vector -- if the MPAA and RIAA want to take a look at Christmas-future, this is a site they should drop by. Vector -- verified torrents -- gives you the straight goods by filtering out fake torrents -- mostly uploaded by the MPAA and RIAA to mess with your pilfering the content of their sponsors. Anyway, enjoy the site. It will be brought down shortly.

Well, apparently Google invented cloud computing . Or that's what you'll get out of this BusinessWeek article, that profiles the 27-year-old Christophe Bisciglia, chief-cloud-guy, at Google. Have a read, as it gives a good sense of where Google is heading, and why they will take over the world if they're successful. Worse case scenario: Terminator or the Matrix. It will make us wish for the days when Microsoft dominated the computing market. Watch out future, here we come!

It's blacker and than black, darker than dark ... it's a material made of the ever versatile carbon nanotube, configured to reflect 0.045% of all light shone on it. The material was created by researchers at Rice University who were never as cool as the kids who wore black when they were younger. The material will be used to make really black jackets.

Scientists have developed a more efficient thermoelectric silicon nanowire that could be used in generators to covert heat from various sources, including the human body, to electricity. While the physics of the new nanowires are not fully understood, the results are. Previous nanowire-based converters were not efficient for production, but if the promise of these new nanowires hold through, we could see countless applications hitting the market. The US DOD & DOE would definitely be interested, but so would commercial interests. Think of powering your laptop or other gadgets and toys using your own body heat ... makes power trips to the local fast food trough almost excusable.

100% Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars are here! They're just a bit small. The H-racer is a toy car from Horizon Fuel Cell , a company that develops fuel cell technology for real-life cars. The H-racer comes with its own hydrogen refueling station that generates hydrogen for the car using solar energy and water. It retails for $115US and can be ordered directly from Horizon . Now how cool is that? Related: The Race to Build the Supergreen Car -- Wired Magazine Are the Auto Industry's Arguments Against California's CO 2 Rule Just Hot Air? -- Autopia from Wired.com

Nicholas Carr, ever the optimist, uses Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar [PDF], to sermonize on the limitations of the open source model for innovation, in strategy+business magazine. If you're not familiar with Raymond's paper, Carr summarizes it as follows: Traditionally, sophisticated programs had always been "built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation." An open source project, in contrast, was the product of a large and informal community of volunteers who in aggregate "seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches." What was amazing, Raymond wrote, was that "the Linux world not only didn't fly apart in confusion but seemed to go from strength to strength at a speed barely imaginable to cathedral-builders." With the advent of the Internet, an efficient vehicle for information exchange, the bazaar took off. Innovati...

The February 1 st issue of CIO Magazine carries an article on innovation and benefits IT can bring to the process as an enabler. CIO suggests that as product lifecycles continue to shrink, the pressure to bring the innovation cycle down to shorter timeframes will be even greater. Internal R&D departments can no longer afford to do it all on their own –- and innovation as a result, is becoming a distributed process, requiring the collaboration of customers, suppliers, independents and even competitors. How can IT help? CIO provides these elements that specifically requires IT as an enabler: Collaboration. Communications is critical among both internal employees and external contractors. Agree on a medium, whether its e-mail, IM or fancy collaboration software, and get everyone using it. Data access. Easy access to research information is the basis for doing collaborative innovation work with outsiders. Make project data available in a format that is standard, simple and e...

The April 2 nd issue of BusinessWeek carries a cover story on the coming virtualization of the world that's an eyeopener on future of human-computer interface. Lets face it, the keyboard is not natural -- neither is the mouse, the remote control or 2D simulations of 3D worlds. What is natural for humans have long been a challenge for computers to accept as input, interpret and execute. A glimpse of the future however is here, and its showing up in the unlikely place of business. Sure the entertainment industry has been at the forefront of exploiting new technologies such as motion capture, rendering and virtualization of the real world -- but how about sensor technology that detects movements and expressions, allowing the natural interaction with presentations? Or technology that tracks the motion, allowing advertisers to interact with their audience? Others are also bringing 3D modeling to life, allowing prototypes to be interacted with -- designed, tested and virtually co...

Out of Google's Labs comes another search solution -- voice search. To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone. Using this service, you can: search for a local business by name or category. You can say "Giovanni's Pizzeria" or just "pizza". get connected to the business, free of charge. get the details by SMS if you’re using a mobile phone. Just say "text message". How cool is that?!

Limited thinking would view the poor as a burden to society, but if you buy C.K. Prahalad's bottom-of-the-pyramid theory, the 4-plus billion impoverished people in the world are a vast untapped market. If you're motivated solely by profits, you may limit your understanding of Prahalad's theory to bringing consumerism to the poor -- but if your aspirations are to close the inequalities that exist between those that have, and those that have don't, then this vast untapped market represents an opportunity to make a difference, even while eking out profits. The poster child for tapping into those at the bottom is Grameen Bank , with their micro-financing to aid those in developing nations towards self-sustainment. Helping the poor help themselves is a novel idea that is taking off in philanthropy. It's not just about throwing endless sums of money at the vacuum of need -- but about wisely investing in the poor, so they can create an economic environment where the c...