Clean-out to start-up!

Interesting entrepreneurial story of Yuchun Lee, an MIT graduate who used maths to clean out Las Vegas casinos and now has a sucessful software company. His story is the subject of a recent film entitled "21":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7374111.stm

"All I have to do is dream ... " and other breakthroughs

There have been a number of reported cases of creative inspiration and even scientific problem-solving while people were asleep. These examples range from Kekulé to Paul McCartney and various webpages have been devoted to the topic (some of them selling dream-related products) http://www.brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm
http://www.dreamtree.com/Culture/Famous.htm

Meanwhile a fairly recent paper from a researcher at Harvard Medical School aims to approach the topic in a more rigorous fashion:

http://www.asdreams.org/journal/articles/barrett3-2.htm

Career management: wacky office?

If you like the idea of working in an office with a slide, a games room, a 'chill-out' aquarium and plenty of free food then you had better get your CV into Google Zurich according to a recent BBC item: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7290322.stm

Mobile phone future: Android, open source and Google ?

Interesting developments with the new open source operating system Android:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7266201.stm

Will Google dominate this market also?
Might be a good thing for us consumers!

Spinvox

A new startup company in the UK has launched an interesting new voice-recognition technology using 30 million pounds venture capital. BBC video report http://tinyurl.com/2nrglh

Company page: http://www.spinvox.com/

Robots explore the Nazaré Canyon

Robot submarines have been exploring the ocean off the coast of Portugal.
The BBC have a short video about the work here.

Value Engineering - a good thing?

What do the following phenomena have in common?

• extremely quick service at a pizza resturant
• thin doors on kitchen cupboards that you buy at IKEA
• no little bottles of shampoo in some hotel room bathrooms

Answer:

They are all minor but planned examples of Value Engineering.

For more info read the blog of the BBC economics editor.