MuseClouds

One of the interesting things about looking at new ideas others have is the way they can influence and inspire us for the creation of our own new ideas. This happens because every mind is a different mind, and the way we interpret and process information may be different from person to person. That’s why so many ideas were left in the dark for so long until they were caught by the right guy who made them a breakthrough.

Out of many ways to gather for new ideas, innovation awards are one of my favorites. Why? Besides the innovation factor every entry is supposed to have, as it’s open to everyone to vote, they’ll be voting on what they use and find helpful in their everyday lives. So, it somehow represents the public perception of innovation and how they are using and interacting with it.

The Industry Standard Innovation 100 Awards 2008 are divided into 10 categories and you can check every entry on their website. I parsed them all and found a lot of new products and services I never heard of before. Check it out! You’re sure to find some great new ideas.

Parsing science news from the past days, I came across one that made me think once again how often we can mix concepts from different fields of research and sparkle innovation. This time, it’s a new algorithm for spam detection, to be presented on the first European conference on Artificial Life (ALIFE XI), inspired on how the vertebrate adaptive immune system makes a distinction between harmless and harmful substances. Let’s see where this Artificial Life field can take us.

You can read more on this news report.

Just read in the news about a recent study conducted by Microsoft Research tracking all Microsoft Messenger conversations from June 2006 (30 billion instant messages sent by 240 million people). As the researchers, Jure Leskovec and Eric Horvitz, state in their publication abstract:

We investigate on a planetary-scale the oft-cited report that people are separated by “six degrees of separation” and find that the average path length among Messenger users is 6.6.

You can read more about the subject on this news story. If you don’t want to read the entire publication, Mashable has also put up a great post on the subject back in March with a map showing the messenger use distribution across the globe.

Although this study is not considered scientifically reliable, the idea behind it, which is not new, inspired a play, a TV series, a film, a game and SixDegrees.org, a brilliant charitable initiative of actor Kevin Bacon in partnership with Network for Good. Also built upon this concept is ConnectingCadence, a social mapping network tracing the connections between you and those people important to you.

Reality or not, it’s an inspiring thought for sure!