I thought this was urban myth but maybe not, anyway, good story from our current chairman...

Haier, China's largest white goods manufacturer prides itself on after-sales service. A high number of washing machine faults started being flagged by their maintenance staff and when they took the machines apart found vegetables cuttings trapped in the filter. Oh, said customers, we use the machine for washing our vegetables too.

Rather than ruling the warrantee invalid, Haier took the challenge back to R&D and within a week had found a solution; modify the pump, open the filter a bit, etc, and within a month had the new model back on the market proclaiming best for washing your clothes and your vegetables!

Sales leapt again.

This is a fully funded three year PhD studentship in collaboration with ARUP. The overall aim of the project is to explore ways in which navigation services can be personalised and made more context-aware. This studentship will provide a very exciting opportunity for a dedicated individual to advance their knowledge and skills in this cutting edge area.

This project will address several questions related to the interplay of technology and real world in creating personalised services, and the nature and usability of technology and the interaction mechanisms used. The balance that has to be achieved between ambience and ubiquity and intrusiveness will also be an important issue to consider. In this way, the project will direct future research in two ways: first, by developing better and more user-friendly navigational models and second, by directing design of buildings and urban environments to make them interactive and accessible.

The Department of Geomatic Engineering at University College London has many leading researchers working in the areas of global positioning systems, geospatial interoperability and mobile location based services. The research will be supervised by Dr Pragya Agarwal at UCL and the student will join the GIS Research Group. The Department of Geomatic Engineering also runs a highly successful Masters in Geographic Information Science and the successful candidate will also have the opportunity to attend relevant modules on this course. The studentship is part funded by ARUP, a global design business and consulting firm, and the student will also have the opportunity to work closely with researchers in ubiquitous computing at ARUP as part of this project.

Candidates will be British nationals with a good first degree, and preferably a Masters degree, in geoinformatics, geography, computer science or related fields. The project will require programming skills for development of interactive systems and interfaces, some prior knowledge of GIS and also relevant interest and/or experience in designing and carrying out human subject experiments, whether in the field or a lab.

Applications should be sent in form of detailed CV along with names/addresses of two referees to Dr Pragya Agarwal at pagarwal[at]ge.ucl.ac.uk. Informal queries regarding the studentship can also be addressed to Dr P Agarwal. Closing Date: 15 January 2007.

Charles Leadbeater was a speaker at our first Hotel of the Future conference back in 2002. He gave an excellent insight into luxury. His latest project is We-think - an exploration of and experiment in collaborative creativity. His book, We-think, is due out next year but his publishers have agreed to him putting it on-line now in the spirit of open innovation. Blurb from an email circular below:

With Google on the verge of bidding for Youtube, I wanted to alert you to my new book - WE-THINK: the power of mass creativity - which is available in draft on my website. You can download the draft, print it off, share it and comment on the text through the site.

WE-THINK is about what the rise of the likes of Wikipedia and Youtube, Linux and Graigslist means for the way we organise ourselves, not just in digital businesses but in schools and hospitals, cities and mainstream corporations.

My argument is that these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea rather than consumption and work. People want to be players not just spectators, part of the action, not on the sidelines.

With the support of Profile, my publisher, I am releasing the book prior to formal publication next year so that people can comment upon the text, add to it, disagree with it. I hope this open approach to peer review is in itself an experiment in collaborative creativity and will help to create new ways for people to write books and share ideas.

You can find WE-THINK through my website - www.charlesleadbeater.net - and by putting - www.wethinkthebook.com - into your browser.

Notes from FP6 UK Information Society Technologies meeting at DTI conference centre 06.10.06 to launch the the ICT component of FP7 to UK audience.

The 7 themes for ICT in FP7

Introduced main features and proposed priorities for 2007-08. First ICT call in Jan/Feb 2007. Seven *challenges* are proposed each with several *target* areas for research:

1. network and service infrastructure (250 mil euro) (Sarah: items such as built in security and trust, full support of distributed value chains - SOA, computing as utility)

2. cognitive systems, robotics and interaction (450 mil euro) (Alvise, Tristan, Darren: looking at things like robots adapting to context, machines and systems that understand their users and/or their environments**, systems that understand multimedia and multi modal digital information)

3. components, systems, engineering (200 mil euro) (at electronic level - not for Arup)

4. digital libraries and content (400 mil euro) (Rebecca G, Tom, Tony, Kevin: mass-individualisation of learning experiences with ICT, efficient editing and knowledge management systems)

5. sustainable and personalised healthcare (175 mil euro) (Gavin, Phil: they mentioned computational modelling and simulation of organs as a specific objective, also met chap from Primal Pictures - http://www.primalpictures.com/ or http://www.anatomy.tv/)

6. mobility, environment, energy (180 mil euro) (David, Amanda: items included optimised traffic management, integrated management systems to monitor and react to environmental risks*)

7. ICT for independent living and inclusion (75 mil euro) (Rebecca M: ICT solutions that will substantially reduce the 30% of the population currently not using ICT, user friendly systems beyond the PC and current technologies**)

(For info i am interested in challenge 1: target = reconfigurability, adaptability, interoperability, service composition and challenge and those targets above marked with **)

Funding schemes

3 types of project:
A. Collaboration projects (STREPS - or IP)
B. Networks of excellence
C. Coordination and support actions

2100 mil total split as follows

1150 mil euro Jan 07 call - 1 stage submission (just long prop)
650 mil euro May 07 call - 2 stage submission (short then full)
200 mil euro Nov 07 call - 2 stage submission (short then full)

FET futures and emerging technologies open 65 mil euro over 2 years proactive 125 mil euro

fixed over head rate they use (where people cannot demonstrate their own ie SME's) is 60% (dropping to 40% for projects starting in 2009)

Rules for participation: minimum 3 different member states must be involved, big co's (Arup) get 50% funding for R&D and demonstrator type activity (Uni, public, SME's get 75%) and 100% funding for management activities.
Full details available in early 2007
Industry evaluators needed (call in november from site below) paid 450 (euro?) per day plus expenses.

more detail at http://fp6uk.ost.gov.uk/ if you register you will get notified of announcements, calls etc. and DW has ppt handouts from day for those who want to see them (just add a comment at bottom).

Application tips:

Evaluators have to read many of these - keep it simple, to the point, understandable on page one and then show why you are the dream team
Reference the ETP reports - especially the SRA's, strategic research agendas - since the technology programmes have been setup to influence the agenda of the FP7 programme (Arup are leading ECTP PICT - european construction technology platform, processing and ICT - this MUST be referenced for built environment projects) - http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/about/techn-platform.htm
Don't wait for call to start to pull together dream team since once call is made time is short...
Get advice from the UK National Contact Point (Peter Walters) - go talk to them and see what they think of your application.

just presented Bop to John Prescott - when i spoke about the reasons why we were doing it the analogy he made was to do with military strategy in the American civil war - apparantly the red coats lost a few battles due to the heat and their inability to take off their red coats which hampered their performance due to effect of heat....
anyway, he thought it was a great project and he wanted a couple of motes for his own home.