Remember my post last month about one of my inventor clients, Mick Gordon?  He is back in the news again, and I couldn’t be more pleased! Mick is a very prolific innovator–he is passionate about his inventions.

We’ve been helping him in the development of KlenzPod™ which recently won the inaugural Innovation Award at the annual World of Wipes (WOW 2008) Conference. Mick was honored for his innovative approach and elegant solution to the lack of efficient wet wipe disposal facilities on the market.

The KlenzPod system was developed for offices and public buildings to provide employees and customers easy access to single wet wipes. Mick’s invention was inspired by his experience with his dying father in a British hospital where he saw poor hygiene being practiced, and realized that medical staff really needed some easily-available wipes to keep their hands clean.

It has taken years of development. Mick refined the invention based on feedback from other experts and corporations, but numerous innovations have now come together to provide a really useful, economical, and aesthetically-pleasing solution that can be used almost anywhere.

Way to go, Mick!

Nintendo is releasing what might be the first big-budget console game that can pull in that ever elusive segment: mothers. I blogged about the Wii craze last year, pointing to the ALPHA MOM as the key audience Nintendo looked to in creating video games that would spur their children to get off the couch. For an industry that’s often been blamed for helping cause obesity and inactivity, Wii Fit is a chance to turn back the criticism by offering a game that targets health issues in a way that’s fun.

Wii Fit is a health and exercise program that I believe will boost the momentum of the Nintendo Wii, which has sold more than 9 million consoles since it was released in November 2006. The Wii has created a huge shift in the gaming world, inviting millions of casual and nongamers, many of them women, to pick up the motion-sensing Wii remote controller and play games using gestures and waves.

Officially, Nintendo said Wii Fit is designed for an “expanded audience.” But the game has the potential to attract what some marketers have called the chief household officer, ALPHA MOMS, a large but mostly unreached population of potential gamers. Some think that the new Wii game will skew female, much like the “Richard Simmons Sweatin’ to the Oldies. ” videos of the Eighties.

For about $90 players can chart their weight and body mass index over time and work to improve them by engaging in about 40 activities including yoga, aerobic step routines, strength and training exercises, and balance games. The balance board can track the progress of up to eight players, so users can encourage each other toward their respective goals. (Nintendo’s Wii Fit mini-site has video demonstrations of each training mode. For those who are well aware of the Wii Fit and have been patiently awaiting its release, you may have a tough time finding it in stores!)

The increase in new female gamers on the Wii has been noticeable, but Wii Fit can take it a step further by enticing moms to spring for the Wii for themselves, not just for their kids.

Here’s a fantastic article on one of my clients! Innovationedge has been working with an inventors Gene Gordon and his son Peter Gordon of Germgard Lighting, LLC. They’ve invented a product called Glovegard, a medical exam glove sterilization device that efficiently kills bacteria. It works by exposing a gloved hand to Ultraviolet C light to kill pathogens on the glove. In only three seconds, the gloves are sterilized with safety and speed.

The idea came about in the fall of 2005 after Gene reflected back on an infection he had contracted during a hospital stay for a back operation. His ultimate goal was to prevent others from going through the ordeal he experienced, and I’m excited that he is achieving that dream.

Check out the video here.

Fathers Day is coming up soon, and I’m always on the lookout for innovative and practical gifts for dads who are “techies.”

My own kids are well-past the baby stage, but I thought I’d pass this on to those of you who know a new or expecting dad this month: A cordless video-enabled baby monitor. There are a few on the market now, including the Guardian Angel, a high-tech baby monitor that can inform everything about your kid even when you are not nearby.

From within 300 feet, the baby monitor from Swann fits well in a pocket or can be hooked into your belt. The package comes with a camera and a receiver. The ultra sensitive microphone hooked to the camera picks up even the slightest murmur of your child. The infra-red LEDs even provide night vision capability. The LCD color screen makes the video visible with ultimate clarity, and costs about $150.

For $20 more, there’s the Edge 12-inch digital photo frame with built-in MP3 player. The high-resolution screen has a sharp image display , and you can program it for an automatic slide show with multiple transition effects and display times.

To get your pictures rolling, you just insert your memory card or USB flash drive in the back of the Digital Photo Frame.

Or for half the price, the Space Monitor will help dads get a grasp on the universe. The hand-held star-locator computer works by entering the time and location in the Northern Hemisphere on the keypad.

The navigator shows them exactly where to find 66 of the brightest stars, 56 constellations and four visible planets. It can also track thousands of astronomical events through the year 2020.

The device includes 20 star charts, measures about 10 inches, and requires three AAA batteries.

I’m seeing a lot more hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars on the roads these days, as drivers battle the rising fuel costs. Here’s an innovative auto that promises 41-MPG on the highway: the “smart fortwo.” (The gas tank of the smart fortwo is 8.7 gallons!)

The inventors of the fortwo started sketching out this unique care in the early 1990’s with a Joint Venture between Mercedes-Benz and Swatch, the makers of Swatch watches known for their wide array of colorful designs. Nicolas Hayek, the inventor of the Swatch watch brought his ideas for an “ultra-urban” car to Mercedes-Benz, and Mercedes took on this engineering challenge with the outcome of one of the most innovative cars ever introduced.

Ahh, but is it safe? Mercedes says it is. The tridion safety cell was it’s answer for a small car that can meet high safety standards. The tridion safety cell is a “hard shell” that surrounds the smart fortwo’s occupants with an energy displacing system of longitudinal and transverse structural members.

The auto is made of energy efficient and recyclable materials. For example, only water-soluble paints are used for the smart’s three basic colors – black, white and yellow. Painting the tridion safety cell is done by the powder-coating process. This removes the need for solvents. The body panels with molded-in color are fully recyclable. Environmental management is a high priority in Hambach, France, where the car is made.

The days of loose coupon clippings may be coming to an end, as the coupons we used to clip and carry are just about to go mobile. McDonald, Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Kimberly-Clark, Clorox and Del Monte and others are all posed to send their customers mobile coupons, either via text messages (with their permission), directing the user to the company’s mobile coupon site or promoting the product through barcode technology where retailers scan the barcodes right from your cell phone as you stand in the checkout line!

This one-to-one marketing opportunity is huge–where messages are customized and localized towards individual’s tastes and behaviors. Today there are more than 230 million mobile phone users in the US; and an estimated three billion coupons will be issued to mobile phone users by 2011, amounting to sales of almost $87 billion.

How do consumers feel about coupons via cell phone? Three-quarters of consumers felt that a coupon would be the most effective incentive to get them to respond to a mobile marketing message and that half would use mobile coupons for a discount at a local store, according to a survey by ABI Research. Similar studies by Jupiter Research show that 30 percent of consumers would like to receive mobile coupons.

A start-up called Cellfire provides advertisers/marketers with the ability to promote special discounts or savings of their goods/services via mobile coupons (opted-in SMS). Some of the advertisers include Domino’s Pizza, Supercuts, EMI Music, LA Times and Hardees’ among others. McDonald recently conducted a regional test of mobile coupons where consumers could receive one of the chain’s new iced coffees for free. Subway is using mobile coupon to drive retail traffic with last-minute special offers. To date, more than 10,000 retail stores nationwide are said to redeem Cellfire mobile coupons.

The Kroger grocery store has entered into a partnership with consumer-packaged food companies like P&G, General Mills and Kimberly-Clark to offer mobile coupons at the end of the second quarter using Cellfire services. The coupons offered will be mobile-exclusive and will be valid for specific store locations.

Other mobile coupon providers include GoMobo, SnapTell and Ugotitfirst. With mobile phones being such personal devices, receiving opt-in savings messages from relevant businesses would be highly appealing.

Best of all in my opinion is that there’s definitely a “Green” advantage to mobile coupons in the potential to save billions of dollars in paper and printing costs!

If you’re headed to Britain from any European nations this summer, you’ll get some face time at the security gate. It’s part of a new technology that will scan the faces of every passenger. European air travelers to Britain will be screened with automatic facial recognition technology in a bid to tighten security and ease congestion.

Citizens of Britain and all European Economic Area countries will pass through unmanned clearance gates which will scan passengers’ faces and compare them to data held on their biometric passports.

The European Economic Area includes all 27 European Union countries as well as Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. The technology being used has been programmed to err on the side of caution to ensure that travelers on security services’ watch lists are not allowed to freely pass through.Because of that, some passengers may be held up and redirected if the clearance gates cannot match their faces to the records on their passports.

The government had not yet decided on how many airports would take part in the initial trial this year, but I imagine that if all goes well we most likely will see this innovative technology in airports across the globe.

Scientists in the U.K. are taking the first steps in a project to create the first real-life Transformers - those toys that can change shape from, say a car, into a robot. The project has echoes of last year’s Transformers film about alien robots that disguise themselves as cars, motorbikes and lorries to wage war on each other.

It’s actually called the Symbrion project, a multi-million dollar experiment funded by the EU. Scientists will attempt to build swarms of tiny robots, each the size of a sugar cube, that move around on their own and connect together to form larger, intelligent machines.

Researchers say the first swarm of autonomous, intelligent, shape-changing robots could be in use within five years.

The scientists are very excited about the possibilities about saving lives. Here’s a quote:

“They could be used in medicine, in space exploration and in search and rescue missions,” said a spokesman for scientists at the University of the West of England in Bristol and the University of York. “You can imagine dropping hundreds of these small robots into a crevice after a building has collapsed. They would find each other and maybe connect together to form a snake-shaped object that could wriggle through the wreckage.”Then they could re-form into a spider to climb over a wall - or a robot with an arm that could lift rubble away. The possibilities are endless.”

Here’s the link to the University of York’s media alert, but you also might find this link about the SYMBRION project helpful as well.
Each robot would have wheels or tentacles, allowing it to move around independently. It would contain a small computer brain, making it as intelligent as an iPod or iPhone, and use infra-red to find other cubes. It sounds like it’s straight from children’s comic book or adventure movie!

Here is a highly-caffenaited concept for your morning: A coffee mug that acts as your own personal computer! The Yuno PC is a concept designed to help you get the most out of your morning without holding you back or constraining you to a desktop PC.

This mug incorporates all the important morning alerts such as weather, time, traffic, stocks, and all your latest e-mails on its touchscreen display. You can also display your own images as a screensaver if you just want to relax.

Designed by California State University Long Beach student, the concept isn’t on the market yet–but it is on the radar screens of high-tech gadgetry reviewers around the world. I’m guessing the Yuno PC is not dishwasher safe, but who knows what the next generation will bring?

Global concerns about terrorism have taken us down a path of new inventions designed to keep us more safe. A British company is launching a camera that can detect weapons, drugs or explosives hidden under people’s clothes from up to 80 feet away in what could be a breakthrough for the security industry.

ThruVision has designed the camers with what it calls “passive imaging technology” to identify objects by the natural electromagnetic rays — known as Terahertz or T-rays — that they emit.

The high-powered camera is effective even when people are moving. It does not reveal physical body details and the screening is harmless, the company says.

As with many cool innovations, ThruVision came up with the technology for the camera collaborating in an open innovation partership with the European Space Agency. This technology has both military and civilian applications and could be used in crowded airports, shopping malls or sporting events.

All people and objects emit low levels of electromagnetic radiation. Terahertz rays lie somewhere between infrared and microwaves on the electromagnetic spectrum and travel through clouds and walls.

So how great is this technology? Depending on the material, the signature of the wave is different, so that explosives can be distinguished from a block of clay and cocaine is different from a bag of flour!