Growing Knowledge the Evolution of Research – the garden is open

Our Growing Knowledge – the Evolution of Research was officially opened by Andrew Miller MP, Chair of the Science and Technology Committee last week.

Over the next nine months, we will be using a dedicated exhibition to explore what technological tools will shape the library’s future research facilities.

The exhibition aims to challenge visitors on how research is changing and ask what you want to experience from the library of the future.

I have volunteered to be a guide to the exhibition so do drop by and say hello.

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Working with hardware partner HP and software partner Microsoft, the library is showcasing a range of research tools, including a prototype of Sony’s RayModeler 360-degree Autostereoscopic Display that uses gesture control to view static and moving 3D images and video.

At the end of the Growing Knowledge exhibition, the British Library will evaluate the tools and decide which have been most useful for researchers – a term the library uses to describe anyone using its resources.

Richard Boulderstone, CIO at the British Library, explained: “It’s about trying to explore what tools and services we should provide for researchers in future. What is the future of the library? What tools, spaces, technologies should we provide for researchers?”

Clive Izard, head of creative services at the British Library, added: “We are evaluating the way researchers will work in an area that is not hushed and quiet – where people will be more collaborative physically.

“At the end [of the exhibition] we will produce a report. JISC [independent advisory body providing advice on ICT use to higher education] is going to take the findings and incorporate them into our services.”

The exhibition, which is running on a thin client solution, is testing everything from monitor set-up – from a single touch screen monitor to four standard monitors – to audio search software developed by Microsoft.

These tools, which include map rectification software that reshapes old maps over current maps, and a Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts tool that enables users to digitally delve into Austen’s handwritten manuscripts, will be alternated with other ones in the British Library’s portfolio over the nine months.

Researchers can also experiment with a Microsoft Surface Table, on which the British Library is showing an interactive, digital version of the world’s longest painting, the 19th century Garibaldi Panorama. A set of dials, developed with (University College London (UCL), also measures Twitter activity across nine capital cities.

The Growing Knowledge exhibition will run until 16 July 2011.

Growing Knowledge – the Evolution of Research is open

Growing Knowledge – the Evolution of Research has been officially opened by Andrew Miller MP, Chair of the Science and Technology Committee.

Showcasing some never-seen-before research tools, thought-provoking content and futuristic design in a fully interactive research environment, the exhibition aims to challenge our audiences on how research is changing and ask what they want to experience from the library of the future.

For more information watch this You Tube video for interviews with Library staff and further details about the exhibition.

Reuters have also produced a video piece on the exhibition.

Inventing the 21st Century Exhibition Evening

Last Wednesday night was the formal opening of our Inventing 21st Century exhibition by BIS Minister Mark Prisk. He talked about the British Library and the Business & IP Centre in glowing terms which was nice.

During the evening I chatted to a range of inventors and business support advisers, but my most memorable conversation was with a man in a K-2 Wheelchair featured in the exhibition. He explained how using it had changed his life for the better. It was inspiring to see how an invention can make such an impact on the lives of people.

The BBC has put together a slide show of the exhibits featured in the exhibition.

On Saturday morning, Steve Van Dulken the curator of the exhibition was interviewed on BBC Breakfast News with the inventor of a double headed broom.

Steve has also written a book Inventing the 21st Century to coincide with the exhibition.

Our exhibition: Inventing the 21st century

From next Monday our new exhibition Inventing the 21st century, opens here at the British Library in our Folio Society Gallery, and runs until 28 November 2010.

It is a celebration of wonderful British ingenuity, and contains a wide range of inventions from sport to tackling climate change to the weekly nightmare of changing your duvet cover. It also includes President Obama’s favourite dog bowl (as seen – and rejected – on Dragons Den), and Dyson’s revolutionary bladeless fan.

My colleague Steve van Dulken is the curator of the exhibition and has already covered several of the inventions on show in his excellent Patent Search blog.

We are also running an Ingenious Britons evening event, where you will be able to hear from and put questions to some of the inventors.

In conjunction with the exhibition we also have an Invent it! campaign. We want to inspire the next generation of ingenious Britons to develop products to make your lives easier, from a mug of tea that never goes cold, to a smart phone battery that can last all week. Personally, I would like to have a stretchy keyboard for my Blackberry, as I can touch type, but my clunking fingers are far too big for the standard BB keys.

What would you like to see an invention for? Have your say on our Facebook fan page and Twitter using the hashtag #bipcinvent

We’ll be announcing the top ten ideas during Global Entrepreneurship Week (15 – 19 November).

Intellectual Property: A Success Story To Be Extended?

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I’ve just been reminded of one of my  more scary speaking engagements of recent times. It was back in January 2009 at the invitation of Professor Michael Mainelli, Emeritus Gresham Professor of Commerce at Gresham College.

It was at the Real Time Club. Founded in 1967, the Real Time Club is believed to be the world’s oldest IT dining Club. The Club is dedicated to participative events that provide “rapid responses to the challenges of the information society”.

My fellow speakers were:
Professor Ian Angel
, who is Professor of Information Systems at the London School of Economics and also Chairman of Creative Commons (England and Wales).
David Bunting, who is CEO of Trevor Baylis Brands plc (a company which he setup with Trevor Baylis), which provides route-to-market services for inventors and entrepreneurs. David is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and a Fellow of the CMA,
Richard Overden, who is an Associate Director of Oxford University’s Bodlian Library and Keeper of Special Collections. Prior to that he worked at Durham University Library, the House of Lords Library, and at the University of Edinburgh.
Tony Pluckrose, who is a Partner at Boult Wade Tennant and also a Chartered and European Patent Attorney.

Here is a brief report from the evening:

Some 40 members and guests of the Real Time Club attended the first dinner of 2009 to debate the subject of: “Intellectual Property: A Success Story to be Extended? Just Desserts or Global Gridlock?” The Chairman, Mark Holford welcomed the guests and then handed over to the evening’s host, Professor Michael Mainelli, who is also the club’s Vice President.

The format of the evening was a brief (three minute) statement by each of the panel of speakers, followed by a lively and challenging debate, to which everyone present made a contribution.

The introductory sessions posed a series of challenges. These included:

* “Is Intellectual Property protection being mis-sold?” Inventors often do not understand patent protection – they have a great idea, talk about it in the pub, and don’t realize that by doing so they have already exposed it to the public. Their problem is the extent to which they dare tell people what they are doing. They think that a patent will give them protection, even if the idea has been put into the public domain, and defending a patent is very expensive. What they should do is think like an entrepreneur, by keeping quiet, building a product, and once it is built patent it and sell it to a large corporation.

* The second challenge was the unreasonableness of traditional copyright law: “Is it right that I should be charged $500 in Las Vegas to use 30 seconds of Ella Fitzgerald in a presentation?”

* The third challenge was the fairness of current practice – monopoly rights that are given by governments in the form of patents should be properly categorized and reasonably charged; if they are not, it will stifle inventiveness.

* We then moved into the realm of science fiction and considered the Star Trek replicator, which is fast becoming science fact, since replication costs are negligible. Why shouldn’t we generate an idea, create value, and then make it freely available? Don’t we have a moral imperative to do this? After all, multiple people possess an idea – it is rather arbitrary that the first person who patents the idea owns it. Replication is now also now a major part of the librarian’s job; because of digitization, librarians have progressed from being curators of knowledge within a specific location to providers of digital representation on a global scale. And relationships with companies like Google introduce commercial, as well as engineering, considerations.

* The final contribution to the introductory session was the differences between USA and European IP law. In the past the USA has granted patents relatively freely (as in the case of State Street Bank), whereas Europe has been tougher (as in the case of Symbian). The USA has now resiled, and the high tide has passed and is now receding, But although patents are harder to get, they are still being granted when they shouldn’t be. The issues are cost and complexity, including the expense of challenging patent rights.

The World Cup In An Hour for 59 pence

I love it when one of our clients does something really smart. In this case – taking advantage of all the excitement currently around the FIFA World Cup.

Annabel and Rupert Colley have created an ePublishing business initially aimed at the various forms of Apple iDevices (iPod Touch, iPhone and now iPad).

They have started with a set of  four history ‘In and hour’ titles, but have just come out with The World Cup In An Hour to coincide with the World Cup.

Opportunity Knocks, as good old Hughie Green used to say.

Welcome to Collca

Founded specifically as an ePublisher, Collca currently publishes book-derived and other educational and reference mobile apps initially for the Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. More platforms will be added as required.

We currently have 4 titles from the History In An Hour series available as iPhone apps in the Apple iTunes store:
•     The Cold War In An Hour by Rupert Colley     The Cold War In An Hour
•     Nazi Germany In An Hour by Rupert Colley     Nazi Germany In An Hour
•     The World Cup In An Hour by Rupert Colley     The World Cup In An Hour
•     World War II In An Hour by Rupert Colley     World War II In An Hour

We are planning a lot of future titles both in the History In An Hour series and for other series.

As an integral part of creating The Cold War In An Hour, we developed Condor – a software and data framework that streamlines the whole design and production process. Using Condor we can develop iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch apps quickly and economically.

What happens to innovations in fast moving tech markets?

iPhone Screenshot 1I recently met for a coffee with one of my earliest Business Information Advice clients from October 2008. I was glad to find out her business was successful, but surprised to hear that it was now quite different from the project we had discussed nearly two years before.

Her original innovation involved the use of dedicated computer terminals in shopping centres. However the rise of smartphones, in particular the Apple iPhone led to a change in plan. Now her company specialises in developing shopping related iPhone applications (apps) and they have just launched their first one for L’Oreal UK Ltd.

It is a Vichy Skin Health Consultation and helps you find the right free sample starter kit for your skin. Having perfect skin myself (bad joke) I don’t personally have use for this widget, but I can see it being popular with those who do care about their complexion.
HEALTHY SKIN AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
Our mission is to give you tools, advice, access to expert and products to help you achieve healthy, beautiful looking skin.

That’s why we have launched the Vichy Skin Health Mobile Application, giving you a FREE Skin Health Consultation on your mobile. After the Consultation you’ll be able to receive a FREE sample starter kit so you can try the products before you buy.

In the app we’ve included exclusive content on our most popular products, a pharmacy locator so you’ll never be too far away from your nearest advisor and a bar code scanner to find out if a product is suitable for you. We’ve also included some special offers, promotions and competitions.

With all this at your fingertips, we hope you’ll be one step closer to achieving healthy, beautiful looking skin.

A radical Reworking of business

front coverI know I refer quite a bit to items I hear on Leo Laport’s Net@Night podcast.  However episode 142 of the show with Sarah Lane guesting for Amber Macarthur was all about business.

They interviewed Jason Fried and David Hansson who created Ruby on Rails and co-authored Getting Real, amongst a range of notable achievements.

In their new book Reworking they attempt to debunk many business clichés, based on ten years of experience of running 37 Signals an internet based business.

They looked back over their first ten years of starting and growing their business to see what lessons they had learned, and how they could present the best of those ideas as succinctly as possible.

I tend to agree with them when they say that so many business books don’t really need to be more than 50 or 60 pages long, as their authors aren’t really saying very much. To generate enough content for 150 or 200 pages takes many years of experience.

Get more sleep
The first idea covered in the interview, Get More Sleep, may sound obvious, but working extreme hours has become something of a obsession especially with workaholics, and especially in the United States. But as they point out, the practical result is that you just end up with people being tired the whole time, and sooner or later it usually leads to burnout. Also, you can’t make up for the loss with an occasional one nights good sleep. You have to be consistent about your sleep. I like their quote, ‘you have to sleep in order to do good work.’

Ignore your competition
The second is about not copying, or even bothering to find out what your competitors are doing.

As they rightly point out, running a business takes a lot of time and you have to prioritise what you are going to spend that time on. Given that fact, they feel you are better off  spending it on your customers and your own products, rather than what other people are doing.

You can’t pay complete attention to your competitors, and your customers, and your products, and your employees, and your vision. You have to make some decisions and prioritise. So David and Jason would rather spend their time making the people who use their products very happy, instead of worrying about customers they don’t have yet, who might be being approached by their competitors.

They quote Henry Ford; ‘The competitors you should be worrying about are the ones that don’t care about you. They are the ones who are focussed on building their own business.’

According to David and Jason there is a business cold war going on, especially in the software industry, where everyone is spending their time trying to get one-up on everyone else. ‘We have to add two more features to counteract the one new feature from our competitor’. There are very few winners in this world where companies try and outspend their competitors, and everyone ends up looking the same.

Business is like software
They feel that businesses should be malleable, as we aren’t building bridges or skyscrapers. A company can change, it can try new things, it can iterate. ‘We try new stuff all the time, some works and some doesn’t. Our business itself has ‘bugs’, and we fix them as we go.’

‘When people think of a business as a monolith that has to have a lot of structure and policies, then they are sort of screwing themselves.’

‘There are few phrases I hate more than ‘this is how we do things around here’’. It is such a wrong and circular argument, but you hear it all the time.

The book has a simple structure with one idea every page or so. ‘The whole point of the book is that it is short, it is a quick read, because… aren’t you supposed to be doing something? These business books that take you a week or two to read, just seem like a waste of time.’

Learning from mistakes is overrated
‘There is a weird obsession, especially in the tech world, where everyone is telling you to fail early and fail often. What is that advice, fail often?’

‘Our take is that there is certainly some thing to be learnt from failure, but you are better off learning lessons from things that work well. Focus on the things that have gone right for you and try and do those things again. If you think that failure is so natural it will happen to you, you will start making really bad business decisions, and not looking at the odds.’

The obsession with growth

‘What is the point of everyone trying to build a billion dollar company? What is wrong with a million dollars? When did a million dollars become a small amount of money? When did running a business that generates $10 million a year become not a good and cool thing to do?’

‘Typically what happens is that people aren’t very happy working at these big big companies, and they are very slow at innovation. They have to acquire innovation by buying the small guys. The small guys are where the innovation and excitement happens.’

‘Why not build a great little company that is doing incredibly well, you can generate millions of dollars a year in profit. Who is going to be ashamed of that? And you can enjoy it, and you can get to sleep. That to me is really what it is all about.’

Entrepreneurs have a bad name
‘That word has so many bad connotations, it means risking everything, including your family, because you have to go all-in, right away. It’s just not true. The way we build our software company was by doing work on the side. You don’t need to throw away all your safety nets on day one and charge after this thing with a everything you have.’

‘In many ways I think the American dream has been perverted. I think before, it was simply financial independence, and somehow it has become this thing where you have to build a billion dollar company. It should get back to the way it was.’

I will leave my favourite quote from their interview to the end. ‘Starting a business does not have to be rocket surgery’. I’m not sure if this was a deliberate play on rocket science and brain surgery but I would like to adopt it as a business start-up slogan.

Sorting out my digital music mess with Pollux

I have been thoroughly addicted to digital music for several years now. In fact it is all too easy to forget just how revolutionary the iPod and its successors have been. Who would have thought, even ten years ago, that many of us would be walking around with our entire music collection at our fingertips?

However, even iTunes, Windows Media Player and other music software have their failings. In particular they are not good at recognising individual music tracks in terms of artist and album source. I have wasted many hours in the past manually inputting their details onto my computer so I can find the right track amongst my 5,000 songs.

Needless to say it was only a matter of time before an ingenious young whippersnapper of a programmer solved this annoyance. In this instance it was three undergraduate students from Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Karnataka (Chetan Surpur, Second year undergrad at U.C. Berkeley, California. Shashwat Kandadai, Second year undergrad at U.C. Santa Cruz, California. Manoj Mardithaya, Third year undergrad at National Institute of Technology Karnataka, India.)

Together they have created Pollux, which was initially discovered by net@night with Amber and Leo. The first version was Mac only, but just last week I downloaded the Windows version. I went straight for the full version at $10 for a year, instead of the free trial. It took my computer around 24 hours to work its way through my entire music collection. But, now I have a full set of tagged songs, with album art to go with them, and I am very grateful to Chetan, Shashwat and Manoj.

Amendment: I just discovered on my way home this evening that this service also downloads the lyrics of songs. Finally I can read what my current favourite artist Regina Spektor is singing about; ‘I have dreams of orca whales and owls, But I wake up in fear‘. Even if I don’t understand what she means.

Never worry about organizing your music library again
Completely automatic and easy to use
Tags name, artist, album, album art, genre, year, and lyrics
Analyses the track’s unique fingerprint, so it can never be wrong
No existing track information necessary
Automatically corrects each track’s information as it is added to iTunes

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Pollux (star) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pollux
(β Gem / β Geminorum / Beta Geminorum) is an orange giant star approximately 34 light-years from the Earth

Climbing the Google rankings with Lucidica

Lucidica_logoTonight over 100 aspiring entrepreneurs were treated to a virtuoso performance from Thomas Jeffs the founder and Chief Technology Officer of our partner Lucidica. I had attended his workshop on What is a CRM, and when are they best used by small business? In November and had been impressed.

The topic was how to climb up the Google page-rankings and was based on the story of how, within three months, Thomas moved Lucidica from page 47, to page 1 on a Google search for IT support London.

Although Thomas could have talked for hours on the topic (and in fact runs a four hour workshop on this very topic in the Business & IP Centre), he compressed his information into seven SEO (search engine optimisation) tips.

1. Get your business onto Google Maps – as it could get to straight onto page one.

2. Get techie (technical in IT speak) – understand the role of anchor text and meta tags. If it is too tricky, find someone who can do it for you.

3. Get links coming into your website – the higher quality the links which point to you, the higher up Google you will go.

4. Get socialising – LinkedIn is the best for most business to business, but Facebook might be more relevant for your business. Use as many social media platforms as you can maintain within reason.

5. Get commenting – instead of just spreading you name about on other websites and forums, think about what you can give that is of value to others. It’s a bit like Karma. If you give away good information people will talk about you in positive terms and link to you.

6. Get feedback and make it link – find out what forums and online spaces your customers hang out in and make your presence felt.

7.a. Get randomising – this one really surprised me. You have to make sure the references to your business are as varied as possible. If you follow the traditional marketing route of always using the same strapline when referring to your business, there is chance Google will think you are trying to cheat their indexing software, and send your pages results into oblivion.

7.b. Get listed – there a lots of great directories in the UK where your listing will boost your Google ranking. Thomas recommended Touch London at £150 a year. However, he warned there are a few dodgy listing sites who will take you way down on Google if you make the mistake of listing on them.

All in all it was a great evening, with an unlimited supply of excellent questions from the audience These were all met with even more impressive answers from Thomas.

Lucidica’s next workshop with us, is Designing, developing and maintaining an effective website next Tuesday, and there are still a few places left.

What is a CRM, and when are they best used by small business?

Tech support cheat sheet for non-techies

Just because I have a degree in computer science (health warning – it was in 1984 when Turbo Pascal was all the rage), various relatives and friends think I have a magical ability to solve all computer problems.

Having wasted far too many hours grappling with various computer ‘challenges’ over the years, I was intrigued to be shown this catch all solution from xkcd by a friend who does know his IT onions.

I think it is great that the answer to almost any IT problem is out there on the internet, and all you have to do is find it.

Tech Support Cheat Sheet