Idea generation #51: How to do good with 2.0

Image by Tim O’Reilly / Flickr via CrunchBaseTim O'Reilly had a great post on what has been posted here quite frequently: using 2.0 in to organise information to solve real problems. Instedd's approach to early detection of infectious diseases, Ushahidi's approach to crowdsourcing crisis information, Witness's harnessing of consumer video to report on human rights abuses, and AMEE's APIs for exchanging carbon data between applicationsAll the above are first steps in collecting and organising information for real problems. What is important is to recognise is that we need markets, networks and communities to derive and unlock the value in these...

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Startup Idea #91: Open source mechanisms for game monetisation

As I learned about different monetisation methods offered by companies to independent game developers, I am both thrilled and worried. I am thrilled at the way game industry is creating different value chains for the smaller guys. Things like Nonoba's payment API or Kongregate's advertising programme are innovative business models that bypasses traditional value chains.However, I am also worried that these platforms now control all the information and power. The power imbalance will surely become an issue. What if these services decide not to continue their operations? What if they demand higher commissions?I think what we need is something akin to OpenX for the game industry where developers can control their monetisation mechanisms. A system where developers can host any of the monetisation...

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Startup Idea #90: Feeds based advertising

Fred Wilson had a great post last week on opening up our feeds to advertisements. This post follows up on what he was saying earlier about the importance of feeds, of which I had postedMy personal view is that the advertising model for feeds will not be in the form of what we are used to in Google Adsense. Your feeds are too personal for advertisers to insert anything and not pissed you off. I think the advertising model should be the other way around. Rather than advertisements, it should be recommendations. There are important but subtle differences between the two.I think the recommendation model can work in either or a combination of the two models highlighted below.In the first model, the service detects your consumption of a product/service through your feeds and offers to you, the option...

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Startup Idea #89: From consumption to investment

If you have not been reading Umair Haque's blog, I suggest you do it NOW. His recent articles offered a new way to think about strategies: from consumption to investment. This is quite a powerful lens to to create startups ideas if you think about it.Most businesses want users to consume somthing. What if we flip that idea around? Rather than endless consumption, how do we form businesses that encourages users to invest in things like environment, education, health, skills et al?Let's take fashion. How do we go link up the many independent fashion designers to not only sell their latest collection but to form an initiative to teach other people how to create fashion pieces themselves? Is there money to be made? Of course there is. Just look at the market for informal training. What we need...

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Idea generation #50: Markets for energy

I believe in the age of markets and that price is an important mechanism to govern their workings and realise their true potential. Hence, it is with great interest that I am following the progress of smart grids and dynamic pricing in the electricity market that is happening around the world.On the research front, the GridWise Olympic Peninsula Project is a year-long smart grid research project on price-responsive household technology, dynamic electricity pricing, and consumer behavior. You can read the summary in this NYtimes article. One of the most interesting outcome is the people are behaving like day traders in managing their energy consumption:Every five minutes, the households and local utilities were buying and selling electricity, with prices constantly fluctuating by tiny amounts...

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Startup Idea #88: Data driven business ideas in healthcare

For anyone interested in using data to improve their industries, here are some recent studies that might give you ideas to build your next startup that solves real issues.Farecast for hurricane evacuations / Farecast for natural disasters :A personal online prediction tool for the ideal time for evacuation would help businesses, government and individuals to better manage hurricane risk. If we can allow various ways to parse the data to show e.g. the cost of evacuation vs probability of being hit, the number of false positives, the different routes to evacuation, (combining with GPS data) the least crowded evacuation route et al, I think a lot of useful information can be teased out.Weatherbill for retirement planning: Weatherbill represents, to me, how a modern investment bank should run....

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Idea generation #49: Yammer, flood of camera date

Flood of camera data: The below para makes a verrrry interesting point. With millions of data points on pictures, enabled by mass penetration of camera phones and digital cameras, what kind of business can this resulted? Food for thought..The bigger point is that cell phones and cameras add literally billions of minute-to-minute images of what's going on in the world. Millions of us now carry the tools to report on each other. And whether it's fighting crime or targeting potential Macy's shoppers, the Numerati are gaining more data that will lead to new businesses and services. Yammer: Yammer just won the TC50 which should give them some attention for a while. More interesting for me is the line below:Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange...

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Idea generation #48: Email innovation

If you are looking for ideas in the email or communication space, below are some useful links from some very smart people: Bijansabet, Foundry Group and Mike Speiser.Some of the ideas I found to be intriguing are:i) Extracting the social graph from your email to improve productivity and customer management (Note: how to turn your inbox into LinkedIn?)ii) Data mining the links and media from your email to aid in content discoveryiii) Data mining the email content to discover expertiseiv) An automated scheduling tool based on emailWhat other ideas do you ha...

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Startup Idea #87: Feeds as the next search

I normally don't try to link to popular articles or blog articles to maintain some degree of freshness for any readers that might come across my blog. However, this post by Fred Wilson's on the "feedization of the web UI" is too compelling for me not to mention it.Feeds is always something I am mindful of. It is, to me, part of the next generation solution to the attention problem and this makes it an area full of potential. As pointed out by Fred, feeds represent an alternative or complement to search and it is interesting to note what happens when the Facebook generation uses more feeds than search.Feeds however brings with it a new set of problems and that is in the diminishing returns when the feeds volume increases. To me, the solution is not better filters. Rather, it is to acknowledge...

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Applications of Twiiter (Part I)

I am always interested in how microblogging as a whole is evolving. So, I will posting these stuff as I continue my discovery of what Twitter and its cousins can do.Twiller: New forms of medium eventually spawns new forms of media. This is the first example of such a media. A good startup breeding ground for people that focuses on culturally relevant ideas. I think this is worth following.Twitter and branding: A natural application. This is part of the continuing transformation of branding as a one-way broadcast to a two way interactive medium. One of the new potential investment we are looking at involves doing a proper Twitter for enterprises that includes aggregation capabilities and a very cool twist that I can't disclose right n...

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Startup Idea #86 (Part II): Turning social networks into data driven businesses

(See part 1 of the post here)Sorry for the lack of posts for the past few days. My laptop got stolen ($#@&%) so have to get a new one before I can start blogging again.As promised, here are some ideas of how social networks can be turned into data driven businesses that can help reshaped stale industries:Beauty Treatment: Sort of like PatientsLikeMe but with a focus on beauty related treatments. This includes things like diet treatments, acme solutions, hair products et al. User can share their treatment experiences and outputs while we provide analytics, aggregation and visualisation tools to help the community figure out which type of beauty treatment works for which type of body types. If this product can be focused on teens, this is a potentially big market to go after.Small Business...

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Startup Idea #86: Turning social networks into data driven businesses

(See part 2 of the post here)It is my deep belief that data driven businesses will become more and more prevalent in this networked economy. Converting the masses of data in social networks into powerful applications that help the community be better at what they are passionate about is one manifestation.This NYtimes article suggests how this can be done. It talks about how a site, PatientsLikeMe, is using data about its users to create powerful management tools, similar to how Amazon create useful recommendations based on their users' clicking behavior.The members of PatientsLikeMe don’t just share their experiences anecdotally; they quantify them, breaking down their symptoms and treatments into hard data. They note what hurts, where and for how long. They list their drugs and dosages and...

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