innovative

If you like adding tech to your outdoor workout, 4iiii Innovations has a nifty gadget that can turn virtually any pair of sunglasses into a heads-up display, or HUD.

Recently shown off at Interbike 2011 expo in Las Vegas, Sportiiiis ("sport eyes" and, yes, it's four i's as in four eyes) is a body rhythm monitor that adds LEDs in seven colors to your shades.

The device clips to the arm of a pair of sunglasses and communicates performance info via a small boom that extends to the eyepiece. … Read more

Facebook, the world's largest social-networking platform, is tapping eBay's commerce platform to create new social shopping experiences for hundreds of millions of consumers.

Specifically, eBay is integrating Facebook's new Open Graph 2.0 functionality into its global commerce systems, which come under the umbrella of a new business unit called X.commerce, and include eBay, PayPal, and Magento (which has built shopping sites for 100,000 merchants). The news was announced at Innovate, eBay's developer conference, being held today through Friday in San Francisco.

"Facebook is now linked into the largest commerce ecosystem," Matthew … Read more

commentary Much has been said about how the newly passed patent reform legislation, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, benefits large corporations. While that argument certainly can be made, Congress did not forget the individual inventor entirely. The creation of a "micro entity" encourages the individual inventor to get back into the patent game by reducing the fees required for filing an application.

Jerome Lemelson is considered by some to be one of the most prolific inventors of all time. With more the 600 patents to his name, Lemelson was able to generate over a billion dollars in licensing … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Peter Thiel and Max Levchin's upcoming book, "The Blueprint," is going to annoy or charge up (or both) entrepreneurs here in the U.S.

Thiel and Levchin, two of the PayPal co-founders, maintained in an interview here today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, that in the U.S., which holds itself up as a beacon of innovation and entrepreneurship, innovation is "between dire straits and dead."

They maintain that we're not solving hard problems anymore, and they lay the blame, indirectly, on the innovations that have gotten us to where we are. As … Read more

People get pretty tight with their iPhones, but if you really want to take your relationship to the next level, put a ring on it, as Beyonce would say.

That's the idea behind the interesting new iDo iPhone 4 case from Rampant Innovations, which integrates an articulating finger-grasping ring to keep your phone from dropping. What's also cool is that the ring acts as a 360-degree kickstand to prop up your phone either vertically or horizontally.

We've been playing around with an iDo case for a couple of days and it's really pretty clever. The case … Read more

We covered the launch news of the iZON Remote Room Monitor from Stem Innovation on Monday. Now, I have my hands on an actual unit. We'll see if it's as easy to use as promised.

Here's a quick refresher. The iZON combines a camera with an iOS app to keep video and audio tabs on a room.

I set the iZON up in my living room where an unidentified feline suspect has been clawing the couch. Dealing with the hardware is simple and the power cord was long enough to reach to the top of the bookcase where I placed the camera.

The next step involved downloading the free Stem:Connect app to my iPad and following the setup instructions to hook the iZON up with my home wireless network. Easy-peasy.

From there, I was up and running. My DSL connection in this old neighborhood is extremely pokey, so there was a slight delay in the video showing up on my iPad. Users with faster Internet connections shouldn't have this problem.

Stem Innovation recommends at least a 2Mbps upload speed. I wish mine was that fast.… Read more

Maybe you have a new puppy. You wonder if sweet, innocent Spike is destroying your leather couch and everything else you hold dear while you're at work. Maybe you want to know which roommate is stealing your leftovers from the fridge.

Pair the iZON Remote Room Monitor from Stem Innovation with your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, and wonder no more. Remote cameras aren't a new concept, but the iZON comes in at $129.95 and has some enticing bells and whistles that should appeal to Apple fans.

Set up the compact camera somewhere convenient, point it at the object of your interest, and hook it up to your Wi-Fi network. It works with the free Stem:Connect iOS app to give you a real-time audio and video peek into the room. … Read more

TED Air gives you on-the-go access to video content from the one of the world's most popular platforms for idea-sharing--TED Conferences. Right from your Android mobile device, you can sift through and watch over 900 TED Talks, share them with friends, or even download them for offline access.

The TED Air interface is clean and simple--just the way we like it. It opens up to a chronological listing of TED Talks, each with title, speaker, topic, video length, and a thumbnail image. Along the bottom of the screen there is a scrolling dock that lets you search by Tag, … Read more