marketplace innovation report | q3, 2015
TRANSCRIPT
About this report
Hello and welcome to the latest quarterly report on MarketplaceInnovation from Endava.
This is the eighth edition of Marketplace Innovation, which meanswe’re celebrating a special second birthday.
These quarterly reports showcase some of the leading innovationsin the marketplace. These examples serve to illustrate what innovative companies can achieve to change the game.
We hope you enjoy this report. If you have any feedback, please contact us @Endava on Twitter or via our email addresses: [email protected] or [email protected]
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smartphone navigation apps are so yesterday… what you really need to navigate to your destination isthought-control. researchers are now able to “nudge”users to turn left or right directly to their leg muscles.
Printing out a map is already obsolete, now lookingdown on your phone or watch will also be as researchershave been trialling sending electrical impulses to yourlegs to tell you which way to turn.
This innovative idea sounds like it could get quitepainful if you can’t find somewhere to cross the road or end up getting lost!
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536646/researchers-use-electrodes-for-human-cruise-control/
Thought control
DIrEcT sTIMulATIon
of THE HuMAn locoMoTIon
sysTEM
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Mini glasses
one drawback of car dashboards is that drivers need to take theireyes off the road to look down.
Head up displays are starting to become more popular in high endcars, but these can be taxing on the eye – needing to refocus, andstill look away from the road ahead.
As a potential solution, Mini have unveiled a pair of driver glasseswith augmented reality, to enable drivers to keep their eyes onthe road and receive much more information through the glasses.
The glasses detect when the driver turns their head, helping tosee through the car for more peripheral vision.
We like the overall idea, but they are not the most flattering design, and look more like driving goggles from the 1920s!
http://www.bmwgroupdesignworks.com/work/mini-ar-glasses/
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If you ever wonder how people can spend so much time on Minecraft or whyMicrosoft paid $2.5bn to buy it, watch this video from Wired about the huge scale of Minecraft.
By way of example, Earth is 500 millionsquare kms, and Minecraft is equivalent to 5 billion square kms. users have evenstarted sponsored walks for charity inside it!
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/data-effect-minecraft
Minecraft is very big
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researchers at the university of Washingtonhave worked out how to power small electronic devices using just Wifi signals.This means that you don’t have to put abattery or plug devices in to the mains.They have been trialling this with camerasand have also managed to wirelesslyrecharge a battery from 28 feet away.
This could be what is needed to kickstart IoT and start connecting up everything!
http://arxiv.org/abs/1505.06815
Powering Internet of Things
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The concept of using spare, or idle, computing power for other tasks isn’t new – many of us were trying to find extra-terrestrials decades ago throughscreen savers (remember sETI?)
sentient is different because it joins manycomputers and servers together and presents them almost as a single instance.This provides enough capacity to powervery sophisticated artificial intelligence programs, they claim to be able to utilise upto 1m processor cores which is a far biggerscale than even Google can reach!
http://www.sentient.ai/
The power of many becomes one
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Kidzania is a global concept aiming to letchildren try a job for a day. Parents canchoose from jobs ranging from dentistry, to working in a Power station to a supermarket. It’s based in a 75,000 sq ftchild size city and is aimed at teachingthem essential life skills.
The experience isn’t cheap – it’s just under£30 per child in the uK.
http://london.kidzania.com/en-uk/
Give your child a job
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Amazon has launched an invitation-only experiment of “a Dash button”. The dashbutton is very small and when pressed, itwill order a specific item from Amazonstraight away.
The invite-only looks like it is targeted towards consumers with high demands ofwashing powder. Gillette are also part ofthe experiment, but we are puzzled howoften men require an instant restock of razors at home.
https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-button
Single click to buy – version 2
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Just when you thought tape backups werea thing of the past, IBM have set a newrecord – enabling a single tape to store 220Tb of uncompressed data.
To put this into perspective, this newrecord is a 22 fold improvement over IBM’scurrent enterprise class tape product.Tapes might be making a comeback, youwill have to dust off your old Walkmans!
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/uk/en/pressrelease/46568.wss
Better tape storage
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The university of new south Wales(unsW) have used the same technologyused in Google Maps for navigating thehuman body, at a cellular level.
We like the creative thinking around thisproject – taking an almost everyday tool andapplying it to a different field altogether. Italso sounds like you could recreate the oldsci-fi film fantastic Voyage!
http://www.mechbio.org/sites/mechbio/files/maps/index.html
Google Maps for… thehuman body
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one of our favourite music streaming services, spotify, has had a major overhaul.spotify now features short video clips, andsome intelligent playlist features such asspotify running. This spotify update is aclear effort in trying to stay ahead ofApple’s new streaming service.
spotify running changes a listener’s playlistto match a runner’s tempo. spotify has alsoteamed up with nike+ and runKeeper forsome additional features.
This merging of mobile apps is likely to continue, and Endava labs are working onsome similar concepts – watch this space.
https://press.spotify.com/uk/2015/05/20/say-hello-to-the-most-entertaining-spotify-ever/
New Spotify
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At Endava, we like usB-c. The latest versionof usB can be inserted either way up, andcan provide enough power for a laptop. Wealso like Macbook Airs and surface Pros –both of which only have a single usB port.
Enter Infinite usB-c, a Kickstarter projectwhich allows multiple cables to connect toeach other, rather than use a usB hub. Thisis a nice elegant solution to connect multipledevices together.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/668098663/infiniteusb-one-usb-port-unlimited-devices
Infinite USB-C ports
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Google Photos is an online library enablingusers to upload, you guessed it, photos.There’s a big difference with Google Photos– it is completely free of charge and alreadyavailable offers unlimited storage. This willcompete against the likes of icloud andDropbox.
The cost of online storage has now fallen to the point that we’ll see more companiesoffering free storage because it will be bundled as part of another service. All youhave to remember is which service youused to store everything on!
https://photos.google.com/
Google Photos
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one of the drawbacks of buying games orother digital products is there is rarely adissatisfaction policy. steam have set thebar by offering refunds on purchases thatusers are unhappy with – even if it’s for thesimple case of not liking them.
This will put pressure on other online onlyservices to follow suit.
http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds
Digital refunds
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We really like Google cardboard – a sub-$20 approachto 3D-environments.
Google are showcasing the-literally-cardboard technologyin the education sector, by enabling users to visit a museum in 3D.
These types of interfaces will be the future – takingover from text based browsers in the next few years.
https://www.google.com/get/cardboard/
Google Cardboard
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A number of production cars have automaticparking features, when the driver engagesa parking mode for the car to parallel-parkitself. now BMW has increased the complexity by implementing connected-Drive with Dynamic Parking Prediction.
connectedDrive shares data from otherBMW drivers, so that when one car drivespast a parking space or a charging space orleaves one, other BMW drivers looking fora place to park or recharge can find thenearest spot from a shared database.
https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/pressDetail.html?title=bmw-connecteddrive-develops-intelligent-parking-search-solutions-the-next-step-in-connected&outputchannelId=6&id=T0220542En&left_menu_item=node__5238
Auto-parking
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We try not to cover too many speculativeKickstarter projects in these reports but thisone really caught our eye. Pun intended.
AquaDrone is a waterproof drone whichhas changeable ‘pods’ or base-mounted accessories, to either lay a fish bait or fly aline, or even look for fish up to 120 feet deep!It doesn’t have many backers yet, as itmight take some of the fun out of fishing!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1528442751/first-water-proof-drone-with-sonar-fish-finder
Drone fishing
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We take it for granted that when we touch itemsaround us, we are given some feedback which helps usunderstand more about the object we are manipulating.force feedback is starting to appear in device trackpadsand The European space Agency and nAsA have takenthis a step further. They have managed to implementthe first “force-feedback” experiment enabling an astronaut to “feel” something on Earth.
To make the experiment a little more difficult, the astronaut was on the International space station, travelling at 28,800 mph – so if we want to use thetechnology on say, the same planet, the system will be easier to implement.
http://www.esa.int/our_Activities/Human_spaceflight/Historic_handshake_between_space_and_Earth
Handshake in space
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facebook lite is a (much) smaller smartphone app which uses less data andcan even work on slow 2G networks. This is targeting at developing countries that don’thave good mobile coverage.
This is undoubtedly a great idea from facebook, and it will be interesting to seehow many other organisations adopt a similar offering of a simplified and slimmeddown app for users on slow connectionsand smaller devices.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.lite&hl=en
Facebook Lite
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In october, the first live nfl game will bestreamed live on yahoo! for free, on anydevice.
The concept of a high profile sport beinglive broadcast globally is already a first. Doingso over the Internet makes it more special.Making it free is almost unimaginable.
We are excited to see the outcome of thegame – what the viewing figures will be, andhow well the quality rates in comparison toother broadcasts. Hopefully, this will be thestart of more free high profile events offeringfree live streaming.
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000495384/article/nfl-and-yahoo-partner-to-deliver-firstever-global-live-stream
Live! NFL! Streaming! On! Yahoo!
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Google are teasing users with an inviteonly, san francisco Bay Area only, payments app.
Apple Pay enables us users to use contactless payment for the first time, andlets users simply carry their phone andleave their wallet at home. Google takesthis a step further and without saying howit’s done, the user doesn’t even need to gettheir phone out of their pocket any longer.
https://get.google.com/handsfree
Google Handsfree
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About Endava
Endava is a well-established IT Services company, with over 2,250 full timeemployees working across our European development centres, London headquarters and further offices in the US. Endava focuses on the Banking & Payments, Insurance, Retail, Consumer Goods, Telecommunications & Travel andMedia, Tech & Publishing sectors where we design, implement and manage secure, high-volume, business-criticalsystems and digital services for clients.
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Martin SmithHead of Delivery, Digital [email protected]
Bradley HowardHead of Digital [email protected]
uK +44 20 7367 1000usA +1 (212) 920 7240Germany +49 69 999 9115 0