Michael Osofsky on Innovation

Innovative sleeping bag allows you to walk around

2009-12-09T14:18:00.000-08:00

Ever worried while you're camping that you might not get out of your sleeping bag in time to run away from a bear? Well I just found something interesting that could help. It's called the Selk'Bag and it's a sleeping bag jump suit. I found it while doing some testing on my company's technology.

Selk'Bag: http://www.lippiselkbag.co.uk/

Get ready to party like is 11/11/11!

2009-09-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

My friend Auren Hoffman has been planning a party on the Golden Gate Bridge for November 11, 2011. He's going to make an attempt at a Guiness record for the largest party on a bridge. Check out the evite:

http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?event=WWLHWZEHOAAZJDWZZFME&inviteId=BRKQMWXYCEBHIXQTOWRY&showPreview=false&x=613543

Divine, Inc.

2009-09-07T16:15:00.000-07:00

My friend Brian Doom is coming out with a movie. It's called Divine, Inc. I saw the trailer at
http://deviousincmovie.com/. It look like a wild and krazy time.

Good luck on the debut Mr. Doom!

Uplifting social disturbances

2009-09-07T15:46:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago our friend Jay and his hula troop crashed various spots throughout the city (san francisco) and broke into hula. This hula-by-surprise was part of an organized effort called Hit and Run Hula (www.hitandrunhula.com). My favorite was when we crammed into the Apple store (http://sfist.com/2009/08/15/hit_and_run_hula_ambushes_apple_sto.php). While the unsuspecting customers browsed the computers, Dee and I put the Hit and Run Hula website up on the Safari web browsers on the display machines. That way they'd know what hit 'em. The best thing about the dances was that the dancers were all in plain clothes. More and more of them would join the dance as the song went on. As a bystander you couldn't tell who was a dancer and who wasn't. The reactions on peoples' faces were very memorable. The funniest was when the Apple store's security guard first noticed somethin was afoot. He lunged into the sea of people but his pace quickly slowed to a stunned run as he began to realize the store was being ambushed by a rare act of kindness and beauty.

Dee and I had lunch with the Hula troop that day and were talking about social disturbance. Someone mentioned another example where on Valentine's Day, singles get together in Justin Herman Plaza and have a pillow fight (http://www.pillowfight.info/). From what I've heard they're protesting those in love...and hoping to get lucky themselves perhaps in a fun and unusual social setting.

One last example of social disturbance with a positive tone came up as I've been reading SOMA (http://www.somalit.com/SoMa-The-Novel.html). It's a great work of fiction-based-on-fact. But anyway, in the book it talks about all kinds of ways people in my town have innovated to connect with each other. One is called the Cocktail Club. I can't find any mention of it online anymore, but apparently this used to be a crowd that would suddenly get a text message one night with the location of a bar typically unfrequented. The idea was everyone would suddenly show up at that bar as if out of the blue causing a bit of fun social disturbance for the regulars.

NetBase unveils public demo - HealthBase

2009-09-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

NetBase now has a publicly-accessible demo of its technology. The domain area we chose was health because it's something we can all relate to.

Check out HealthBase at http://healthbase.netbase.com/

This demo illustrates NetBase's Content Intelligence technology applied to health care. We have other applications of Content Intelligence for other domains as well. Our website goes into more detail: http://www.netbase.com.

I love exploring valuable new ways to apply technology. If you find you have to read tons of text (on the web, subscription-based sources, etc.) and you would like technology to do the reading for you, then Content Intelligence might be the solution.

What kind of analysis would you like to automate on the text you read?

Kids innovating with their Nintendo DS

2009-08-21T18:32:00.001-07:00

My kids are the in the other room playing on their Nintendo DSs. These are handheld game devices that have built-in networking so the devices can communicate with each other. My older one is telling my younger one "sound it out!!!" It sounds like a spelling lesson.

My older daughter is using her Nintendo DS to teach my younger son to read! She writes a work on her DS and he has to read it on his. They're able to lay around sprawled out on bean bags and sofas looking up at their DSs. I can imagine that in days of old, the two would have sat at a table with a piece of paper between them. But how much more fun to lay around.

Hey I'm not complaining :-) Good kids.

Goldfish S'mores Adventures

2009-08-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

My office mate, Joe Hung (employee #1 at NetBase), and I love camping. He camps more than I do and so was first to find and tell me about a great new product, Goldfish S'mores Adventure. This is no ordinary bag of Goldfish. Each bag contains a mixture of chocolate grahams, marshmallow, and honey graham fish that are all shaped like Goldfish. A tasty innovation!

Thanks Joe!

Announcing www.twitter.com/innovationmuse

2009-07-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

I had been encouraging my good friend Malcolm De Leo for years to write a blog because he's got so many good ideas and perspectives pertaining to innovation. I'm glad to say he did launch that blog and wrote about some good stuff. But now Malcolm's gone one step beyond. He's now an avid user of Twitter. In fact, Malcolm is the first person I know from my professional network who actively tweets about his worklife. I like what Malcolm said about blogs vs. tweets: "Blogs...that's so 2003!"

Malcolm--leading the way in the next generation of business networking, here's announcing his Twitter spot:

www.twitter.com/innovationmuse

Seeking a Software Sales Executive - Federal

2009-04-17T16:09:00.000-07:00

I could use your help finding great candidates for our opening for a Software Sales Executive - Federal at NetBase. Please feel free to forward this.

Software Sales Executive - Federal
Location: Washington, DC

If you ever wanted to take part in how the world’s leading companies and governments leverage various forms of content and next generation search technologies, let NetBase give you the inside track to this dynamic sales career.

NetBase delivers Content Intelligence solutions that harness value and insight from any source including the Internet, premium purchased content, and your own enterprise content. NetBase delivers value by "reading" every sentence inside each available document, linguistically understanding that content, comparing that content to "uniquely deliver" relevant answers and insights that you can use to take action. NetBase is being deployed by organizations that are recognized as global leaders in healthcare, publishing, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and government such as Elsevier, Procter & Gamble, 3M, The U.S. Army, Pepsi and many more. For more information on how you can use the power and insight of Netbase, visit www.netbase.com.

NetBase seeks an experienced Sales Executive/Hunter to drive client acquisition in the Federal Government segment. This role is 100% focused on acquiring new clients and driving new business.

The ideal candidate is a bright, ambitious, responsible, hard-working individual with a proven track record selling complex products to senior level government officials, particularly in the Armed Forces community.

This position offers opportunities for significant compensation as well as potential career growth in sales, and sales management. It also features the benefits of working for a startup company, including rapid change, a fast paced team-work environment, and stock options.

US work authorization required.

Qualifications:
- Proven track record selling complex solutions to the Federal Government and Armed Forces, in and exceeding sales targets
- Passion for sales, exceeding sales goals, and adding value for clients
- Ability to rapidly drive sales from cold call to close
- Aspires to the highest level of integrity
- Undergraduate degree (Engineering degree a plus)
- Outstanding communication, leadership, and teamwork skills
- Ability to adapt to rapid change
- Resourceful, flexible, and aggressive about learning new things
- Track record of meeting deadlines
- Skills with computer tools and office automation tools
- Knowledge of Miller Hieman sales methodologies a plus
- MBA a plus

Location: Washington, DC
Percentage travel: 60% Travel

Authorization to work in the US required.

To apply: Please submit a resume and cover letter via email to team@netbase.com with the subject of "Software Sales Executive - Federal".

Seeking Machine Learning Specialists

2009-04-17T16:08:00.000-07:00

I could use your help finding great candidates for our opening for a Machine Learning Specialist at NetBase. Please feel free to forward this.

Machine Learning Specialist
Location: Mountain View, CA

NetBase, a well-funded, fast growing company with an impressive roster of top-tier Fortune 500 companies, seeks to grow its team with a machine learning specialist.

NetBase delivers Content Intelligence solutions that harness value and insight from any source, including the Internet, premium and enterprise content. NetBase reads every sentence inside documents, linguistically understands the content and powers breakthrough search experiences with relevant answers and insights. NetBase is being used by organizations that are recognized as global leaders in healthcare, publishing, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and government such as Elsevier, Clorox, 3M, The U.S. Army, Pepsi and many more.

The Machine Learning Specialist role involves clustering/classification, topic identification, named entity tagging, lexicon acquisition and pattern identification from large corpora. The ideal candidate will have a PhD degree in Computer Science or related field with experience in natural language processing, computational linguistics, or information retrieval/extraction. Strong programming skills are required. At least two years of experience working with real life NL systems is required. A strong research record is a plus. We look for people who are flexible, learn quickly, and love getting into the details.

Authorization to work in the US and relocation are required.

To apply: Please submit a resume and cover letter via email to team@netbase.com with the subject of "Machine Learning Specialist".

Seeking a Software Architect

2009-04-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

I could use your help finding great candidates for our Software Architect openning at NetBase. Please feel free to forward this.

Software Architect
Location: Mountain View, CA

NetBase, a well-funded, fast growing company with an impressive roster of top-tier Fortune 500 companies, seeks to grow its team with a hands-on software architect.

NetBase delivers Content Intelligence solutions that harness value and insight from any source, including the Internet, premium and enterprise content. NetBase reads every sentence inside documents, linguistically understands the content and powers breakthrough search experiences with relevant answers and insights. NetBase is being used by organizations that are recognized as global leaders in healthcare, publishing, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and government such as Elsevier, Clorox, 3M, The U.S. Army, Pepsi and many more.

We seek a hands-on architect with extensive background in software development to translate business objectives into a technology vision and articulated architecture. Candidates should have a strong track record of designing and developing multi-tiered web applications that are high quality, scalable, and reliable. We prefer generalists who have driven feature development at every layer of the stack. We have a strong preference for large-scale text search expertise whether at a big search company or through experience customizing systems like Lucene or FAST. Also preferred are candidates with experience in applying NLP and Machine Learning to solving problems for Fortune 500 end-users.

Candidates should have excellent interpersonal skills and a track record of increasing responsibility. Those who are skilled in organizational needs assessment and driving change via consensus will fit in well on our team. Candidates should be able to establish credibility quickly and provide mentorship to team members. We target talented individuals who are resourceful, flexible, and aggressive about learning new things.

We are an Agile development shop. We do test-driven design and rapid iterative development and are looking for a like-minded architect to help us build for the future.

Requirements:
* 10 years work experience with 3+ as an architect
* Experience in large-scale, distributed, web-based applications
* Agile development methodology
* Deep knowledge of Java
* MS or PhD in CS
* Database design and SQL (MySQL a plus)
* Excellent interpersonal and communications skills
* High degree of integrity and drive
* Expertise in Adobe Flex, Flash and Python are nice to have

Authorization to work in the US and relocation are required.

To apply: Please submit a resume and cover letter via email to team@netbase.com with the subject of "Software Architect".

Riya rocks!

2009-04-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

I needed to find some pictures of my grandma and didn't have time to go through thousands of photos. I used illumin8 to find an easy face recognition tool and it led me to Riya. Riya quickly solved my problem.

All I had to do was upload all my photos, show it a few examples of my grandma, and then it found 77 pictures of her for me. That was so easy...and fun!

Here are the pictures of her, in case you're interested:

By the way, my Grandma makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. They are so good I've even brought them to our board meetings!

Material that can bend light around 3D objects making them "disappear"

2009-01-06T10:09:00.000-08:00

Hunting around on illumin8, I came across this very interesting innovation from the University of California at Berkeley: a material that can bend light around 3D objects making them "disappear".

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7553061.stm

Online Self-Assessment for Innovation Practitioners

2008-10-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

A Ph.D. in innovation management at Purdue named Brian Glassman contacted me recently about his online self-assessment for innovation practitioners. He explained to me that practitioners can take it to learn where their company is strong or weak in controlling idea generation and idea management, and can get some new thoughts about how to improve their own processes.

Here is a link to the survey:
http://purdue.qualtrics.com/SE?SID=SV_cVhcPUtwiO9ODzK&SVID=Prod

He said the survey takes about 18 minutes to complete.

USB twinkie

2008-09-22T17:23:00.001-07:00

I was gazing at my co-worker's shoe during a meeting today and noticed it had a little round metal hole in the side of it. I imagined that it was a jack for plugging in electronic devices. Suddenly his shoe seemed a lot more exciting. It practically made me laugh. But since it was an inappropriate time to laugh during the meeting, I snapped back to attention. Sure enough, my eyes lit once again upon his shoe and off my mind raced again.

I realized you can make practically any ordinary object suddenly intriguing if you add a jack on it for electronics. Add USB to your shoe and just think what people would imagine it does.

USB to a microwave oven?

USB to a coffee cup? Warms your coffee for you?

USB twinkie?

Hat with USB adapters sticking out of all sides? Sounds like a good Halloween costume.

USB adapter for a USB adapter???

California Academy of Sciences Grand Re-Opening

2008-09-22T17:19:00.001-07:00

The California Academy of Sciences is holding its grand re-opening this weekend! I fondly remember going to the original one in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park as a kid. The dinosaur skeletons, the African wing, the greasy hamburgers in the cafeteria--I remember them all like it was yesterday. Anyway, don't miss a rare opportunity to be one of the first to step foot into a brand new science museum.

More info can be found on their website: http://www.calacademy.org/

BEVIA

2008-09-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

One of Malcolm Deleo's first posts on his new blog is about his concept of BEVIA: Believe, Experiment, Validate, Integrate, and Adapt. I am very excited he has finally put pen to paper (er, hand to keyboard?) to share this idea with the world because it's truly insightful.

BEVIA is a model of process and organizational innovation. At it's core, the BEVIA model recognizes that people do not change all at once, most of the time. To adopt a change, each person and the organization as a whole must go through a process beginning with Believing that the change is the right thing to do. From there the change spreads as it's tested (Experiment & Validate). In the final stage, the idea is Integrated and the organization Adapts to the change.

I can't emphasize enough how this change takes place at multiple levels in an organization. If you lead one department through the phases of BEVIA, it doesn't mean the whole organization has gone through BEVIA. If one department has been successful in adopting a change, it could help accelerate the process for another department, but don't assume it. And, as Malcolm points out, it's important to recognize that each person goes through the phases of BEVIA too.

I think when people talk about organizational change being hard and time consuming, it may be that BEVIA helps us model what's actually making it so slow. Consider the Believe phase, for instance. Individual people may Believe quickly, but if one person takes longer, that can make it harder to get to the Experiment phase. While they're waiting for the organization to unanimously Believe, some people who originally believed may begin to doubt as a result of the lack of progress. Then they have to be re-sold on the idea. While they're being re-sold, the new believers might begin to doubt again. Thus ideas can bounce around among members of an organization for a long time before enough people Believe for it to advance to the next phase in BEVIA. Maybe that's what makes organizational change seem so slow.

I wish I had known about BEVIA when I proposed the Open Innovation Blueprint because it adds some critical missing pieces to a plan to implement organizational change.

Announcing Malcolm Deleo's Blog

2008-09-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Malcolm Deleo, a close member of my professional network and a good friend, has just started writing a blog. Malcolm has tons of experience innovating and is a fountain of ideas, particularly around how to drive innovation through a corporate culture. I highly recommend checking out his blog at http://innovationmuse.blogspot.com/.

Chief Innovation Officer Executive Seminar

2008-09-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

I just received an announcement about this seminar for Chief Innovation Officers, it sounds like a good seminar worth checking out. For more information go to:

http://archives.subscribermail.com/msg/322079d574774b7eabbbe5ce4695fe78.htm

Interesting Uses of YouTube

2008-08-15T23:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some interesting things I’ve learned people are using YouTube for.

* Police use YouTube to solve crimes - Reuters reports that YouTube has helped Ontario police find a man they believe to be responsible for a murder at a local night club. (source) (source) (source) (source) (source) (source) (source) (source)

* Letting the public act as investigators - "It's our hope that releasing the audio to the public we can come closer to finding Mr. Wali's killer," said D/Sgt Pauline Gray. "I'd be interested in what the public thinks and whether they recognize the suspect's voice.". She said YouTube has been used to encourage witnesses or sources to come forward in past homicide investigations, but never with an audio recording. Click here to visit the YouTube page with the posted audio. "We're using all these great new tools at our hands," Gray said, of posting the audio to YouTube, and letting the public act as investigators. (source)

* Find missing children - By the end of the second week of August, when the McCanns marked the 100th day since Madeleine's disappearance by launching a YouTube initiative to help to find missing children, the Portuguese media had suggested that the McCanns could have killed their daughter, and the British press was not shy about repeating and even revelling in the "monstrous slurs". (source)

* Virtual bands - Three musicians that do not know each other recorded a song together. (source)

* Starting a global yawning epidemic - Mythbusters, which is a pretty cool show in it's own right, is using youtube to try and start a global yawning epidemic. (source) (source)

* Video resumes - Schnurman expects to use YouTube for mass distribution of the resumes and hopes to convince law schools in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to incorporate this project into their career development offerings. (source)

* Broadcast sentencing hearings - Judge James Kimbler might just be my hero. This crafty judge is using YouTube to broadcast sentencing hearings to help shame criminals for their actions. The Ohio-based judge has been quoted as saying he thinks it's a good use of technology. Kimbler's been known to use shame tactics in his courtroom before - the use of YouTube is new. (source)

* Crisis response - Based on how they are using YouTube and podcasts for crisis response , it is clear that the Romney campaign has an understanding of how to use the web in this day and age. (source)

* Using YouTube to “blow the whistle” - An engineer at Lockheed Martin used YouTube to blow the whistle on problems with a large Coast Guard project. (source)

* Mexican drug cartel has been using Youtube - More recently the Mexican drug cartel has been using Youtube, in a sort of cyber drug war, as individuals from rival gangs are killed or tortured the footage is then uploaded to Youtube. (source)

* Chain letters in YouTube comments - Don't know how common this practice is, but I just saw my first "chain letter" in a YouTube comment: (source)

* Doctors give advice to patients in rural locations - Doctors in rural Wales are using YouTube to give health advice to patients. (source) (source)

* Politician congratulates another - Blair uses YouTube to congratulate Sarkozy. (source)

* As a free method of advertising - So I come across a story on CNN about how a toy company used YouTube to create a Viral/Word of Mouth Marketing Buzz for a new remote control helicopter. (source) (source)

* Companies hosting competitions for users to create ads - H.J. Heinz Co. and AT&T Inc. have also used YouTube to host online contests. (source)

* CNN uses YouTube during presidential debate - CNN's use of YouTube for tonight's Democratic presidential debate is being hailed as groundbreaking experiment in democracy. (source)

* Discover new musicians - Video-sharing website YouTube has launched a major music promotion to discover unsigned US bands and musicians. (source)

* Video diaries - lonelygirl15 was a screenname attached to a teenage girl named "Bree" who used myspace and youtube to display diary entries predominantly in video form. (source)

* Cyber bullying - I think Youtube is a terrible website that enables teenagers to humiliate other children. (source)

* Host video walking tours of homes for sale - Real estate agent Krista Miller used YouTube to host a video walking tour of a home for sale. (source)

* Find passwords for FTP sites - The latest Google Hack is using YouTube to find users and passwords for ftp sites. (source)

* Literacy training - Use YouTube for story hours, gaming nights and literacy training. (source) (source)

* Streaming course content - While Berkeley's offerings on iTunes U are mostly available only for listening, and while its videos on its existing, proprietary webcast.berkeley portal are confined to the Real format, YouTube opens streaming course content to virtually anyone with typical bandwidth and a Web browser. (source)

* Teaching ESL - ESL teachers are using YouTube to illustrate the use of everyday English and to help their students improve their listening skills. (source)

Awesome site for cool gadgets

2008-08-07T16:21:00.000-07:00

I found an awesome website with illumin8 for cool gadgets: www.vat19.com

Interesting uses for Alarm Clocks and Interesting Alarm Clocks

2008-08-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

Here are some interesting uses of alarm clocks and alarm clocks that do interesting, unusual things or wake people up in unusual, better, ways:

Alarm clock that wakes you up by wind chimes – The Wind Chime Alarm clock combines punctuality with the sound of metal pipes clinking against each other. (source)

Activating a hearing aid – The beauty of poor hearing is you can sleep soundly if you can just depend on your hearing aid turning on at the right time. (source)

Pillow vibrator – An alarm clock that vibrates your pillow to wake you up (source)

Alarm clock to alert students to take breaks – Many schools now use Alarm Clock-type desk accessory to alert students to take a break once or twice an hour. (source)

Alarm clock that hides itself so you have to get up - Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a roving alarm clock that finds a new hiding spot and waits to go off again when the snooze bar is pressed. (source)

Cure self-mutilating behavior – “Have the victim set a few minute time limit using an alarm clock to delay self injury and note how the intensity of the urge changes.” (source)

Awaken person through light – Oregon Scientific RM313PNA Projection Alarm Clock is an attractive blue atomic clock that beams a fixed projection onto the ceiling of a darkended room. (source)

Headset for sleeping on trains (cancels out noise and wakes you up) – It is an object of the invention to provide a combination noise blocking headset and alarm clock which is capable of blocking out ambient noise of a commuter train or subway in order that a commuter will be able to nap or read without distractions. (source)

'Reverse Alarm Clock' That Keeps Young Children Sleeping (source)

Alarm clock that deduces emotions – Our assignment was to see if we could come up with a concept for an alarm clock that would enable us to deduce a whole range of emotions from the way people use it.' (source) (source) (source) (source)

Remind people to be mindful – A second object is to provide an alarm clock system for facilitating a moment of mindfulness, awareness, stress reduction and quiet at random times during the day. (source)

Alarm clock to get out of bad dates – I myself (please forgive me Lord) have used the alarm-clock mode of my cell-phone to get out of bad dates. (source)

Improve voter turnout – A London-area municipality has launched a new Election Alarm Clock service designed to improve voter registration and turnout. (source) (source) (source)

Replicate sunrise – Philips has developed an alarm clock that replicates a sunrise to wake you up naturally, making you more refreshed when it's time to get up. (source)

Lumalive

2008-08-02T00:27:00.001-07:00

Just found out about a really cool new technology from Philips called Lumalive. Lumalive combines multicolor LEDs (light-emitting diodes) into textile fabrics. It allows you to create dynamic images on articles of clothing, furniture, and anything else covered in fabric.

Some obvious applications are advertising and art. But I haven't seen much else discussed about how to use this technology to solve important problems yet. I wonder if it could be used as a dynamic camouflage? As you walk past walls of different colors, could it detect the color changes and respond to them like a chamelion? Could it pass through enough detail to make you look invisible?

Another interesting application would be a mood shirt. Like a mood ring, it would change colors depending on your mood. To detect mood, the shirt could be combined with various biometric sensors such as galvanic skin response. Most people wouldn't want to wear such a shirt, but it could be really fun for people at a party who want to try something kind of edgy.

What else could the colors and images on these shirts be tied to in your environment?

I remember talking to people at nTag a few years ago. They had interesting social technology that would tell two people meeting at a conference what two or three things they had in common based on their profiles. They displayed this information on name tags. Maybe it would be more interesting to show it on these shirts?

Or what if at a speed-dating event, various algorithms for matching peole who would be interested in each other could make it so participants milling about a party would suddenly have their shirts turn the same color if they were identified as matches whenever they were less than 5 feet from each other?

What other problems are there with shirts and other apparrel that could be solved with Lumalive? What a fun technology. Thank you Philips!

Interesting uses of nail clippers

2008-08-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

Here are some novel uses of nail clippers:

□ Remove burnt spot from carpet – "Use a good pair of scissors or a pair of nail clippers to cut the carpet fiber being careful only to remove the damaged section." (source)

□ Cut pills for desired dosage – "People have also used razors, Exacto knives, and nail clippers to make really small doses." (source)

□ Cutting yarn on plane where scissors are banned – "To cut your yarn inflight you can use nail clippers or a box of floss." (source)

□ Make a short card to cheat or do magic tricks – "You can use a nail clipper to make a short card. Just cut like a 16th of an inch off the corner, then round it with a nail file." (source)

□ Opening difficult bottles – "Childless DIYer Kyle describes how to use a thumbtack, a spoon and nail clippers to disarm difficult-to-open bottles of three varieties--the squeeze and turn, the push down and turn and the push tab and turn kinds." (source)

□ Open pill packages – " Just today I had to use a nail clipper to open a pair of cold remedy pills, because instead of using the "easy" way to tamper-proof a pill (plastic shell, peel-off paper backing, then push out the pill) they decided to put two non-peelable layers to seal the plastic bubble, then expect you to be able to cut the pack in half just because there's a 1/8" pre-cut in the plastic." (source)

□ Prove virginity – "Rodriguez uses nail clippers to draw blood from her own fingertip, swipes her blood on a cloth (without anyone but the bride seeing) and the bride presents the red-specked kerchief to everyone waiting - saving her reputation and marriage." (source)

□ Trimming candle wicks – "Use toe nail clippers to trim wicks in jars in which scissors won't fit." (source)

□ Trimming your beard in prison – "Strangely enough, trimmers are still regularly removed from electric razors, forcing inmates to decide either to buy a clear case model or simply use nail clippers to trim beards and mustaches." (source)

□ Trimming lashes uniformly – "I've also heard that a pair of baby-sized nail clippers is the best way to trim the lashes to a uniform length and curvature." (source)

□ Cutting an umbilical cord – "An 18-year-old woman who gave birth to a baby girl in the desert used nail clippers to cut her baby's umbilical cord before being rescued by U.S. Border Patrol agents" (source)

□ Cut fishing line – "Nail clippers are probably the easiest and most effective way to cut fishing line." (source)

□ Trimming extra wire hanging from kids’ braces – "You may also try using a nail clipper or cuticle cutter to cut the extra piece of wire that is sticking out." (source)

□ Nicking seeds to help them grow – "I started in mid March, used a toe nail clipper to nick the seed, soaked for a few days, then planted in a small black pot, which I kept moist." (source)

□ Trimming a beak – "A pair of sharp nail clippers may be used to trim beaks and nails, but care must be taken not to cut to far." (source)

□ Trimming teeth – "To trim those teeth we use large dog nail clippers or you can use a dremal tool with a small grinder attachment." (source)

□ Doing bonsai – "Use his toe nail clippers to trim your bonsai tree." (source)

□ Trim nose hair – "Women are better off not knowing that we eat with our hands the minute they leave the room or that we use their nail clippers to trim our nose hair." (source)

□ Break packing straps – "Use plastic mallets, nail clippers & sheet metal cutters for breaking the straps." (source)

□ Cracking beads for crafts – "A pair of pliers or a nail clipper is a really good tool to crack the bead in half." (source)

□ Escape from jail – "Using nail clippers to fiddle with a lock, Bobby Marcantel escaped from the Parker County jail." (source)

□ Use in recycling – "For GMA recycling operations, the company uses the Heartland Fabrication single-head nail clipper to prep lead boards and remove broken stringers." (source)

□ Marking turtles – "Use nail clippers to mark very small turtles." (source)

□ Remove lesions – "Softened, affected lesions were removed with a nail file or nail clipper." (source: Japanese Journal of Medical Mycology)

□ Remove burrs – "Mark, I use nail clippers to remove those burrs." (source)

□ Snip off blisters – "Suria decided to walk bare footed, her feet were still painful because she snipped off the top of her blisters with nail clippers!" (source)

□ Tighten screws – "He uses his nail clippers to tighten screws, cleans his fingernails with a pencil, and writes with burnt matches." (source)

In my research I also found a really cool site of all kinds of interesting uses of common everyday tools. The site is called ParentHacks: www.ParentHacks.com.

Here was one I encountered: "The hum of the airplane put her to sleep (yay!) but random noises, especially the PA system, would wake her up. We found we couldn't be heard without speaking very loudly right over her, which we didn't want to do (wake-ups). So my husband got two little Dixie cups from the lavatory, and I used baby nail clippers to poach a couple feet of yarn from the end of my knitting project, and we made ourselves an old-fashioned "phone" that reached across her seat and let us speak quietly. I'm sure we looked like idiots, but it worked! Want more tips re: kids + planes?" (source)

Announcing illumin8 Blog!

2008-06-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

My company, NetBase, and Elsevier partnered this year to launch illumin8, an integrated research solution that helps R&D professionals find solutions faster. We have also created a blog you may wish to track at http://blog.illumin8.com/.