It’s time for a new innovation bit! In previous posts I featured Kaggle and SwipeGood, both of which are awesome startups based on great, sustainable ideas.
Today I’d like to introduce Dwolla, a startup from Iowa that defies every single established payment system out there.
The company was founded in 2010 and it has raised nearly $1.3 million from Veridian Credit Union and The Members Group.
A few days ago I introduced this section talking about Kaggle, an interesting startup that turned data science into a competition sport in order to deliver high quality prediction models in a cost-effective way.
Today I’m going to present you a startup that offers a way more simple idea, SwipeGood. I like a lot what they’re doing because it shows that sometimes, the most innovative concepts need not be intrincate technological revolutions, and perhaps even the smallest things can cause a huge impact on society.
A few weeks ago I enrolled in an Innovation Management course sponsored by the Bankinter Foundation of Innovation. In only two sessions my approach to innovation has changed radically, realizing there’s much that can be improved in every single aspect of our lives. I’m very glad that I got into this program, because I feel that most universities have a huge gap in innovation education, and that definitely needs to be amended.
Because of this, I’d like to inaugurate a new section in my blog, where I’m going to share innovative ideas that I come across. I’ll call this section “Innovation Bits”.
The first idea I want to share with you is an amazing approach to revolutionize data mining. Today I’m going to introduce Kaggle, a startup company founded in 2010 that intends to turn data science into a sport.
They have raised around $11 million in their first round, which was led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. Their chairman, Max Levchin, was the co-founder and former CTO of PayPal.
In the history of video games, the current generation of consoles as of 2011 is known as the seventh generation. For home consoles it began on November 22, 2005 with the release of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and continued with the release of Sony’s PlayStation 3 on November 11, 2006, and Nintendo’s Wii on November 19, 2006.
The current generation introduced several important additions to console gaming, such as the popularization of online gaming and the proliferation of motion controllers for every console, starting with Nintendo’s Wiimote, which was later followed by Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Playstation Move. However for most gamers what made the biggest difference was that, for the first time, game consoles featured true high definition graphics at a resolution of up to 1080p (though most games run at 720p). The improvement of game engines in both graphics and physics has allowed the industry to develop new game mechanics and provide high quality adventures with immersive environments that weren’t possible before.
Sure, a good gameplay is always the key point for a game in order to be fun, but great graphics are also nice to have. Without high quality 3D assets many games wouldn’t be what they are. Perhaps some will argue about it, but I believe great graphics are a key selling point for serious games, and it’s time for the industry to leap ahead of the current technological gap.
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