Indian Vents

Cisco announces its second Cisco I-Prize contest. In this open, global competition entrepreneurs submit proposals and collaborate to create the seed idea for Cisco's next billion-dollar business.

Idea submissions should fall in one of four categories:

• The Future of Work: New solutions that accelerate and change the way we do business
• The Connected Life: Technological inspirations that dramatically improve living conditions and disseminate culture
• New Ways to Learn: Next-generation solutions that transform when, where, and how people learn.
• The Future of Entertainment: New solutions that change how people play together

The winning team will receive a grand prize of $250,000.

Here's an illustrated guide to the 20 iPhone patents that Apple's suing HTC over.
Source: gigmodo

The Finance Bill 2010-11 has created a corpus called National Clean Energy Fund, which will invest in entrepreneurial ventures and research in the field of clean energy technologies. The money for this will be garnered through a so-called ‘clean energy cess’ — Rs 50 on every tonne of coal, both domestic and imported. The government didn’t say how much the new cess would bring in, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation by ET indicates that a sum of Rs 2,500 crore may not be unrealistic. How to leverage the fund? take a clue from China- support Indian private business to invest in start-ups in USA and Europe.
China has set aside a whopping $200.8 billion in stimulus funding for cleantech, 79 percent more than the $112.2 billion the U.S.These numbers mean that governments, in essence, have become the biggest cleantech venture capitalists – with China as the largest player by far. Here is an example: vanadium redox flow batteries were being developed in Vancouver, Canada by a company called VRB Power Systems and chinese firm Prudent Energy bought out the struggling company’s assets in Jan. 2009. Later the Chinese firm has raised a $22 million Series C round to build its Beijing manufacturing capacity for vanadium redox flow batteries.

The traditional way of funding Indian public sector units like CEL / BHEL or CSIR labs (CECRI) & IITs to develop clean technologies would take us no where. The starting point is not research but access to patented technology. Will government dare to lend stimuls money to firms to buy out start-up firms from abroad???

Morpheus is now accepting applications for its fourth batch of startups. Last date for submission is 10 Mar 2010. There will be mentoring and seed funding of Rs 5 lakhs. See their existing portfolio of start-ups at:
http://themorpheus.com/portfolio/

THE ECONOMIST’S ninth annual Innovation Summit will take place in London on October 22nd. You can nominate outstanding innovators in seven categories: bioscience (which includes medical devices, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and agriculture); energy and the environment; computing and telecommunications; “no boundaries” (which includes materials science, nanotechnology and other emerging fields); consumer products and services; business processes; and social and economic innovation, a category that recognises individuals who have pioneered novel technologies and business models that improve everyday lives.
Nominees should be people, not companies, who are responsible for an innovation that has been a proven success in the past decade. Please submit your nominations by e-mail to innovation@economist.com, giving the nominee’s name, affiliation and contact information, and a 200-word summary explaining why he or she deserves the award in a particular category. Nominations can also be submitted online at economist.com/innovationawards. The deadline is April 1st.

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Benefits of doing anulom vilom are known but many do not spend sufficient time doing these simple breathing exercises. Innovator Santam Singh has got an instrument to do that for you. See his web site or call him 9888576622 .