Friday, February 6, 2009

Can Bee Teach You Mangment Ideas?

A startup based in Toronto says that it has come up with a way to reduce energy use by mimicking the self-organizing behavior of bees. REGEN Energy has developed a wireless controller that connects to the control box on a piece of building equipment and functions as a smart power switch. Once several controllers have been activated, they detect each other using a networking standard called ZigBee and begin negotiating the best times to turn equipment on and off. The devices learn the power cycles of each appliance and reconfigure them to maximize collective efficiency.

The goal is to avoid everything coming on at the same time without sacrificing individual performance. The devices work through this problem using a "swarm algorithm" that coordinates activity without any single device issuing orders.

"Every node thinks for itself," says Mark Kerbel, cofounder and chief executive officer of REGEN Energy, which invented the proprietary algorithm embedded in each device. Before making a decision, he explains, a node will consider the circumstances of other nodes in its network. For example, if a refrigerator needs to cycle on to maintain a minimum temperature, a node connected to a fan or pump will stay off for an extra 15 minutes to keep power use below a certain threshold. "The devices must satisfy the local restraint but simultaneously satisfy the system objective," says Kerbel, adding that a typical building might have between 10 and 40 controllers working together in a single "hive." The devices are simple and quick to install and, because there's no human intervention, require no special training to use.

It's a dramatic departure from the top-down command model associated with current building-automation systems. Some researchers say that the decentralized approach to energy management offers a cheaper, more effective way to manage supply and demand in a delicately balanced electricity system. Indeed, some believe that it could be an early prescription for an emerging smart grid.

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AddMerch---Print-on-Demand custom merchandise store

What Company Is Offering:
AddMerch is a brand new service that allows everyone to embed a complete Print-on-Demand custom merchandise store in right in their own website. Photos, images and user generated content can all be offered as high quality merchandise without any manual uploading or setting up of products.

How It Works:

Tell AddMerch the URL of theimage that you want to use, and AddMerch does the rest.

Customers can access the custom merchandise with a single click and choose from over 30 different color combinations.

Setup is incredibly simple and websites that use AddMerch improve their branding and make money without any cost or overhead.

More at:http://www.addmerch.com/

AdventureDrop lets you research, review, post, and edit adventures all over the world

What Company Is Offering:

AdventureDrop lets you research, review, post, and edit adventures all over the world. It is an adventure community promoting outdoor adventuring, exploration and knowledge.

How It Works:

They are an adventure community based on the fundamental values of the true trailblazer and designed to promote outdoor adventuring, exploration and knowledge. AdventureDrop.com was founded by adventurers at heart in an effort to help everyone have a more informed and pleasurable experience while visiting new places and trying new things. They are a community based knowledge center, as they believe that in order to get a true understanding of any adventure that need the community to contribute their knowledge and first hand experiences. Every trip you take and tell about adds to the ever-growing knowledge base found on AdventureDrop.com.


More at:http://www.adventuredrop.com/

Invoicera --Online Billing

What Company Is Offering:
Invoicera is an out-of-the-edge online application that takes over the traditional paper-and-pen billing system and "internetizes" it! It is a smart, easy, and fortified e-way of sending invoices to your clients.


How It Works:

With Invoicera, you can send professional looking online bills to your clients and can receive payment the same way.
Invoicera comes with A-1 features and takes the concept of Online Billing to another level of comfortability. It is of great help for small and medium scaled enterprises, consultants and freelancers. It enhances your business transparency by crystal clear accounting transactions that minimize any chances of mathematical errors.
It is automated, full-featured, powerful, effective and an easy to use application. With just the click of a button, Invoicera automatically generates professional looking invoices for you. Save time, save extra efforts and maintain a strong firm-client relationship.

More at:http://www.invoicera.com/

Loogix---Create Cool Animated Effects

What Company Is Offering:
It lets users create cool animated effects. And you can also create slideshow from your photos there.

How It Works:

You can create animated picture from its main pape. Just upload at least two photos ( maximum ten ), select desired size and speed and click to "Generate Animation" button.

To create animated effect, please, select one from the listed on the main page effects, upload necessary number of photos, select effect size and click to "Generate Animation" button.

More at:http://www.loogix.com/

OpMom is a social network for mothers

What Company Is Offering:

OpMom is a social network for mothers. It offers information about food, travel, party planning and more.

More at:http://www.opmom.com/