Website Pitches Scientific Solutions In Search of Problems 39
ananyo writes "In this age of social media, innovators eager to develop high-tech products are tapping into the wisdom of crowds to solve problems, with crowdsourcing sites such as Innocentive and Kaggle offering cash prizes for answers to science or data questions. The launch this week of a site called Marblar is turning this model on its head. Marblar gives scientists a space to tout solutions that have yet to find their problem (it's not in beta, despite the redirect). Members, who can come from any background, are invited to publicly discuss potential uses for patented discoveries made in research laboratories that as yet may not have led to real-world applications. Every suggestion at Marblar is posted on a public forum alongside video interviews with the scientists and explanations of their work. Website visitors suggest applications and vote them up and down, and the scientists behind the discovery are encouraged to take part in the discussion. Popular suggestions are recognized with a points system (denoted by marbles — hence the name) and, in some cases, small cash prizes. A trial run seems to have been pretty successful."
Re:wait... what? (Score:5, Interesting)
See Gorilla Glass
----Corning experimented with chemically strengthened glass in 1960, as part of an initiative called "Project Muscle". Within a few years it had developed what it named "Chemcor" glass. Corning could find no practical use for the glass at the time and the predecessor of "Gorilla Glass" was never put into mass production, excepting its use in approximately one hundred 1968 Dodge Dart and Plymouth Barracuda race cars, where the reduced weight was key.[5]
In 2006, while developing the first iPhone, Apple discovered that keys placed in a pocket with the prototype could scratch its hard plastic surface – and resolved to find a glass sufficiently scratch-resistant to eliminate the problem.[6][7] When Steve Jobs subsequently contacted Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning told him of the material the company had developed in the 1960s and subsequently mothballed. Despite the CEO's initial concern over whether the company could manufacture sufficient quantities for the product debut, Jobs convinced Weeks to produce the glass, and Corning's factory in Harrodsburg, Kentucky supplied the screens for the product's release in June 2007.[5] Corning further developed the material for a variety of smartphones and other consumer electronics devices for a range of companies.[8][3][9]