Matt Jones, a designer at London-based BERG, explores the idea that smart cities can be constructed bottum-up with the creation of smart products; that is, small and unobtrusive loosely networked objects fluidly integrated within their larger context. His talk from TechnoArk in Switzerland is below:

People Are Walking Architecture, or making NearlyNets with MujiComp, January 2010

[People are walking architecture, or making NearlyNets with MujiComp], via [PSFK]

The attendees of Thursday night’s Bootstrapping and Agility meetup at Rotterdam witnessed the unveiling of a very neat idea that could very well change the game of business plan submissions. Though presented in a “tongue-in-cheek” manner, I believe the concept solves a very real problem: clear communication between entrepreneurs presenting new ventures and investors seeking new opportunities. Many ideas begin from a playful starting point; only when one takes a step back and really evaluates them is their actual merit realized.

The presentation comes from Peter Hilton (@PeterHilton) of Lunatech, part early stage VC firm and part software development company and the gracious hosts of the event. Inspired by the simplicity and success of the Creative Commons icons, which condense pages of information that no one ever reads into an easily-understandable symbol accompanied by a sentence of text, Peter proposes to apply that exact same logic to business plans. In reality many submitted business plans are simply not read by investors – they are too long, too boring, or too convoluted. Naturally, the entrepreneurs who write them want to go into as much detail as possible in their plans while the investors that read them just want to see the very core points.

This inherent rift that persists between investors and entrepreneurs is bridged by creating icon-based business plans, which condense a thick proposal to an easily-digestible single cover page. The system provides a way for entrepreneurs to present exactly what they are offering in a standardized common visual language. It has the potential to save a lot of time (and frustration) for both ends. Of course, this is not meant to replace a business plan, but rather act as an initial filter for at least getting the right ideas through the door.

Lunatech imagines this as a simple web app where users can check-off all the standard descriptions that apply to them, producing a final page of icons that can each be accompanied by no more than an additional 140 characters of descriptive text. This should be enough for any investor to know whether they want to meet with you or not, and to easily identify the strong and weak points of your proposal.

Peter’s entire presentation can be seen here. Please note that this is the first time this has been presented, it is in the very early stages, and they are still very much working on the concept.

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UPDATE (3/5/2010): The application is now live at PlanCruncher.com. Check it out everyone!

Virtual worlds are a natural setting for experimenting and testing various AI applications and appear especially suited for “general” intelligence development because of their broadness, openness and theoretical lack of limitations and rules. Ben Goertzel and his company, Novamente, have been working on virtual pets and the results are pretty interesting. So while projects such as these are something to get excited about, it’s hard not to dismiss bigheaded goals as worthless hype without seeing the real work that has gone into specific planning and execution – at least something that does not recall the infamous Underpants Gnome plan of 1)Collect underpants 2)??? 3)Profit. So while I don’t think much will come out of this, I have to issue the small warning that the distinction between “virtual” and “real” is pretty nonexistent. All that data is comprised of real code stored on real servers with real physical locations managed by real people… And again while I do remain skeptical of anyone achieving anything close to sentient intelligence anytime soon, I am also a bit concerned about singular commercial entities working secretly on a closed AGI system. Not involving all stakeholders – that is, ALL OF US – raises some ethical quandaries that at least need to be debated.

I would put someone like Philip Rosedale (proven record, visionary thinker, deep pockets and connections) pretty high on the list of people that could make some serious headway in the field, especially in potential commercial applications; he certainly tackles the big issues. Let’s just hope Philip Rosedale doesn’t resemble Watchmen’s Ozymandias…

[New World Notes - Philip Rosedale Attempting to Create Sentient Artificial Intelligence That Thinks and Dreams in Second Life!]

We had the opportunity to meet interesting people, network with industry leaders, hear inspirational talks (and not so inspirational ones), and rekindle some of our energy/enthusiasm about the future of the web and 2010 in general. It was surely a nice antidote for entrepreneurial burnout. Off course, some truly great food and wine and simply enjoying the beautiful City of Light doesn’t hurt either.

A lot has been written about Le Web 09 already and we don’t want to simply recycle content, but rather offer a few highlights of our personal experience:

Twitter and Square
First off, we heard the term Twitter a bit too much, but that’s not surprising. Not only was it spoken about constantly (especially rumors about a Google purchase), but it seemed like everyone were on Twitter compulsively every spare second they had. The conference started out with Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, presenting his newest venture: Square. Square is a small hardware attachment for the iPhone that allows users to accept credit card payments directly in person. It looks very promising and using the headphone jack plug is a creative solution. The application’s interface seems incredibly intuitive and quite beautiful, and will likely be a hit. We also had an opportunity to watch Jack demo Square close up at a reception thrown by the Mayor at the Paris City Hall: