The homes will be made of recycled materials – pallet flooring and framing, waterproofed cardboard walls, aluminum can roofing – and some donated materials. Architect Arthur Dyson is working with construction management students at Fresno State to create an unprecedented “Eco-Village” of tiny homes for homeless folks. If successful, it seems like Dyson’s Eco-Village could [...]

Dutchman Peter van de Werken has invented and successfully developed a new kind of rose: rainbow coloured rose. By treating the stalk with natural pigments, van de Werken has managed to make each petal a different colour. Watch the Reuters story here…

The idea that collaborative thinking, or ‘Groupthink’, as the right way to solve problems creatively is misguided. According to author Susan Cain in the New York Times, it is often solitary thinking that leads to the biggest creative breakthroughs. She mentions Steve Wozniak who invented the first Apple computer and said in his memoir: “Most [...]

From Yahoo. Here’s a fairy tale that could only happen in the movies. Man makes YouTube video. Goes to Hollywood. Gets pots of money and a movie deal. Except this story is true. An unknown producer from Uruguay, Fede Alvarez, shelled out about $300 to create a cool video of a robot invasion in Montevideo, [...]

According to multimedia artist Mike Winkelman, interviewed for the Atlantic, making something new everyday gets over the fear of starting creative projects. Mike has completed a new art project every single day since May 1 2007 and now has 1600. He says they aren’t all perfect, but that’s not the point: “Just showing up is [...]

When announcing an effort to launch Googly TV head of engineering, Vic Gundotra, was making an obvious reference to Apple when he said at the press conference: “If you believe that the only way to get a good smartphone is to bet on one man, one device, one carrier, and one choice, that is a [...]

 What do you get when you cross speed-dating with brainstorming? Yup, ‘speedstorming’ a rapid technique for coming up with ideas and assessing potential partners for collaboration. The psychologists who came up with the technique describe it like this: “Speedstorming is similar in structure to therecent phenomenon of speed-dating. Since itsorigination in 1998, speed-dating has inspireda [...]

Punk band Anti-Flag and useless.org released a limited edition tee shirt for Earth Day. The shirts are unwanted shirts that were gathering dust in Anti-Flag’s warehouse, that have now been repurposed with a new message. All proceeds fund a water and sanitation project in Sierra Leone. See more details here.

Without a culture of creativity in a business and without resorting to just copying other people’s ideas (hello China), innovation becomes impossible. And innovation is what drives growth in the good times, and survival in challenging ones.  The President of Ohio-based bathroom fixtures company Moen, David Lingafelter, is convinced that innovation driven by creativity is [...]

Love this little device demonstrated at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It’s called the Light Touch and is by UK company Light Blue Optics.

MIT researchers are developing a microchip that could help blind people regain partial eyesight. Though it won’t completely restore normal vision, it will enable a blind person to recognize faces and navigate a room without assistance. The chip, which is encased in titanium to prevent water damage, will be implanted onto a patient’s eyeball. The [...]

This is a nice piece on seeing different perspectives that appeared in the Atlantic and was written by Laura Seargeant Richardson, a principal designer at frog design, a global innovation firm. Javier Hans is on a mission to change how the world’s youth think about creativity and innovation. At nine, he founded Inventors Without Borders. At 15, [...]

Fro the New York Times magazine 9th annual year in ideas. Nature may well be the art of God, but that isn’t keeping mere mortals from trying their hand at it. This year, a group of British engineers recommended building a forest of artificial carbon-filtering “trees” across the United Kingdom to combat climate change; and [...]

Plenty of people’s Twitter feeds appear to be connected directly to their egos, but one scientist’s is actually wired to his brain. In April, University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson — working with adviser Justin Williams, above — tweeted 23 characters just by thinking. He focused his attention on one flashing letter after another [...]