Monthly Archives: August 2012

VizWiz and The Socially Beneficial App: Support This Innovocracy Project

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“Another, called VizWiz, allowed them to take a picture of an item and pose questions about it to an online community of sighted people.

At one point, Charlson posted the question, “What does this box say?” Seconds later, a response was read aloud by the device: “Honey Maid graham crackers,” the phone said.

With VizWiz, “I have 10,000 people in my pocket waiting to help me,” Charlson said. “It’s amazing.”

From Boston.com article on the use of apps to aid the visually impaired.

One of our current Innovocracy funding Projects is VizWiz, a iPhone/iPad app that reads print for visually disabled people. The premise is simple but the execution is complex: The user points their iOS device at printed material and takes a photo. The photo is transmitted to a website where a volunteer reads it aloud. That reading is transmitted to the device, in real time, and it is read back to the user.

VizWiz is raising money on Innovocracy to make their app scalable, in other words to go from serving 5000 users with over 50,000 translations to many times that. The funds they raise will help the app reach many more people without compromising quality. This not only means increasing their volunteer base and the ability of their web site to handle volume but it also puts them on a path to automating the translation from print to speech.

“Despite their limitations, the apps are still a means to reducing such dependence on others, according to Charlson. “There’s absolutely a rush,” he said. “There’s a feeling of acceptance and inclusion that only comes as a result of a high level of independence.”

As we’ve written about, Innovocracy is not just about creating profitable products and services. These products need to have a core function that benefits society. VizWiz is a prime example of how this works. The app is free and the volunteers are unpaid. The users’ quality of life is impacted in a meaningful and positive way. And all it takes is a donation of a few dollars from you to take this to the next level. To Donate Visit This Page.

We see that as a total win-win situation.

VizWiz was developed out of research from the University of Rochester, a founding Innovocracy Network Member Institution.

Businesses Are Networks, Organizations Are Networks, We Are Networks

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At Innovocracy we have a vision of creating a network of innovation in higher education, a network composed of a hundred or more of the top research universities in the world. We’re creating a platform that member universities can plug into and that is optimized to foster commercial innovation from their research. But why a network?

Networks Thrive When We Remove Barriers To Entry

In the last few years network theory has come out of the lab and into our lives in a big way. Social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn show us how networks are created by making connections across all kinds of barriers- geographic, age, income, education, cultural and more. These barriers dissipate when a platform comes along that makes it easy for anyone to connect with a click. Connections are one piece of the network puzzle.

Networks Spread As Connections Multiply

The second piece are the nodes or hubs that the connections connect to. With the social networks we become hubs as others connect to us and we reciprocate. Think of it as spokes radiating outward and connecting to hubs that, in turn connect to others. That’s where network theory gets interesting- and relevant. One connection multiplies into hundreds or thousands very quickly with a hub and spoke model where barriers to making connections are eliminated.

But we are already members of many networks. Businesses are networks, organizations are networks, we ourselves are incredibly complex networks of cells, genes, DNA and more. Connections are not something you pick-up at networking events, they are lifeblood. Networks are the power grid of society.

Innovocracy’s network is designed for one overriding purpose: To facilitate innovation coming out of academic research communities. It does this by leveraging the power of a strong network. With a few clicks a Project owner (inventor) using Innovocracy to raise funds can reach connected supporters anywhere within the network, potentially millions of them. But it goes beyond fundraising.

We support innovation that contributes to the common good. When we come across an invention that can change people’s lives, we do more than help them raise a few thousand dollars. We use our network to tap into resources that are far more valuable: Business and legal advice, potential partners and investors, manufacturing and distribution resources and more. These networks help that innovation reach those who need it most.

Universities are huge networks unto themselves but often it is difficult to connect into their various constituencies. When a university joins the Innovocracy network we work with the university to make it easy for their constituents with an interest in innovation to connect to those who are creating. We believe there is immense power for good to be tapped into by building our network and fostering connections without barriers to entry.

Innovocracy Announces Academic Crowdfunding Project for an App for the Visually Impaired

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VizWiz App Builds on a University of Rochester Prototype Already Used by 5,000 People to Answer 50,000 Questions

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Rochester, NY (PRWEB) August 10, 2012

Contact: Martin Edic, 585-727-3119

Earlier this year, the University of Rochester Human Computer Interaction Group developed an initial iOS application called VizWiz, that blind people can use to answer visual questions in their everyday lives. Users simply take a picture and speak a question they’d like to know about it, and their questions are answered by people out on the web, usually in under a minute and all for free.

Thus far, answers have been provided primarily by workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a paid microtasking marketplace. In order to broaden the availability of the service to a larger portion of the visually impaired community, the project is now seeking crowdfunding through the Innovocracy platform.

“We would like to create a web site to serve as a hub and answering center for VizWiz volunteers. The site will allow users to sign up to answer questions, track worker quality (and perhaps give rewards to the best ones), and, most importantly, allow VizWiz to remain free to users,” says Jeff Bigham, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester. He adds, “Building a volunteer workforce may eventually allow for more ambitious VizWiz services, such as a streaming video option”.

New supporters can make donations through the VizWiz project page on Innovocracy (http://innovocracy.org/vizwiz-support-network) as well as download the current version of the application on the Apple App Store (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vizwiz/id439686043).

About the Innovator
In 2009, Jeff appeared on the MIT Technology Review Top 35 Innovators Under 35 for his work on Web-Anywhere, a free screen reader that can be used with practically any web browser on any operating system. He is also the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award which is the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars. Jeff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Rochester where he heads the Rochester Human Computer Interaction Group (ROC HCI). His work is at the intersection of human-computer interaction, human computation, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on developing innovative technology that serves people with disabilities in their everyday lives.

About Innovocracy.org
Innovocracy, a benefit corporation based in New York State, is a social funding platform created to rapidly commercialize innovation coming out of academic research. Innovocracy is building a network of leading research universities, as well as of individuals with an interest in sponsoring commercializable research, in order to efficiently identify and fund critical proof-of-concept activities and take the first steps toward building companies around university-based innovations. Most of the products and services supported by Innovocracy create social benefit for society, such as those related to healthcare, sustainability, education and extreme affordability. Innovocracy’s social funding site at http://www.innovocracy.org helps inventors raise money from donors with a personal or professional interest in the social benefits of those inventions. All the funds raised, except third-party credit card fees, go directly to the innovator while conforming to the unique requirements of each member university. In addition, Innovocracy offers to work with select innovators to facilitate the creation of startups to commercialize their research. Learn more at Innovocracy.org.

Link to this on PRWeb: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/8/prweb9783501.htm

What Is ‘Social Funding’?

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The Nature of Social Funding

Here at Innovocracy we’ve been closely watching the evolution of crowdfunding as we’ve evolved our platform and network. Initially, inspired by Kickstarter, we simply saw an application for this new donor-funding model in academic research. As we began working with universities and innovators in higher education, our perception of the entire process and our business model have moved from a specialized funding platform to the realization that we are building a unique network, a network created to intensify the commercialization of campus research. As a result, we increasingly find that the term ‘crowdfunding’ only covers a single aspect of what we’re working on.

Networks Are Social

Each university or university system is a vast network comprised of students, graduate students, faculty, researchers, administrators, alumni and peers around the globe. Add in financial supporters and the citizens of the area(s) where the university is located and you have an extensive network of people, from all walks of life, with common connections.
The Innovocracy Network takes this already enormous group of connected people and multiplies it each time we add a university to our membership. This means that the addressable market for any Innovator seeking to raise funding via our website is potentially in the millions without even going outside of the academic universe. Add in the friends and family, co-workers and neighbors of anyone using the system and you are potentially tapping into vast resources, even if individual donations are tiny ($5, $1? $1000? All are welcome.)
Just as social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have leveraged these social connections, Innovocracy is also seeking to be a central social funding platform. But that is just one piece of why we prefer the term ‘social funding’.

Social = Beneficial To Society

The types of Projects we support are those that combine commercial potential with a benefit to society. Even with just a few completed Projects under our belt we’re seeing solutions for parents with autistic children, for people who’ve lost the use of a limb and people with vision problems. And we have projects related to energy, green technology and environmental issues in the wings. These are inherently social innovations.

Donors Donate Because of Social Connections To A Project

Social funding is predicated on the concept that we are willing donate money to support a cause with a personal or social connection to our lives, without an immediate benefit to ourselves. All of the projects mentioned above have avid constituencies of potential supporters who contribute for the better good. Innovocracy is working to tie these various social aspects of both our funding model and our network to make it easy for donors to make a difference, for innovators to get to the next level and for our university partners to accelerate the pace of invention coming out of their research programs.
That’s social funding as we define it.