:Michael Anuzis

What a clever idea – allowing gamers to leverage their skills to help solve protein folding: http://fold.it

Excerpts from the site…

Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.

What big problems is this game tackling?

Protein structure prediction: As described above, knowing the structure of a protein is key to understanding how it works and to targeting it with drugs. A small proteins can consist of 100 amino acids, while some human proteins can be huge (1000 amino acids). The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans’ puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.

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You heard it right – I’ll lay down $ for tiny ninja doodles. They could be doodles of anything ninja related. It could be a bunch of ninjas in a tree. Could be a ninja disguised as a pirate. Could even be a corn on the cob dressed like a ninja. I need as many mini-fun ninja doodles as possible to incorporate into ninja-based educational material.

You can come up with the craziest/zany-est ninja doodle idea you can think of and let me worry about finding a way to incorporate it into the lessons. No limits on the funky kind of stuff I’ll buy. I’m thinking of paying around $5 per doodle, purchasing up to ~20-50 doodles, so, up to around $250. I know my price is cheap, but it’s also a reflection of how small the doodles are I’m willing to accept. They could be 2″x1″, 3″x2″, 1″x1″, any random ninja doodle. (I actually would like a corn on the cob in ninja garb, if someone can doodle that; probably around 1″x1.5″)

The only thing is the doodles need to be in a digital form, e.g. a JPG or GIF file. If you can doodle it on paper and convert it to digital without it looking too weird that’s fine.

So, if you’re interested go ahead and send me a sample of what you can do! 1-2 sample doodles is fine, & if your stuff is usable we’ll chat about an on-going ninja-doodling deal based on how many you’re interested in making.

If you’re not much of a ninja doodler yourself, but you know someone who is please pass this post on to them. I could really use a great doodler. Thanks!

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I’ve been blogging for over a year about designing a gadget that tracks the unified environmental efforts of millions of people and allows everyone to celebrate their contribution. A few weeks ago it looks like Google released a gadget called ‘Energy Saver‘ that does just that.

It doesn’t allow people to track their contributions in as many ways as I’d like to see, but it does provide a beautiful/simple way for people to make a difference with hardly effort at all by “Enabling and optimizing your computer’s power management settings to help save the world energy.”

If I wasn’t already working on a different startup, I’d love to take this idea to the next level with my domain greenolution.com. Previous posts of mine detailing that business model & vision:

- The Greenolution Pitch
- Three Design Opportunities for a Brighter Future
- Anyone Join Me for $25 Million
- Count Down Your Carbon

If you combined CDYD and Google’s Energy Saver gadget and threw in a global goal, a gadget easier for people to paste on social networking sites than the Google Gadget, and some greentech product recommendations on the most cost-effective technologies currently available, you’d have my idea for greenolution.com.

Aside from possible ad revenue, you could add an e-commerce portion of the site to sell the greentech conveniently to consumers/businesses, or at least collect affiliate earnings.

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Just bought a $200 laptop for my mom, with a matching $200 laptop going to a child in a developing country. It’s fun to think about the kid out there who will get the internet from a laptop matching this one.

The laptops are not killer for 3D gaming, but they can use pretty much any web app out there. These laptops are also durable, weather resistant, & have some sweet design innovations. The ability to purchase one of these laptops expires Dec 31st, 2007. They won’t arrive in time for X-Mas, but if you’re interested you should order one now!

Bonus Tip – the matching laptop is tax deductible!

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Ann Arbor is replacing every street light in the city with LEDs, and reducing their energy usage 55% in the process. The project will cost $650,000 and achieve a return on investment in 4.2 years. The city already implemented LEDs on Washington St between 4th & 5th street and its citizens to submitted feedback via the web. With 98% approval, the city is moving forward.

LEDs: easier on the eyes than fluorescent bulbs and significantly more energy efficient as well. A fellow Googler recently replaced the lighting in her house with LEDs, and her entire upstairs runs on a total of 11 watts. She could leave a light on 24/7 for a year at a cost of about $4. I’m thinking of making the switch…

If you’re living in a city that hasn’t yet made the switch, I tagged this post as ‘business’ and ‘opportunities’ on your behalf. It’s a no-brainer once you’re informed. Good luck!

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Sorry for the delay in posting – work has been quite busy. To make it up to you I’m giving out four $25 Kiva gift certificates to the first four people to claim them in a comment on this post. It’s basically $25 you can do what you want with, but I hope you will lend them out at least once before you choose to withdraw the money for yourself.

For those of you unfamiliar with Kiva, it’s a way to invest in an entrepreneur in a developing country. There’s a 97% likelihood they’ll pay you back, which is really great. When the entrepreneur pays you back, you can withdraw your money or re-lend it to another entrepreneur – whatever you want! Here’s a quick clip on Kiva for those interested:

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Entrepreneurial idea that hit me like a rock during this morning’s meditation. Recorded in under 5 minutes, seems like a solid way to motivate advancements in science, medicine, and technology. Feedback & critique appreciated!

 Advancing Science and Technology [3:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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This podcast shares an entrepreneurial idea that will revolutionize the world of politics by exposing the world’s most brilliant speakers on any given topic and empowering everyone to contribute meaningfully in a truly democratic system.

The podcast itself is preliminary and not intended for public adoption. I go deeper into theory than the general public would care to hear, and plan to release a video-cast in the future with the objective of inciting massive public demand.

First few minutes are informative and background – the meat of the idea comes middle to end. Feedback & critique appreciated!

 Building a People's Democracy [13:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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A few people have e-mailed me asking for elaboration on the Greenolution idea. To save you the time, the pitch is pasted here:

The world should have a site like traineo.com – but rather than track calories burnt as a community, it tracks money saved and co2 emissions reduced through green-technology usage.

Traineo.com has a live readout of calories burnt by all their members – if we had a similar readout for $ saved and emissions reduced it’d be an exciting spectacle for individuals the world over.

With over $10 trillion currently invested in greentech R&D, more energy-efficient products will emerge in the thousands. Greenolution.com provides a quick-list of the most proven & effective products available at any given time, and gives users a simple interface to report their product adoption.

We’ll provide simple code for widgets to be embedded on private sites\social networking profiles that show our live results of $ saved and co2 emissions reduced alongside our global goal of 1B tons reduced & that’ll be an attention-grabber. People who click the link can see a quick flash demo on how the site works and how to get involved.

If such a site were in existence, it shouldn’t have any trouble getting picked up by NPR, The Economist, NY Times, etc. That’s the pitch. I don’t have the details worked out, but if we get enough intelligent people collaborating on it, success seems likely.

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British billionaire entrepreneur, Richard Branson, put a $25 million reward on the table for a solution that will remove a billion tons of co2 per year from the Earth’s atmosphere.

Seems like a perfect opportunity to roll out my greenolution.com idea for tracking green-technology usage through a community-driven site with realtime tracking of money saved and co2 prevented alongside global goals for emissions reductions.

If only I had the web-programming knowledge necessary to design this database\user-interface for massive public adoption. Seems like such an connecting site would have the potential to drop 1B tons co2/yr easy.

update: if you’ve got the ability to roll this site out and are looking for a domain to do it on I’ll contribute greenolution.com – let’s just get this site rolled out. drop me a line if you want to collaborate.

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