Yesterday, the Founder conference 2010 gathered two hundred enthusiastic entrepreneurs looking for advice and cofounders to start their new business.

First speaker was Aaron Patzer, well-known CEO of Mint.com which has been bought by Intuit for $170M in 2009. According to Aaron, the entrepreneur path is a long journey. “In the early days of Mint.com, I was living in Sunnyvale, most boring place in the Bay Area and had no sex life for a year” Confessed Aaron, “but self-doubt is okay as soon as you know what you’re aiming at”. Aaron stated that people recruitment is critical and that you need to “solve every people needs and problems if you want to have wonderful workers”. For example, Aaron found a girlfriend to his cofounder (who happened to be now his wife) and he became very dedicated to his work. Down the path, Mint.com has been rejected by more than 50 VCs before being successful. At this time, Aaron was just thinking about how to sell it to Microsoft (Microsoft Money) or Intuit… which he finally succeeded in!

From the very beginning, Mint.com was all about classified transactions to better categorize what money was dedicated to which budget (food, leisure…). It aimed at a personal finance management tool after the market research confirmed there was a great opportunity there. For Aaron, One of the key success factors was Mint marketing. While Mint competitors were launched previously, Mint had more traffic on their website thanks to their original content on their Blog with special weekly rendez-vous on Tuesday among others. It allowed Mint to collect more than 20000 email addresses of people willing to be part of Mint beta. Last but not least, they created a very nice buzz before their launch: they would give you a special access to the Mint beta if you put a badge “I want Mint” on your blogs or Facebook badge. Few weeks after, more than 600 blogs have put the badge and gave Mint.com tremendous free advertising.

First day of the Singularity Summit 2010 and first round-up of the last innovations and cutting-edge projects in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). The conferences focused more on demos and concrete applications, less on Theory. L’Atelier US was there.

Human health and body improvement was a highly discussed subject today. Ben Goertzel, CEO of bioinformatics firm Biomind, talked about AI for increasing Human Health. He explained how the human body can be thought of as a very complex machine and remains very difficult to understand for our human mind. Longevity research has shown that everything in the body is interrelated. There isn’t a magic cocktail for longevity. In a near future, AI and AGI could help biology and pharma. What we need is an AI Biologist.

Steve Mann, an eccentric inventor and professor at the University of Toronto, gave the most entertaining show. He arrived wearing cam glasses and a blue machine that plays music with water. He also filmed the audience while he was talking. His concept of “sousveillance” or “undersight”, presented as the opposite of “surveillance” could be a deep understanding of how cam technologies can change society for the good or not. He thinks that a society based on the concept of “sousveillance” is the best way to decrease criminality because in this case surveillance comes from a human level, from “under”. It’s the contrary of a Big Brother society based surveillance from the above.

Another inspiring idea shared by Steve Mann and his music team was his idea about addiction. Human Computer Interfaces seem to work better if there is a real human desire to have an interaction with them. Better is the pleasure to play with machines, better humans and machines are interrelated. The best way to create this addiction is to create machines that are also provide sensitive experiences (playing music with water for example). Science engineering and art have to fuse to create Human Computer Machines of the future.

Mandayam A. Srinivasan, Director of MIT’s TouchLab, explained the latest innovations in haptic (touch) technologies: TADOMA, a system that aids deaf people, remote human interactions, brain machine control. He gave his vision of the future human brain: superhuman capacities (high speed and accurate vision, for example), directly integrated software (music), data management, new capacities to evolve in an abstract space.

Oracle filed a complaint against Google for patent and copyright infringement Thursday evening related to the development of the Android mobile operating system. Oracle spokesperson Karen Tillman in a press release posted by MarketWatch explained that the lawsuit’s complaint is that Android infringes upon Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property.

The integrated business software and hardware systems company filed this complaint with the US District Court for the Northern District of California, which was quoted by CNET: "Android (including without limitation the Dalvik VM and the Android software development kit) and devices that operate Android infringe one or more claims of each of United States Patents Nos. 6,125,447; 6,192,476; 5,966,702; 7,426,720; RE38,104; 6,910,205; and 6,061,520." The complaint calls for a jury trial.

Google attracted attention when they began Android development in 2007, a software system that uses Java-derived tech, Oracle argues, without a proper license. Android competes against Java, which is implemented on other mobile phones. Developed by Sun Microsystems, Java was acknowledged in the documentation as one of the most significant technologies that Oracle acquired from Sun when the latter was acquired by Oracle.

Apparently the suit will not be a surprise to Google. James Gosling, an author of Java, mentioned in his blog Nighthacks that during the Oracle-Sun integration meetings, Oracle lawyers were asking questions about the patent situation between Sun and Google.

Google’s response via TechCrunch has labelled the suit contrary to the open source spirit of Java. “We are disappointed Oracle has chosen to attack both Google and the open-source Java community with this baseless lawsuit. The open-source Java community goes beyond any one corporation and works every day to make the web a better place. We will strongly defend open-source standards and will continue to work with the industry to develop the Android platform.”

Americans spend much of their time online visiting social network sites and blogs when they are in front of a full sized screen, but on mobile devices their activities are very different. A Nielsen study released this month, "What Americans Do Online: Social Media and Games Dominate Activity," breaks down US online time on personal computers and wireless devices.

Social networks took up 22.7 percent of online Internet time in June 2010, an increase of 43 percent from June 2009. Online games increased ten percent from last year to 10.2 percent of total time - playing games online overtook personal e-mail as the second most used activity this year. E-mail’s share was 8.3 percent, down 28 percent from last year. Other activities, such as visiting portals, instant messaging and other categories, decreased in usage. Watching video or movies, as well as conducting searches, were the only other categories that increased from last year.

But on mobile devices, US consumers spend much more time on e-mail than any other activity. While mobile Web users increased their social networking behavior on mobile 28 percent, e-mail rose from 37.4 percent last year to 41.6 percent. Second in heaviest activity was portals at 11.7 percent, and mobile music and video consuming rose twenty percent. Social networking only took 10.5 percent.

To illustrate the proportions of Internet usage, Nielsen organized the categories around a stopwatch. If all mobile Internet time was condensed into one hour, each category took up a certain number of minutes and seconds.

• e-mail- 25 minutes
• portals - seven minutes
• social networks and blogs - six minutes and eighteen seconds
• Search - four minutes and twelve seconds
• news - two minutes and 42 seconds
• entertainment - two minutes
• music - one minute and 54 seconds
• weather - one minute and 42 seconds
• sports - one minute and 24 seconds
• time spent on video- and movie-specific sites (YouTube, Hulu, etc) or movie-related Web sites (IMDB, Netflix, etc) - one minute and twelve seconds
• other remaining online sectors - six minutes and 42 seconds

New technology from Senseg and Toshiba delivers texture and other forms of haptic feedback to any screen-type surface. Demonstrated at the Embedded Tech Systems Expo, their system is called E-Sense.  The tech is built upon a type of human-machine interface called electrotactile arrays, which apply very mild electrical current to the nerves of the skin. Electrotactile arrays can create texture or pressure without mechanical vibration, a more well-known type of touch-based feedback, as is explained by Travis Deyle in the robotics new portal Hizook.

This tech has been around for some time, Deyle continues, but has recently been embedded into a film that can cover an LCD screen on a tablet computer or mobile device. At the expo, demonstrations included sections of the screen that was rough (”like a brush”), uneven (”as if it has metal strips on it”), or like wood or stone. Since it is now being incorporated into autonomous small devices, more applications are possible.

Tactile interface technology company Senseg calls its E-Sense output system a “modulated attraction force,” or Coulomb force. Senseg claims that “virtually any surface can be made” to use E-Sense, from “handheld devices to wall-sized interactive displays… including transparent, flat or curved surfaces.”

Applications for this type of touch feedback have included many devices for sensory-impaired individuals, including the blind and those with damaged inner-ears. Additionally, non-visual displays for fighter pilots have also been developed. As Deyle explains, this technique has been around for years.

Coverage by Übergizmo from May predicts future possible applications in regular workflow, as well as video games and pornography.

Google released Voice Actions today, a new Android app that provides voice-activated support for a list of tasks that users can now ask their mobile phone to do. Augmenting the voice search option on all Android mobile handsets running version 2.2, this will allow for even less typing or other manual navigation for such common tasks as making calls, writing e-mails or texts or listening to music.

Demonstrated at a press gathering in San Francisco, Voice Actions helps users perform commonly performed workflows that are listed in Google’s blog and mobile blog:

• send text to [contact] [message]
• listen to [artist/song/album]
• call [business]
• call [contact]
• send email to [contact] [message]
• go to [website]
• note to self [e-mail to self]
• navigate to [location/business name]
• directions to [location/business name]
• map of [location]

Android’s new functionality is being developed to give users what Google refers to as “the most natural way of interacting with a phone.” While voice command development has been complicated, it is still at a more usable stage than mind-activated mobile phone navigation such as ThinkContacts’ app.

Voice Actions is not the first of its kind, and as The New York Times’ Bits Blog explains, its release engages in competition with Apple’s Siri, a voice-command app for the iPhone. Apple acquired the developers of Siri back in April, which can follow more commands, such as booking restaurant reservations.

Also announced today, Google’s Chrome-to-Phone is a new button on the Chrome Web browser interface that sends selected information directly to an Android device (again, using the latest version 2.2). The button can send phone numbers, links, maps, and allows for an easier way to take tasks from the personal computer to a mobile device.

For the last few weeks, Alexander Osterwalder has been in Silicon Valley to talk about his must-read book, Business Model Generation, and to see what his next step in the area of facilitating business model will be.

We talk a lot about the fast-changing environment in which companies are evolving and how hard it is for traditional players to grow and change. One of the most painful points is the lack of easy tools to assess the situation and imagine a new paradigm.

This need for fast adaptation strikes a chord in Silicon Valley and its “lean startup” movement led by Eric Ries which tries to democratize the idea of quick iteration for startups and making pivot points to find the business model that best fits them.

Osterwalder’s book deals with business strategy and how to better define and draw business models. The book is full of well-designed concepts created by a team of 470 practitioners, which makes the reading experience painless. But the key asset for the business community is the book’s business model canvas, which the creators give for free on their website, encouraging people to use it:

This canvas is very useful for putting complex ideas on paper in a way that no one has addressed completely in the past. All the simple tools we now use in the business strategy area were created decades ago - the BCG matrix or the Porter’s five forces, for example - so it’s time for change.

This canvas can be very useful for all kind of businesses, from startups to big corporations, to better define their business model and to imagine new ones.

Osterwalder is working on an iPad application that will let people “play” with a business model with virtual post-its to stick on the business model canvas, while collaborating to create a new one. One cool idea could be to create an online business model library. Another idea could be to play with this app on large touch-screen walls. Is this the next revolution in the boardroom and at Sand Hill Road, where the VCs dwell?

A mobile application that uses a brainwave scanner to make phone calls has reached a usable level of development. With the ThinkContacts system, individuals with motor disabilities can select contacts from their mobile phone’s address book and make calls.

TheNextWeb reported on ThinkContacts, which uses hardware from NeuroSky that registers two types of qualities in brain activity: "meditation" and "attention." The NeuroSky MindSet headpiece, as shown on the project’s YouTube sample video, looks like over-ear-style headphones but for a small boom that touches the skin at the center of the forehead. This three point contact system presumably gives access to enough neural activity to determine both concentration and relaxation, the means of navigation for the app.

After assisting in Bluetooth connection to the mobile device, team developer Mirko Perkusich demonstrates how the user manipulates the Nokia handset with a status bar for both Meditation and Attention. The project wiki explains the navigation in detail: "The user controls the selection of the desired contact by controlling his/her level of meditation and attention. If the user’s level of attention is higher than 70% the software switches to the next contact in the list, if it is lower than 30% the software switches to the previous, otherwise the current contact will not be switched. If the user’s meditation level is higher than 80%, the software makes a phone call to the contact located at the center of the screen."

The app is designed for the Nokia N900’s Maemo platform, the Linux-based software that runs on the device. Maemo prioritizes multitasking, cross-platform social networking, multiple desktops and geotagging for its core functionality.

No progress roadmap is given on the ThinkContacts wiki, suggesting this project is still in a relatively early stage. ReadWriteWeb remarked on the limited number of accessibility apps for mobile are currently in the market. Several apps mentioned are available on the Android operating system, many of which are tools for the visually impaired.

News sharing site Digg was undermined by fringe groups of conservative news manipulators for over a year before the story broke yesterday.These users frequently buried news deemed “too left-leaning” by the group, ensuring that this news was effectively removed from the site.

The San Francisco startup, founded by Kevin Rose, was responsible for shaping the now commonplace practice of forwarding articles to social networks, as well as popularizing stories on their front page by “Digging” the stories using a bookmarklet. The “most dugg” stories were often different than what one would commonly find on a more mainstream news portal, as frequent users often skewed more towards technology, liberal views and of course, stories about Digg.com and its staff.

The flipside of the “Digg” action is “Bury,” which the influential conservative Digg members in question exploited, according to Alternet, by means of “multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives.” These practices disproportionately affected popular stories on the Digg page, but also trickled down to driven traffic to news source sites. This is not a small effect - Digg is ranked fiftieth among US Web sites by Alexa, likely has three million users and generates around 25 million page views per month (all Alternet numbers).These tremendous shifts in bandwidth usage and page views have overwhelmed Web sites with the “Digg effect.”

A year of undercover investigation connected to author Oleoleolson exposed these groups, now referred to as “bury brigades.” One conservative group, who calls themselves the “Digg Patriots,” buried over ninety percent of certain users and Web sites’ articles. Along with political articles, these groups target other subjects including “education, homophobia, racism, science, the environment, economics, wealth disparity, world events, the media, green energy,” and articles critical of GOP, Tea Party and Fox News leaders.

A new Digg site is imminent, with various safeguards to help prevent undemocratic gaming of the system. For example, users can now follow individuals or publishers so that they will have access to trusted content whether or not their news items have been Dugg or Buried. CNET reports that they will shelve Bury functionality.

Everyone remembers Andy Pausch’s famous “Last Lecture,” which the computer science professor gave a couple months before he died of cancer, and which  became hugely popular in the U.S. Andy was the co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University.

In the Last Lecture, Pausch refers to the “Tornado” he founded the ETC with. This Tornado happened to be one of the keynote speakers at this year’s SIGGRAPH: Don Marinelli, Executive Producer of the Entertainment Technology Center.

What is it about these two professors and their Center that made them so influential?

Two men, two opposite backgrounds: Randy the geek, Don the crazy theater professor. They each represent one side of the binary system our society has established between Arts and Sciences/Technology: right and left brain, the creative versus the rational. Why do we have to set the arts and sciences in opposition?

This socially constructed binary is one of the “brick walls” Randy and Don’s ETC is meant to tear down.

The Entertainment Technology Center is a professional graduate program that reconciles arts and technology in many different ways. Students come from extremely diverse backgrounds - there are engineers, architects, musicians, dramatists, computer graphics students, and so on. The goal is to have them build projects together and use their diverse backgrounds for challenging team projects.

Because innovation happens, according to Don and Andy, at the convergence of arts and technology.

During his keynote, Marinelli explained how similar theater and animation are. There’s a storyline, a plot, characters, a virtual world, a structure, and an architecture. They’e both about experience.

“There is a science to art, and an art to sciences,” he says. To him the rehearsals for a theater play are like algorithms for math.

If you consider an innovator, here is the question Don Marinelli would want you to ask yourself: are you ready to paint your office walls?

This question might seem a little overstated, but it is interesting when you think about it. If you want to think out of the box, the first thing you should be able to do is paint your office walls: first, in order to build a more creative environment, and second, because an innovator should be able to transgress the codes and act out of the box.

And that’s exactly what Don and Andy did with the ETC. The building looks like Disneyland.

Not only are their walls painted, but the entire curriculum of ETC is based on this original vision the founders had about connecting arts and technology. The students go rafting to experience risk, they learn Aristotle, try improvisational acting to work on creating a narrative with a team, build virtual worlds and learn game design. What a program! As well, the ETC has official agreements with some of the best actors in the industry – such as EA and Pixar – for them to hire ETC students upon graduation.

So … can you paint your walls?

(Photo: Carnegie Mellon University)