In my new role as an investor in the technology space, I make a similar distinction between inventors and innovators and while I love to meet with inventors, if you are not also an innovator, it is unlikely I will want to be an investor. Here’s why:

Merriam-Webster defines “invent” here as “to produce for the first time through the use of imagination.”

“Innovate” is defined here as “to introduce as or as if new” and “to make changes, to do something in a new way.”

Inductive charging, one type of wireless power transfer, is a cool invention with many potential applications. Wikipedia describes inductive charging here and lists the convenience of charging mobile devices on a “contact plate” instead of with a wire and plug as one of the benefits.

This has recently been popularized by the “powermat” This product is technically innovation as the producers did not invent inductive charging, but the mindset of this product team is more inventor than innovator.

You can see in the image above that one of the ways to use the powermat is a cube with a mini-USB charging cable. This offers zero marginal improvement for the customer over a traditional wired charging experience, but it utilizes the inductive charge capability of the mat. – inventor mission accomplished. In general, the powermat is not better than a well organized approach to the wired solution like this box.

the "powerbox"

Alternatively, the video at the bottom of this post illustrates an understanding of the consumer and if integrated into a line of furniture would create an entire new experience and offer significant utility. Thanks to Darren Murph at engadget for bringing this to my attention with this article and including links to a full “how to.”

Inventors create technology for the first time through unprecedented imaginative effort. Because inventors create things that have never been seen before, value accrues to the first person or team to make the technology work and the process is driven by the original vision. Innovators introduce concepts “as if new” implying iteration and the integration of external data – such as from consumers – and value accrues to the first person to discover product-market fit.  Inventors tell the market what they have while innovators listen to the market and deliver what it asks them to create.

Wood Induction Charger from Jason V on Vimeo.

If you are an innovator or an inventor or both, I hope you will continue this in the comments.

Find and Filter = Gourmet Content Buffet

The acceleration of content creation on the web, both social streams and traditional outlets, has created a situation where I almost always feel behind in terms of my ability to consume the information and overwhelmed by the effort required to pull the relevant stuff from the irrelevant. I have trouble with the find and filter process and either get bloated by consuming too much or end up content starved. The right balance lies in becoming a content gourmet — and this balance has so far eluded me.

The velocity of content creation has driven me to the point of a binary decision: read or ignore. I bvelieve content should be surfaced and prioritized by relevancy, but I found that I had retreated into my twitter stream and was really skimming for links (to forward to myself via e-mail and read throughout the day). I also would pull out specific terms and the @replies and DM’s via tweetdeck. Twitter had become my IM and RSS in addition to the baseline “twitter stream” of real-time conversation about “what are you doing?”

I have struggled with what I call “Find and Filter” since about 2003. Back then I created the chart below that laid out my ideal solution to the problem – let me choose my content curators based on my knowledge of them and then give them a way to highlight the content that they think is most valuable around a given topic and have the system push it to me. I also wanted to be able to discover other people who pulled this same content out of the “feedtank” and view their profiles/subscribe to them on the given topic. The idea was to find and filter my sources and let them, in turn, find and filter my content. I called it editoRSS.com and never did more with it than what you see here:

Over time, lots of solutions to this problem have emerged including FriendFeed, Google Wave and Glue as well as the Facebook NewsFeed and the Twitter stream. I would also include the latest entry from Google in the form of social search (see video here), but I am still feeling overwhelmed by the effort required to find and filter the content that I really want without consuming too much or missing out by consuming too little.

In an effort to work on my process, I have changed my Twitter follows to people I know and interesting people who’s tweets go beyond what I can get via RSS feeds from their blog. (Did you know that the url for an un-follow on twitter is twitter.com/friendship/destroy ??) I am going to re-invest in my NetNewsReader for articles and longer form news and try to re-engage in the twitter stream as conversation rather than news fire hose.

If you are willing to share how you solve this problem or are working on a solution to it, I would love to hear about it in the comments or an @reply on Twitter.

A run to remember (with some technical help)

Chris Fralic started the twitter account @runningtech to “discover and share the best and worst of running technologies, whether it’s Nike+iPod, Powerbars, GPS systems or your favorite running playlist.” Chris manages it with CoTweet, one of our portfolio companies, so multiple people can each post to the @runningtech twitter account. I have been remiss in my contributions and so yesterday I enlisted the help of a friend to test some running tech.

He is training for the Pike’s Peak Ascent and today was a long run day in the hills for him so I decided to tag along and test my RunKeeper iPhone app vs. his Garmin Running watch. The results reported by the RunKeeper can be seen here and the Garmin results are here. I have to say that I cramped up at mile 14 and walked the final mile but this is the only place we were more than 5 yards apart.

The experience provided by the Garmin is utilitarian — speed, distance, time mixed to provide pace data in real time or averages and a PC upload requiring a USB connection. The online experience allows you to name the activity and see the route on a map as well as providing the summary details of the run. Garmin also makes it possible to see the pace over time and the elevation profile of the run. In all, garmin gives you all the info you need to inform your training and see your progress over time.

The RunKeeper, I splurged on the Pro Version, provides an audio cue with milage, time and pace that can be set to announce your stats every 5 minutes, every mile or on demand. The pace that is announced is the current pace, and I wish I had the option to hear the average over the designated time or distance. The audio cues are a nice solution to the battery drain problem on the iPhone as it allows you to darken the screen while running, but I think a simple timer and pace display designed in gray on a mostly black screen would be another nice feature to add. I started teh run with a full battery and was down to the 20% battery warning by the 2 hour mark of the run even with the screen off, so RunKeeper may not be the best solution for marathon training unless you are world class. The software also allows you to build training programs — intervals etc — but I will write about those as I use them.

While the two devices reported slightly different distances, +/- 5%, the only major discrepancy was in the elevation profile and total elevation gain. I am not sure why the actual elevation readings would be different, but it does seem that the RunKeeper may look at net elevation gain over each mile resulting in a total of 993 ft vs. the Garmin report of 7,711 ft. From being on the run, it did feel like we climbed a lot more than 1,000 feet.

For me, the magic in the RunKeeper comes in the analysis of the runs and the UI of the map. The data is uploaded to the web as you run and I was able to look at my results while stretching even though I had left my phone in the car. The overlays of speed and elevation are very nice and the interactive maps help bring the data layers of time, speed, and place together in the review.

I am looking forward to tracking my runs and rides again, as I have not done this activly since 2003 while training for the Ironman. If anyone has suggestions for other solutions I would love to hear about them here, or on Twitter, just tag them with #runningtech and I will be sure to find them.