The £1K Entries 2003-04

3D Imaging

3D Imaging - To create a simple to use cost effective software application for the life sciences market. Market research so far carried out has shown a clear need for such an application, at an affordable price for the customer

ABC

The company aims to promote a cleaner and safer environment while offering significant savings to the consumer. We, the company, have developed a simple process that produces a diesal-standard fuel offering a realistic, environmentally friendly alternative to conventional motor fuels for inner-city taxis

Active Camera

Active Camera offers a low-cost computer controlled image recording system to capture dynamic scenes.

Art-Hole.com

Art-Hole.com exists to provide printing, sales and distribution services to talented new artists. Currently many new, or part time artists have difficulty selling and marketing their work due to the limited time and facilities they have at their disposal. By recognising this need, and bringing efficient web based sales to the problem, we have created a business mutually profitable both for us and for contributing artists. Art-Hole.com is in the process of incorportating at present and will seek to start trading in June 2004.

B.*.T.C.H ClubWear

There is always a niche in the fashion and clothing inudstry for new, innovative products. B.*.T.C.H (Babe in Total Control of Herself) Club Wear is a trendy, vibrant clubbing wear line designed for women for are constantly looking for something different to add to their wardrobe! This clothing line incorporates clour-changing fabric, i.e. fabric that changes colours according to variations in temperature. Utilising the latest technology, the clothes constantly change colur according to the body temperature, and is forseen to be the new "love indicator" on the scence. People's body temperature change according to their moods, as well as their surronding environment. Women wearing B.*.T.C.H wear will be able to flaunt their confidence and display their emotions without having to voice them out. In today's over-saturated and highly competitive fashion industry, B.*.T.C.H wear stands to carve a niche for itself by being the first of its kind in concept and marketing startegy.

Babble

Babble is an intermediary publishing house that liasises with customers and content publishers and allows customers to "build a book" by specifiying content from different sources (e.g. publishers or titles). Babble then homogenise, pring, bind and deliver the customised book. This process is particularly attractive for material in the scientific and technical fields and for travel and other reference material. The Babble method is unique because it allows users to create coherent, personalised publications that fit their precise needs

The recombinant therapeutic protein (biopharmaceutical) market is currently over $17 billion in annual sales. With the current rapid expansion of this market, protein manufacturing capacity will soon be a bottleneck. BioCellecta's mission is to solve this biopharmaceutical production challenge. Using proprietary technology, BioCellecta will create novel mammalian cell lines especially selected for biopharmaceutical production in industrial conditions. With its uniqure position, BioCellecta should rapidly become an essential supplier of reagents for biopharmaceutical production. In order to develop its collection of proprietary cell lines, BioCellecta is seeking £250,000

BioCognate

BioCognate is an internet resource for protocols and workflows in biology. BioCognate's interface makes it easy for biologists to upload their own protocols into the repository; browse protocols already in the repository; define new protocols in terms of exisiting protocols (either through inheritance and modification, or via joining existing protocols together). BioCognate also provides tools for creating, storing and visualizing experimental workflows built from component protocols, and for generating publication quality diagrammatic representations of these workflows

BlueInstruments

Reliability is a very important issue in power stations. Each blackout can cause damage to the tune of billions of pounds. Most blackouts are caused by the failures of turbine generators. The rotor is a major part of a turbine generator. Accurate instrumentation is required to enable the prevention of rotor failures and hence possible blackouts. Due to the fact that the rotor is moving and awkardly located, instrumentation is difficult. BlueInstruments has developed a technology that can access the rotor in a safe and reliable manner. This will enable the lifetime of turbine generators to be extended (by up to 10%) by applying optimum adjustments to the generation system.

Coventry NT

Coventry NT is a company formed to market carbon nanostructured products, which are the main components of many next-generation products based on cutting edge nano-technology research. Appllications include light weight sport materials, nano-chips, artificial muscles and a new-generation of displays for computers and TV sets with field emission technology.

CarPC

We wish to introduce the technology of a desktop PC to the car, allowing both driver and passenders to access the level of information and entertainment they are used to at home wherever they may be, to integrate this sytem with the owner's home PC and all in such a way that almost no technical knowledge is required

CoolCycle

CoolCycle is a high-tech company based in Coventry , UK . It is dedicated to providing a new generation of bicycles and bicycle accessories with the aim of initiating a revolution in modern environmentally transportation, both in the UK and the world

We have created a distributed air freshening system using our patent protected microcapillary technology. This system provides huge advantages over existing methods of air freshening through centralisation and flexibility! This product is targetted at large commercial projects such as supermarkets. In this market air freshening is a necessary purchase and experiments have already been carried out with distributed air freshening. These lacked the technology and sophistication of our products but show the market has potential.

Dolphin Solutions

Dolphin Solutions will address the large market opportunity for technology-based systems to assis lifeguards in detecting unconcious casulties. The product to be launched is the Lifeguard Alert System, which essentially comprises a wristband that monitors the movement of the swimmer and if they remain motionless for 45 seconds, a signal is sent from the wristband, via a wireless base station, to a pager worn by the lifeguard. This ensures the lifeguard is aware that the swimmer maybe unconscious.

freeNETS

Communication has brought prosperity, knowledge and happiness to the places it has reached. It has revolutionised the way we work, the way we live. But much of the world has been left out of this breakthrough. Africa lacks a basic communication infrastructure. During my travels I have seen first hand how difficult it can sometimes be a to make a phone call, send or receive email or browse the internet. Where these services are available I have seen the difference they make: in hospitals, schools or family homes. By personal ambition and the will to make a difference, I am settuing up a charitable organisation, freeNETS, to change this. The technologies we use to communicate in the Western world are prohibitly expensive for the majority of the developing world. Instead we will use open source ideas with hardware handed down as "yesterday's computers" to implement communication networks where they are needed.

Fusion

Fusion is a choleserol reducing smoothie drink. The market opporunity is the fusion of two rapidly gowing markets - the functional foods and smoothie drinks. This market opportunity coupled with our well-proven technology of phytosterols to reduce cholesterol and a large user base - 13 million people in the UK are concerned about their cholesterol levels - makes Fuesion a very attractive investement opportunity.

GA Solutions ( uk ) Ltd

GA solutions is a spin out from Coventry University , based around a team of 4 academics. We have developed a series of algorithms for speeding up computations involved in 3d computer graphics, geometric computing, and modeling of electromagnetic fields. We aim to market these through software development and consultancy agreements.

High-Performance Alloys

A more efficient production of advanced materials that will provide customers with top-quality high-technology products at much lower prices.

We propose a new security radio frequency identification (RFID) based technology for portable devices. The security mechanism is composed of a chis embedded into the mobile device that wirelessly authenticates the user against a separate RFID chip. Being hardware-based, the system ismore secure than current software-based methods.

iX

If you were given the chance to have a 30 minute one-to-one conversation with anyone in the world today, would you take it? Out of everyone- sporting heroes, film stars, music divas, artists, Nobel laureates, business analysts, great world thinkers, chat show hosts and so on- who would it be? What about if you could go backstage at your music idols show, buy a dress from an Oscar winner, get the ball that was played in the rugby world cup final, signed personalised photos, and so on and so on……where the proceeds go to charity? This is iX, an organisation which will work closely with charities to provide a central web portal similar to eBay where people bid for goods and the money goes to a good cause.

Kludge

Kludge is an online music magazine that covers all genres of music based on musicianship and depth over popularity and hype. With a solid onine presence of three years and an established relationship with the music industry, we are ready to expand our coverage into new fields of the human subject, whilst avoiding the biased superficial coverage that abounds our mainstream media. We will first expand and develop our online presence, then introduce a print version. Our vision is to become a powerful conglomerate in the media industry that is able to speak freely and openly.

Konscious Systems

Konscious systems will develop an associative classification and knowledge management system. By connecting organisations and people, this system will eventually evolve to a Global Knowledge Exchange and facilitate intellectual capital flow. Collectrive knowledge of individuals far exceeds the capacity of each and hence management of knowledge resources will improve performance by orders of magnitude. Konscious systems propose a three phase process beginning with customized solutions for corporate clients, finally leading to the global system which will consolidate the entire human knowledge bank and might even begin to exhibit consciousness!

Listo Solutions

Listo Solutions goal is to be the premier sutom content provider of e-learning in the asia pacific region.

LiveRight

It is widely acknowledged that a balanced diet is vitally important to healthy living; but do most people know what they eat? The LiveRight system is baed around an easy-to-use device which gives people a full nutritional analysis of their food consumption, offers advice on what to eat, records exercise and tracks weight - providing an all-round solution to the stresses of modern life.

MasaVan Ltd. Will be a company dedicated to providing a self-sustainable income source to missionaries and other Charity workers worldwide through the means of organic vanilla farming in Masaka , Uganda . It will also provide much needed jobs and both agricultural and business experience in the local community. MasaVan will look to be profitable within 3 years and be completely self sufficient for around 25 years after that, producing an annual income of £79,000 which should be capable of supporting 4 missionaries or charity workers. Through expansion every 5 years into other vacant land in the same area MasaVan will be able to continue to support these and other workers as well as the local community. MasaVan will also be able to act as a business model for other similar enterprises that could be set up elsewhere in the world in support of other charitable organisations

McFunghi

A wholesome product nutured in a scenic of Scotland with climate and position making a unique offering in the UK with huge potential for growth.

Merlin

We propose a novel electronic menu ordering system, with a broad application in a variety of restaurant types and other food supplying venues. It will comprise of a colour flat touch screen placed at each restaurant table or ordering points. This device will enable customers to view the menu in detail and place their orders electronically. By virtue of a wireless connection to a central terminal. The order will be forwarded to the kitchen for direct execution. This will enable staff to work more efficiently on food preparation and delivery as well as greatly facilitating menu, price, and afterfluctuations and changes it will also open the way to new and existing possibilities such as provision of news and entertainment information, product advertising, customers "loyality" poins and refined statistical analysis of product demand. In addition, the device could be adapted to a portable "virtual"menu book for use in exclusive venues, or could incorporate a credit / debit card swipe capability for use in fast food outlets.

Mobile Enterprises Ltd.

Mobile phones, at present, represent a valuable and somewhat untapped medium for advertising. The difficulties associated with obtaining phone numbers without breaking the provisions of the Data Protection Act mean that it is only the phone companies who are able to 'mass SMS' the general public. Mobile Enterprises would be therefore responsible for the design and implementation of a system which would be able to send mass advertisements via SMS to mobile phone users anonymously, thus circumventing the provisions of the DPA. It would do this while phone users are on the move in cities or towns, and would be implemented in such a way that they would not be relentlessly 'spammed'. The system would be both cheap to omplement, would bot require patents of any form and would only be open to those advertisers who wish to take part in the scheme, i.e. it would be immune to free-riders. Interested?

MyInsurance

Vision: Bring transparency and simplicity to insurance . . . . At last! MyInsurance aims at managing the 'insurance portfolio' of indiciduals and companies in order to achieve a greater transparency and simplicity while allowing them to save money on their insurance expenditures.

Neptune Advanced Systems, LLC

Nuptune Advanced Systems (NAS), is taking boat fire safety to a new level by offering to boat owners and marina operators a new generation of fire prevention systems called Boat Alert! By leveraging recent advances in Micro-Electronic-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) biosensors, fuzzy logic, and Radio Frequency (RF) technologies, Boat Alert! Continuously monitors a boat's total environment for dangerous gasses or electrical shorts ahead of a potentially hazardous event. Unlike most marine fire prevention and detection systems, boat alert protects one's boat when left unattended and always notifies the appropriate authorities when an actual threat is confirmed.

Oil Gelation Technologies

Oil spills are a significant problem to world environment and the shipping community.They are very expensive in terms of lost oil, and have extremely serious consequences in terms of the damage that is done to the ecology in the areas where they happen. I propose a system to enable relavtively cheap and effective clean-up of marine oil spills. This system is based on the technique of gelation, whereby a mixture of oil and water may be induced to separate by the addition of a gelling agent. The result is the formation of clean water and a gel containing the oil, which can then be easily collected. This method would have significant benefits both environmentally and economically.

OSEAN

The Organisation of Sustainable Engineering for ASEAN Nations (OSEAN) aims to implement sustainable engineering projects in the South East Asia (SEA) region. To provide opportunities for technological and cultural exchange between ASEAN students and students from the rest of the world. It is hoped that OSEAN will be the catalyst for which generations of people in SEA will work together to improve standards of living in the region whilst fostering friendshups, cooperation and intercultural exhanges of ideas for many years to come.

Poseidon Watermarkers Ltd.

Poseidon Watermarkers is a start-up venture that has identified an exiciting business opportunity in water supply and marine leisure industry. We are developing a product that is cost effective and versatile for the provision of day-to-day and emergency desalinated fresh drinking water.

ScaffoGen

Tissue engineering is a rapidly growing medical field, which has turned into a global industry and offers innovative treatment options for miliions of patients. ScaffoGen is a tissue engineering start-up that uses degradable scaffolds as implants for human tissue repair. Among its platform, ScaffoGen is currently developing ScaffoGen-Disc and ScaffoGen-Carti, products that repair defects associated with intervertebral disc and cartilage degeneration.

Sensergen

Sensergen is developing a technology platform focused on delivering the next generation of diagnostic systems for the control of food allergy. Our patented Immunotip technology has the capability to detect food allergens in a wide variety of foodstuffs and will prevent the life-threatening symptoms of allergenic disease. The technology, which has been developed by internationally recognised research groups at the Institute of Biotechnology , University of Coventry is poised to make a disruptive impact on the food processing industries, unlockinghidden calue linked to the food allergy epidemic. Sensergen aims to make MAY CONTAINS NUTS a phrase of the past. 

Sharkskin

SHARKSKIN will offer affordable summer water sports holidays for students, providing a summer equivalent to highly popular student skiing holidays. The wide range of activities available, lively group atmosphere, improved accessibility and low cost will broaden the market appeal of what is currently a minority activity amoung students. Our rapid expansion across British universities will result in us taking over 2000 students to a variety of resorts around the Mediterranean within five years.

Symference

Symference provides customised life-science computing to biotech companies. Symference delivers a workflow management tool and a bioinformatics developer's toolkit and provides training and consulting supportto enable the raid deployment of custom analyses. Symference has an open-source business model: both the workflow management tool and developer's toolkit are based on open-source software developed by members of Symference. By enabling low-cost customised analysis, Symference will transform bioinformatics from a cost to a source of competitive advantage.

TAPS

In the business world, the ability to generate effective actions plans from corporate strategies is just as important as henerating the strategies themselves. The truth is that many managers are lacking in the skills or tools to help them do so. Knowing which tactics to adopt to deliver your strategies, which is a key part of managerial problem-solving and decision-making, has become a major challenge for today's managers. TAPS is created and developed to ease this pain for organisations and managers. Developed at Coventry University , it is a user-friendly PC-based tool for systematically translating atrategy into action plans and retaining knowledge.

TellMe

TellMe: The Napster for Knowledge! TellMe connects customers in need of a speedy answer to people with the information at their fingertips. TellMe allows customers to quickly and cheaply: Price-match a product. Check sports results, cinema times, or settle arguments in the pub. The customer simply texts any question to us, and within 5 minutes the answer will be sent to their phone as a reverse billed premium rate SMS text message. No membership, registration, or account is needed. The questions are answered by humans at their home or work computers, via their Instant Messenger service.

TelMate

Telmate is a user-installable appliance that provides novel fixed-line telephony services to assist and enhance the home telephone network. These services include individual bills for memebers of a household, cheapest call routing, call limiting and access controls on a per person basis, voice activated dialling and phone book services, as well as traditional offerings such as individual voice mail and personalised ring tones.

The Wildlife Partnership

The Wildlife Partnership, a conservation venture that focuses on developing the local communitities that live near threatened habitats in order to provide a sustainable local economy that not only conserves the natural habitat but will also assist in the transition of the local economies. The Wildlife Partnership will be more than a conservation charity and ecotourism venture, it will be a vision of a community development, technology, education and health. Companies, educational, health and other organisations from communities in the developed world will contribute resources in terms of products, services and human resources that are relevant to and will help alleviate the population, development and economic pressures facing these communities and in return these organisations will receive certification and accreditation for it. In turn, these communities will carry out conservation projects and develop in an exonomically sustainable manner.

TOP of the CLASS

The purpose of the business is to improve the market of international student teaching programmes by introducing flexibility and adding a new dimension to it. Top of the Class would serve as a medium that would bring together, in an innovative way, students and school or summer camp governors who are looking to recruit. One of the ways in which the compnay will differentiate itself from other gap year / teach abroad-programme providers is by working with the top 1% of students in the country, or potentially worldwide, inorder to ensure the high quality of teaching and promotion of the best teaching practices such as the tutorial system. The scope for the growth and development of the company is extremely wide; hence, initially we will focus on Russia as a polot project, not least because there is an opportunity to establsih connections with the newly established private education sector in Eastern Europe .

Trafficiency

Trafficiency is a software package for the simulation of the flow of road traffic. It is designed to be used by traffic engineers to predict the efficiency of road systems and signal controllers. A new behavious model is used in order to obtain realistic results. Once the software is finished, it may by used by engineers to find ways of enhancing traffice flow and reducing emissions, delays and frustration.

Trans-Net

Mission : "To become the heart of a network which enables people to match their travel needs and find ways of meeting them by utilizing the use of means of transport."

Ultimate Comics

There are thousands of comics web-pages on the Internet today with millions of viewers and subscribers. However, these are mainly proprietary websites and do not consolidate comics from different souces. This means that a comics reader who likes different comics from different syndicates will have to subscribe to different sources and this could incur a high cost. Even after subscription, readers need to be online to view comics and they cannot be saved and sorted automatically and are not PDA friendly. The search engines on the comics databases are also very rudimentary. Ultimate Comics procides a solution to these comics enthusiats by offering them a software that has an advanced data mining and search engine, with artificial intelligence that can search for text as well as graphics for captions in the comics and will allow downloads from virtually any comics website in the world. The software is customisable and ahs a small enough footprint to support almost all PDAs (and future 3G mobile phones), allowing Ultimate Comics users to view their favourite comics any time, anywhere.

WayToSay

WayToSay brings conersation simulation technology to the consumer mass markets.

WHiZKiDS.com

No summary given

XenonOS Software

XenonOS Software, Inc. is developing a secure, reliable, and easy to use alternatice to the desktop operating system solutions available today. The product, called XenonOS, excels in security and robustness but, unlike other operating systems with these features, is easy to use and is highly interoperable. It achieves security and reliability by using the technologically advanced FreeBSD operating system at its core, and ease of use by being able to run Microsoft Windows applications and having a user-friendly graphical desktop envirnoment. We wioll provide prodcts for small to medium sized businesses as well as custom solutions for larger organisations