2004/05, £1k Winner
Anti-Adblock
A large proportion of internet "content" sites (media, search, webmail, etc) rely on advertising revenue for support. Frequently this advertising is performed via click-through images and links. However, this client-side filtering of such material is becoming increasingly popular - the fastest growing share of the browser market is now "Firefox" (over 23M downloads), for which the second most popular extension is a client-side filter (with over 1M users). Such filtering has been available for several years, but is only now becoming "mass market", and thus having a direct impact on the global US$10Bn/yr internet advertising revenue that allows many content sites to survive.
Anti-AdBlock provides a robust solution to this problem, involving a relatively straightforward modification to web-server software. The most common web-server in the market is Apache, which is open source and allows for production of derivative works.
Anti-AdBlock is seeking funds to obtain a US Software patent to protect intellectual property before licensing modified web-server "know-how" to internet media and advertising companies.
Floating Clinic
Our mission is to establish a fully-funded Floating Clinic to facilitate the provision of basic healthcare services in remote parts of Timor Leste. The Floating Clinic, a medically equipped and staffed boat, will travel around the mainland of Timor Leste and its offshore islands. The project will be undertaken in collaboration with a local healthcare provider, responsible for the day to day operations. An extensive fundraising campaign will be conducted in Australia, Singapore and the UK to raise funds to support the Floating Clinic. It is intended as a demonstration project, with long term viability assessed after 5 years.
GreenPowerGenerators
Reduction in power generation costs will reduce the electricity charge for customers. Two major costs in all power stations are Equipment and Maintenance costs. Higher efficiencies also cheapen electricity charges and benefit environment. Reliability is a very important issue in power stations. Each blackout can cause damage to the tune of billions of pounds. Most blackout caused by the failures of turbine generators. GreenPowerGenerators has developed a novel brushless doubly-fed generator for wind and wave power stations. The novel generator has less manufacturing costs (by down to 10%) and maintenance costs (by down to 60%) and is more efficient (by up to 5%) and more reliable. It operates in a wider range of speeds and introduces higher power quality into the grid (i.e. less harmonic pollution). The market for this technology is largely composed of power plant suppliers. Electrical motor and generator manufacturers are also the target companies. Since the technology is innovative and critical, there is great market potential.
Medicines For Humanity
One-third of the world's population does not have access to essential medicines. Pharmaceutical companies have reputational and financial incentives to donate medicines. However, the medical donations process is not meeting its potential. The key problem is a lack of accurate and comprehensive information on unmet medical needs and sources of donations. The MedMap database will provide this, thereby facilitating communication between donors, recipients, and donation channels, and raising public awareness of good medical donations. By consolidating information crucial to all stakeholders, Medicines for Humanity will enable the distribution of the right medicines to the right people at the right time.
Wheelchair Drive
Development of a low-cost, detachable power unit to fit 70% of the UK's 400,000 manual wheelchairs - offering power, steering and regenerative braking for the wheelchair user or an attendant at a much lower price than a powerchair.