The Wall Street Journal published the recipients of their annual Innovation Awards, and there are quite a few visualization-oriented winners.
The one most people are talking about is Unity’s win in the Software category:
San Francisco-based Unity Technologies won in this category for a set of game-development tools that make it cheap and easy to create three-dimensional interactive content, including games, training simulations and medical visualizations, for a range of devices from cellphones to game systems.
The software for creating 3D online universes typically requires teams of engineers who spend years creating and refining these tools. As a result, they’re often too complex and expensive for small-scale or amateur game developers.
Unity’s software simplifies the process of building 3D games and other programs. It includes an easy-to-use editor that can take prefabricated components—rain or falling crates, for example—and combine them with other features to create full game environments.
But they’re not the only ones. Some others to see:
Consumer Electronics, Runners up:
NanoLumens Inc., U.S.: Lightweight digital displays that are flexible, thin and energy efficient. The first product, a 112-inch display, weighs less than 90 pounds, is less than an inch thick and consumes less energy than five light bulbs.
Ford Motor Co., U.S.: MyFord Touch, an instrument panel for cars that replaces traditional buttons, knobs and gauges with voice commands, customizable LCD screens and five-way controls on the steering wheel similar to those on cellphones and MP3 players.
Nokia Corp., Finland: An “augmented reality” browser for mobile devices, called Point & Find, that lets users get information about real-life objects by pointing a camera phone at the object.
Medical Devices Winner:
Zoom Focus Eyewear LLC, winner of the overall Silver award, won in this category. (See “ A Different Kind of Eyeglasses “)
Network/Broadband Winner:
Vidyo Inc., based in Hackensack, N.J., won in this category with its technology for delivering high-quality videoconferencing over the Internet or cellular networks at a fraction of the cost of dedicated “telepresence” systems.
and Runnerup:
Microsoft Corp., U.S.: An experimental Internet application, called Pivot, designed to help users to explore, organize and visualize collections of data quickly by showing relationships between the information.
The WSJ Technology Innovation Award Winners, Category by Category – WSJ.com.
