Nibs

The students received 500 euros for winning this seventh annual entrepreneurs contest, plus additional funds to support their plan to commercially develop the battery. In total, 402 new business ideas were submitted, of which ten made the New Venture shortlist. Den Uijl and Bouman first met each other when they both followed the course, ‘Product Service Systems’, which is open to students of Erasmus University and TU Delft. One of the course’s assignments was to draw up a business plan for a new company. Bouman believes the New Venture Prize will help launch the battery on the commercial market. The first prototype of the battery has been sent to China for production. It should be in stores in 18 months, retailing for around 70 euros.

www.newventure.nl
Hacked

The website of student society Sint Jansbrug was hacked and has been shut down temporarily. The Society’s treasurer, Jonathan Joubert, said a Trojan horse was placed in one of the site’s programs: “We noticed that the hacker was trying to hack another site using ours.” Joubert doesn’t believe that a rival student society is behind the attack: “If it was a joke a society was playing on us, they would’ve told us by now. But right now we still have no idea who has done this.”
Blather

A group called ‘Die Coffye Vlagh’, part of the Delft Student Corps student society, is a finalist for the Kopspijker prize, called ‘De Gouden Zwatelaar’. The word ‘zwatelaar‘ isn’t found in the dictionary, but it means ‘blather’ or ‘drivel’. The students were nominated because, a few months ago, as a joke, they had brought a pig to the wedding of an ex-group member. The incident gained national media coverage when the students were later accused of abusing the pig.
Googled

The libraries of five of the world’s most important academic institutions are to be digitized by Google. Scanned pages from books in the public domain will then be made available for search and reading online. The full libraries of Michigan and Stanford universities, as well as archives at Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library are included. Online pages from scanned books will not have adverts but will have links to online store Amazon, Google said. “The goal of the project is to unlock the wealth of information that is offline and bring it online,” said Susan Wojcicki, director of product management at Google. There will also be links to public libraries so that the books can be borrowed. It will take six years to digitize the full collection at Michigan, which contains seven million volumes. Harvard is limiting its participation to 40,000 books, while Oxford wants Google to scan books originally published in the 19th Century and held in the Bodleian Library.
Water-less

For an entire day the residents of the student housing complex Krakeelhof couldn’t use the toilets and couldn’t take showers. A broken water pipe left the complex without water from early in the morning. And it proved a difficult problem for maintenance workers to fix, as they searched all day to find and fix the broken pipe. It wasn’t until early evening that the water was once again flowing and toilets could be flushed. To fix the problem permanently, however, the water will once again have to be shut off for an entire day.

Inventive

With their invention of a battery that can be charged within 30 seconds and a new type of solar cell, TU Delft Industrial Design student Crijn Bouman, and his partner Simon den Uijl, a student at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University, won the first round of the New Venture Prize. The students received 500 euros for winning this seventh annual entrepreneurs contest, plus additional funds to support their plan to commercially develop the battery. In total, 402 new business ideas were submitted, of which ten made the New Venture shortlist. Den Uijl and Bouman first met each other when they both followed the course, ‘Product Service Systems’, which is open to students of Erasmus University and TU Delft. One of the course’s assignments was to draw up a business plan for a new company. Bouman believes the New Venture Prize will help launch the battery on the commercial market. The first prototype of the battery has been sent to China for production. It should be in stores in 18 months, retailing for around 70 euros.

www.newventure.nl
Hacked

The website of student society Sint Jansbrug was hacked and has been shut down temporarily. The Society’s treasurer, Jonathan Joubert, said a Trojan horse was placed in one of the site’s programs: “We noticed that the hacker was trying to hack another site using ours.” Joubert doesn’t believe that a rival student society is behind the attack: “If it was a joke a society was playing on us, they would’ve told us by now. But right now we still have no idea who has done this.”
Blather

A group called ‘Die Coffye Vlagh’, part of the Delft Student Corps student society, is a finalist for the Kopspijker prize, called ‘De Gouden Zwatelaar’. The word ‘zwatelaar‘ isn’t found in the dictionary, but it means ‘blather’ or ‘drivel’. The students were nominated because, a few months ago, as a joke, they had brought a pig to the wedding of an ex-group member. The incident gained national media coverage when the students were later accused of abusing the pig.
Googled

The libraries of five of the world’s most important academic institutions are to be digitized by Google. Scanned pages from books in the public domain will then be made available for search and reading online. The full libraries of Michigan and Stanford universities, as well as archives at Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library are included. Online pages from scanned books will not have adverts but will have links to online store Amazon, Google said. “The goal of the project is to unlock the wealth of information that is offline and bring it online,” said Susan Wojcicki, director of product management at Google. There will also be links to public libraries so that the books can be borrowed. It will take six years to digitize the full collection at Michigan, which contains seven million volumes. Harvard is limiting its participation to 40,000 books, while Oxford wants Google to scan books originally published in the 19th Century and held in the Bodleian Library.
Water-less

For an entire day the residents of the student housing complex Krakeelhof couldn’t use the toilets and couldn’t take showers. A broken water pipe left the complex without water from early in the morning. And it proved a difficult problem for maintenance workers to fix, as they searched all day to find and fix the broken pipe. It wasn’t until early evening that the water was once again flowing and toilets could be flushed. To fix the problem permanently, however, the water will once again have to be shut off for an entire day.