Welcome to Impromptu, Prompt's weekly newsletter.

This week, we're recognising our Cambridge neighbour's 150th year in existence with stories, numbers and websites celebrating the venerable institution. Rob finds the crafty students are able to get more mileage out their gaming systems than most, I look at the next generation of space travel and Dave shows how MIT's contemporaries are advancing technology and innovation in the UK.

Despite our best efforts, MIT isn't as involved in the media as it is in other fields, but 'Go Figure' shines a light on facts about the institute, while our website of the week takes an innovative look at progressing homelessness awareness.

Thanks for reading, and please let us know if there are any topics you would like us to cover in this space.

Cheers,
Hazel Butters
CEO
Prompt Communications
Twitter: @PromptLondon and @PromptBoston

MIT makes gaming useful everywhere

By Rob Ramos

We live in a digital world. I, for instance, can talk to my alarm clock to turn it off and it reads me the weather while I stir and force myself to get out of bed. I think this is fantastic. But I know there is a ton more that can be done, and will be done in the future. Living and working near MIT lets us get a first hand glimpse at some of those that may be far from production but are certainly possible.

This week, there have been a few stories that caught my eye from those wonderful folks down the road from Prompt Boston. Working in an international agency prevents us from meeting face-to-face with some of our colleagues as much as we'd like. Skype is nice but has its flaws, and as new folks join the team, putting a name to a face isn't always possible. MIT recognizes this and, by hacking Microsoft's Xbox Kinect, has created a video conferencing service that highlights who is speaking by blurring out others and timing how long they've been talking. The Kinect has gotten a lot of grief for not having the games to back up the powerful tech it contains, but more and more we're seeing innovative ways to use this console.

Continuing the hacking of video game systems, a student found a giant Augmented Reality card hanging from the roof of one of the buildings on campus. Taking advantage of the card there, he pulled out his new Nintendo 3DS and was able to project his Nintendo Mii avatars on the card through his handheld system. Before the card was taken down he was able to show various Mii's sky diving and doing a Conga line.

It's clear that either on-the-fly or with some planning, MIT folks can make a lot of great tools even better. Unfortunately, they're not quite so great at predicting outcomes for our local sports teams...

Fly me (back) to the moon

By Hazel Butters

This week SpaceX unveiled its new rocket, the Falcon Heavy. It's poised to become the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V. Rated to carry a payload of 53 metric tonnes — twice the weight the Space Shuttle can carry, a relatively paltry 24 tons. It's been labelled as the next rocket that can take us to the moon

The rocket is powered by an array of 27 engines, nine on each core, providing 3.8 million pounds of thrust, equivalent to the power of 15 Boeing 747s at full power at once. The entire unit meets NASA human transport standards, which has led Elon Musk to claim that it will lead the next-generation of moon transportation.

While far from the worldwide event that the first moon landing created, this new rocket should breathe new life into a space programme that has seen its budget drop in the last fifteen years and is constantly under criticism for its lack of results from politicians.

NASA's space programme has long been guided by those moulded by the American system, including Buzz Aldrin who declined a full scholarship to MIT. As the private sector's space development advances, NASA may have little choice but to reach out to them for the resources necessary to get them back on top.

Future bright for UK higher education research

By Dave Wilby

The universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Manchester and Southampton as well as the extremely accessible Open University, are consistently lauded among the best performing institutions in this area, according to annually published independent guides.

But with technological innovation increasingly playing a leading role in research, breakthroughs are now just as likely to be made by talented teams in any one of the nation's higher educational establishments, or even several at once.

This week, Molecular Solar, a consortium instigated by Warwick University, working with Imperial College London together with a number of private sector firms, received a further £1.4 million in funding from the Technology Strategy Board and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to develop prototype organic solar cells for the commercial market.

Professor Tim Jones from the University of Warwick told Solar Power Portal: "We are working with solar cells made from organic semiconductor materials. They are made from sustainable materials and can be deployed as flexible sheets that could be used for a variety of applications including: a solar powered mobile phone charger that rolls up into a shape as small as the size of a pen, micro-lights that can be added to clothing, and a detachable sun-shade for automobile windscreens that powers a small integral fan to circulate air and cool the interior of the car when parked in direct sunlight."

In total the consortium led by Warwick now consists of 15 British businesses and seven universities that are also sharing £5 million of government funding to enable them to research the use of novel nano-scale technologies to develop the next generation of solar energy technology.

Welcome
Technology News MIT makes gaming useful everywhere Fly me (back) to the moon Future bright for UK higher education research Go Figure
US Media Updates
UK Media Updates
WOTW
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As you've no doubt noticed, we've tied MIT into our stories this week in honor of its 150th anniversary of being chartered. We continue the recognition by finding figures that speak to MIT's reputation, success and longevity as a premier research institute.

• 9 — Nobel Prize winners currently at MIT
• 63 — total Nobel Prize winners related to MIT
• 1,017 — faculty size
• 115 — countries with representation in student body at MIT
• 10.1 percent — applicants offered admission to the undergraduate program at MIT
• $311.4 million — cash gifts received by MIT in 2010

Source: MIT facts

Facebook is mainly used as a social network for friends and family and rarely as a credible news source. But now Facebook is trying to change that and become a better resource for journalists. It's planning to have its first Facebook Journalists Meet up Program on April 27 at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California. The meeting is an attempt to improve its relationship with media organizations and journalists and show how to use Facebook more as a source than a tool to stalk follow people.

The death of the newspaper industry has been greatly exaggerated. Can we say the same for the network evening news? This week soon to be former CBS senior political analyst Jeff Greenfield appeared on daytime TV to discuss his departure from the network and delivered some candid thoughts on the future of the format, saying he didn't think they had much time left and felt one of the big three (ABC, CBS or NBC) may soon change their approach fundamentally. "There is something about that format, which was born out of radio, and made sense when you couldn't see pictures of the world anywhere else," he said.

The Publican's Morning Advertiser is the new merged publication that was once The Publican and Morning Advertiser. Each periodical's magazine, website and event will be shared in the unified publication, which officially began 7 April.

In an effort to entice potential bidders, Barclays bank has predicted that Richard Desmond's four national newspapers will see their profits double over the next two years. Citing improved printing processes, and a move from the Docklands to a new centralised media hub in Luton, the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday all could be worth roughly £500 million up from the £125 million Desmond paid for the titles in 2000.

If there's one common theme running through all of the stories in this week's MIT special edition of Impromptu, it's that innovation and technology will always go hand-in-hand. Just recently, the Guardian announced its MediaGuardian Innovation Award winners. Among the big brand winners you might have guessed would be flexing their budgets to make design breakthroughs — Nike, Nokia, E Ink — was the iHobo project. It's an extremely innovative

website and free app that promotes awareness of street living by providing you with a realistic 'tamagotchi' homeless person to look after for three days and to try to keep from harm. The issues highlighted are harsh, but they are communicated in a high-tech fashion that has particularly appealed to urban teenagers with smartphones who take vagrancy for granted in the cities in which they live. The site and app were developed by Publicis London for the Depaul UK youth homelessness charity, and donations can be made via the site or app.