A well-known proverb states that “Walls have ears”, meaning, eavesdropping can occur when you least expect it. But how many times have you found yourself wondering about the stories different object could tell us, if they could only talk? Take, for example, this red fire hydrant. I recently became aware of this cool startup that enables water pipes to listen to themselves, analyze the sounds retrospectively and figure out useful things. Take a look at this hydrant: it’s red, neat, and does nothing to indicate what is going on beneath the surface of the sidewalk, for example - a leak! A leak from water pipes is problematic to say the least, but it some areas of the globe it can be dangerous and extremely costly. A startup called aquarius-spectrum has invented the technology to allow any pipe outlet to literally listen inside, and the results can be very surprising! This technology is so sensitive that it can distinguish between minor water leakages along pipes embedded dee

Today I had a chance to talk with two different lab managers. Their labs both love and use LabSuit's order management. One lab manager talked about an inherent challenge that every lab faces. Another lab manager proposed a solution, and it's working! 1st lab manager said: "Well, I wish we had a "magical plug" that would remind my lab members to update inventory items, when they physically move them from one location to another in the lab. Since the "plug" doesn't exist, the synchronization between actual inventory and its digital representation maybe a challenging thing". 2nd  lab manager said:  I'm going to repeat it as a mantra from today: "You don't have to be that much of a discipline-person with LabSuit.  Every time the item is delivered, I click " Mark as Delivered " button which automatically updates or adds new inventory item. That's exactly what we need - with minimum effort we get very good syn

Recently we improved orders management module in LabSuit.  Lets't take this classical case as a example. In a typical lab there are two persons responsible for ordering. The first just approves the order, which is then submitted to the order manage, who actually orders it. Usually these functions are strictly separated and often, this two people do not meet for a couple of days, for example a PI who is traveling and a lab secretary, who's most of the time is on campus. The steps go as follows: 1) A graduate/PhD student enters a product, and chooses a) an approval manager and b) an order manager 2) The approval manager gets an notification and approves or rejects an order request 3) In the first case the order manager gets an notification and orders the product  4) In the second case the user entering the request gets notified. 5)  A grad student/PhD gets the product delivered The roles of a grad student, approval manager and orders manager are dynamic an

Just yesterday I had chance of introducing LabSuit to a delegation from Moscow. The delegation came for a visit to Technion to see how things work and learn if they can find something applicable to their institute. Beyond overwhelming academic programs, they got introduced to Biztec, Technion's accelerator. I've been asked many interesting questions both about LabSuit (the institute they came from deals a lot with materials, so we had some common ground), and about Biztec itself. One of the questions still excites me (obviously it does, since I decided to write a blog post about it). The person asked: - I understand, that Technion Biztec accelerator is great, owing to numerous mentors, that themselves are Technion graduates in the past, often successful entrepreneurs and hold executive position in the companies they founded. - Exactly! So they come to mentor young teams and their contribution is huge!  I said - But how could that be? - he asked me. "A successful

Some time ago one of our team members got a telephone call from Prof. Smaryau Hoz. He asked for help in finding and delivering one chemical from Technion. Though it was typical request for us, we were pleasantly surprised by what Prof. Shmarayu said about this experience. "A while ago I suggested to Udi Keinan that the ICS [ Israel Chemical Society ] open and run a Yad 2 site for chemicals. I am happy to see that it has materialized in the form of Labsuit and from my single experience with you it worked out very well" Prof. Shamryau Hoz