p/bBy David Reid/bbr /Reporter, BBC Clickbr /pp/p b With Europe badly hit by the global economic climate change, David Reid tries to find out if the will to innovate has been blunted./b/pp He talked to three organisations developing either new gadgets or software - in the time-honoured way that the technology industry has of innovating. /pp b Saving money/b/pp Logic Wireless is battling on to get its gadget - a combined mobile phone and projector - noticed despite the current difficult market conditions./ppimg src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45628000/jpg/_45628857_projmob_203.jpg" align="left" width="203" height="152" alt="Projector mobile phone" border="0" vspace="4" hspace="4"/pp The slim gadget, called the Logic Bolt, has everything you would expect in a smart phone such as a touch screen and three megapixel camera plus the projector. /pp Said spokesman Adam Aronoff: quot;It is a tough time to launch a new product, however... we feel we've got some hot technology that is right and really fills a need.quot; /pp quot;It does all your word documents, Powerpoints, and movies,quot; he said. quot;Anything you can display on the screen of the phone, you can display on the wall.quot; /pp The projected display can be up to 64in (162cm) across. /pp b Commercial potential/b/pp The Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications in Berlin has developed an ingenious device that could potentially save clothes makers time and money. /pp The so-called virtual mirror simulates different patterns and colours on a model to allow manufacturers to play with designs without actually producing them. /pp quot;You can stand in front of a mirror with a green T-shirt and you can interactively exchange the texture and the colour of the shirt,quot; said Anna Hilsmann from the Heinrich Hertz Institute at the Fraunhofer. /pp The Fraunhofer is best known for inventing the MP3 or MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 to give it a slightly fuller title. The data compression system came to prominence as it as the format of choice for those swapping music via the net. /pp b Open source/b/ppimg src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45628000/jpg/_45628856_anna_203.jpg" align="left" width="203" height="152" alt="Anna Hilsmann from the Fraunhofer Institute" border="0" vspace="4" hspace="4"/pp Germany's University of Applied Sciences in Wildau is another of many European research institutes where ideas for products originate. /pp The Accident Alert for mobile phones created by researchers at the university is the sort of gizmo that would do well in good economic times. /pp The handset's automatic crash alerter sends out an SMS to a pre-defined recipient, such as a friend or the police, on sensing impact. /pp quot;In the course of an accident and the G-force being high enough to hurt your body, the device will send a short message to a police station,quot; explained Martin Schern from the Faculty of Technology and Computer Science at Wildau. /pp quot;You will be able to get to the position where the accident has happened and give medical help and pick up the person and get them to a hospital,quot; he added. /pp But if the handset is simply dropped, for instance, then its owner can cancel the alert. /pp The makers of the Accident Alert phone used the open source platform Openmoko to develop their product. /pp Open source is a cost-effective way to get technical help from others who could also contribute their ideas to an innovation./phrpThis article is from the a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk"BBC News website/a. #169; British Broadcasting Corporation/pdiv class="feedflare"
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