ECU Vice Chancellor Tom Feldbush sits in a command chair and is
instructed by Ideations president Matt Carbone, left, and multimedia
director Sam Baker, behind, during the company's open house on North
Greene Street on Wednesday in Greenville. The chair allows its user to
simultaneously work with and control multiple functions of large data
sets, such as large disaster scenes that require timely emergency and
relief personnel coordination.
Ideations Opens Office in City
By Ginger Livingston
The Daily Reflector
With enthusiasium and a vision for improving lives, a technology research
firm continues to plant its roots in Greenville.
Ideations LLC, a research and development firm specializing in technology
integration, held a ribbon-cutting and open house Wednesday at its
permanent offices in the Technology Enterprise Center on North Greene
Street.
"We've come a long way in a few months on a lot of levels," Matt Carbone,
company president, said.
The company employs five and collaborates with two researchers from East
Carolina University's Brody School of Medicine Telemedicine
Center.
Not only does the business have permanent office space, the company
received a $100,000 grant from the Department of Defense to develop tools
to more comfortably manage large amounts of complex information.
The company also developed a prototype for a portable game and computer
work station tentatively named Dream Station that it is testing with Stony
Brook University Hospital in Stony Brook, NY.
The company is doing technology consultation work.
"The Dream Station is probably where our focus is right now," Carbone
said. "This is the first application of the technology we've had."
Dream Station sprang from a conversation about how hospitals are
developing game and media rooms for young hospital patients. The question
arose about how a bed-ridden patient would use the rooms. Carbone and
others started sketching out ideas for a compact, portable machine that
would incorporate a PlayStation, DVD Player, wireless communication system
and a computer. Working with a Farmville company, Starling
Enterprises, the company built a prototype tested with colleague at Stony
Brook. The hospital has ordered several more machines, and other hospitals
have expressed interest in the equipment, Carbone said. Carbone
and his associates are finalizing plans for financing the manufacturing of
the system. "We feel like a big burden has been lifted off our
shoulders," he said. "Now we can get back into our typical, high energy
production mode."
Carbone and his team come from the nonprofit group,
Center for Really Neat Research, that was based in Syracuse, NY, in the
late 1990's. Carbone and his associates arrived in Greenville late
last year through contacts with the Telemedicine Center. In a January
interview, he said he wanted to focus on finding practical applications
for technological theory and finding ways to help the disabled with
technology. "The Dream Station" is the first application of all the
technology we've had," Carbone said.
During the open house the Ideations
team displayed the "command chair" system it is designing for the defense
department. The ergonomically designed chair, which is suspended in a
frame, contains two computer monitors which allow the occupant to monitor
multiple images and flows of information, he said.
