His new project is Flimmer (German for ‘flicker’). We don’t know a huge amount about it, other than its promise to deliver “a unique approach to the marketing of films and games.”

Flimmer’s preliminary homepage includes the tagline “Earn Per View”, and local media reports have quoted the company as saying it is “the first film portal where the user is rewarded for paying attention to the trailer”. It all sounds a bit confusing, and Flimmer’s press spokesman wasn’t available for comment, so we’ll just have to wildly guess that it’s some kind of breakthrough in the evolution of the content industry. Or not.

According to Deutsche Startups, Emmerich’s partner is another (albeit less well-known) German director, Marco Kreuzpaintner. The company is also being run by a film producer, Christopher Zwickler.

In case you’re thinking this is all a bit too creative-heavy, there does appear to be an established business brain in the team, in the form of Alexander Artopé, CEO of peer-to-peer credit marketplace Smava.

We shall find out more when Flimmer goes live in Germany on August 16 — including whether or not it will be an international play.

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Basic fireworks apps

My number one pick for a traditional fireworks app would have to go to iLoveFireworks. It looked the best on a large display, supported multi-touch, and had a good variety of random firework bursts. It can also record a show that can be played back in a continuous loop.  I almost liked Fireworks Arcade, as it added a sort of fruit ninja gaming element to the show, but it would only work in portrait mode, which detracted from the big screen appeal I was looking for. If you’re looking to add your own photos or artwork as a backdrop to the fireworks display, FireworksToy works well, but does not have the same variety or attention to detail offered by iLoveFireworks when it comes to the fireworks themselves.

Putting on a light show

Plain old fireworks can get boring. Luckily, there are alternatives that offer lots of variety for your light shows, including a great collection from a company called Elements of Design. Spawn Illuminati HD, one of the standouts, was designed specifically for attaching to large screen displays.  With Illuminati, you can take control of the visual aspects of the show in ways you can’t with standard fireworks apps. On the big screen, it’s like the modern-day equivalent of the psychedelic liquid light shows of the 60s and 70s.

Mesmerizing games

Putting on an engaging visual show can extend to games, too, like Osmos for iPad.  You will find that people will quickly pick up on the physics behind the game, and should have fun either playing themselves or even just watching. Equally fun, and a little more Mr. Wizard, is the instantly addictive Ions app. With this app you can add positive and negative points on the screen as well as change gravity effects on ions as they shoot across the screen, which makes for intensely interesting visuals.

If you can’t see the real thing, or you just want something extra to supplement it, the three best indoor replacements for a good old fashioned fireworks display are iLoveFireworks, Illuminati, and Ions.  Set these three to music and let your guests interact with the show in ways they can’t outdoors.

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When I was 8 years old, my father explained to me the secret to American prosperity.

Immigrants come to the United States and take menial jobs so that their children have a chance at a better future, he told me. While the jobs they take are below their intrinsic capabilities, they’re focused on giving their children a better life, not personal job satisfaction. Second-generation children, seeing how hard their parents work to give them an opportunity, in turn work hard at school, where, he noted, they often focus on mathematics and science in pursuit of the economic returns promised by careers in engineering and medicine. Third-generation kids figure the economic return on effort expended is better for business and legal professionals and pursue those professions instead of technical ones.  By the fourth generation, any immigration-related incentives to work hard are largely nonexistent.

It was a gross generalization used to explain to a child the importance of immigration, but one that I have since found to be generally accurate.

On this 233rd celebration of U.S. Independence Day, in the midst of the worst economic recession in at least a lifetime, there is a national debate taking place as to the direction of the country. And while I’m confident that we will preserve our democracy and capitalism, I’m concerned about the tone and tenure of the discussion around immigration. Smart immigration policies will do more for American innovation and productivity than better math and science education, more spending on basic research and additional venture capital combined. If we get strategic about immigration, I believe the U.S. can preserve its economic leadership position in the world far longer than anyone currently expects.

Why immigration is more important to innovation than broad-based science education

Shortly after President Obama was elected, The New York Times published an article by Ian Ayres in which he expressed support for appointing Larry Summers as Treasury Secretary. The article quotes Dr. Summers on his assumption that top physics researchers are 3-4 standard deviations above the mean in terms of I.Q. While I don’t have evidence to support his assumption, my intuition is that he’s right, including when he notes what a small group of people these great thinkers represent. Dr. Summers states:

“If…one is talking about physicists at a top-25 research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it’s not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it’s talking about people who are three-and-a-half, [or] four standard deviations above the mean in the 1 in 5,000, [or] 1 in 10,000 class.”

If we assume that talent is evenly distributed throughout the planet, that the U.S. population is around 300 million, that the global population is 6.7 billion, and that 1/5,000 people are the top candidates to push U.S. innovation forward, that gives us a pool of 60,000 people in the U.S. and 1.28 million outside of it.

Innovation will not be spurred solely by giving those 60,000 Americans access to math or science education, but by providing the right incentives for them to enter the scientific and technical professions. More importantly, we could radically increase the number of innovation candidates through targeted immigration of the 1.28 million people that hail from elsewhere.

The government cannot mandate desire

If the first benefit of immigration is importing talent, the second is that of importing “hunger.” Many countries lack a way to identify and reward their brightest citizens, while that has been the allure of the U.S. since our inception. So I would argue further that the “innovation probability” of a high I.Q. individual whose family has been in the U.S. for many generations is less than that of someone who’s new to our nation and has a comparable intellect, but far more desire.

The time for a strategic approach to immigration is now

Broad-based mathematics education will strengthen our nation by improving our workforce, but that is not best path to innovation. Basic research may create jobs and openings at universities to lay the foundation for innovation in certain areas, but the ROI on such investments is uncertain and sometimes misplaced. And the pool of available venture capital is not the constraining factor in new startups — lack of talent is.

It’s time for a more strategic and aggressive immigration policy, one that targets the best and brightest around the globe and makes it easy for them to become permanent residents. We should be recruiting the world’s best talent the same way top companies recruit the best talent. Talk to anyone who’s tried to become a resident here lately and you’ll quickly realize the process is long and often highly random — in other words, very discouraging.

Strategic immigration, together with our strong democracy, capitalistic system and melting-pot culture, will deliver a better standard of living for many generations of Americans to come. I am grateful to all of the immigrants in the U.S. on this Fourth of July. To them, I say thank you — for everything you do.

Mike Speiser is a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures.

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This two-minute tribute encompasses all that is pure and good and true about the United States. Also, hot dogs. Why the Swedish Chef is participating in this otherwise all-American endeavor is a mystery best left to the ages — as is the question of why Sam the Eagle has taken this opportunity to reach out to his online audience. (His YouTube page is magnificent, by the way.) Because those issues aren’t important. What’s important is that America is here to save the world from weirdos — with, hopefully, with the exception of Gonzo.

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