Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right
** New ideas added 06/15/05 starting at number 230.
230. Danger Alerts -
An interesting cross-reference table.
Since google saves the IP address and search terms used for every search,
and mapquest can save the IP address
and location for every search, adding them together and filtering the list
for significant keywords might point the finger
in interesting directions. For instance, suppose the words bomb and
explosive are used as search terms frequently
from an IP address, and Washington shows up a lot in Mapquest from the
same IP address, I'd be interested in
finding out what the person doing the searches was thinking.
This might also be useful for someone who wants to register the fact that
they have a restraining order against another
person (without naming names). Then they could have an alert automatically
emailed to them if someone was
searching for them by name.
Hopefully the filtering algorithm will be sharp enough to omit normal people
like us. Even though the average person
might coincidentally search on bomb and later on do a mapquest of Washington,
it's higly unlikely that they'll do a
search on the actual chemicals and components required to make a bomb.
They could further reduce false positives
by tracking activity based on modem MAC addresses (the unique ID number
associated with every modem in the
world) to drop people from the list who usually go to innocuous sites.
(Of course, the terrorists might try to thwart
this by paying kids to surf the web on their computers most of the time,
thereby making them look innocent.)
231. Light Beam Animals -
For those dreary cloudy days.
Based on the same concept as light-transmitting concrete, this would be
a public service provided by cities in areas
where there are way too many cloudy days (Seattle comes to mind). A dirigible
would rise above the clouds until it
was sunny side up and then drop a frame back down through them. The frame
would be held in place by the same
kind of optic fiber used in the concrete to deliver sunlight through the
clouds to the seasonally-saddened people
below. When they looked up they'd see various sunbeam animals floating
beneath the clouds, slightly brightening their
mood.
(Of course, eventually some greedy ad agency will try to sponser the entertainment,
flashing 'This cloud brought to
you by ___' every so often.)
232. Smart Pants -
It wouldn't be too hard to catch some items in a washing machine - crayons,
lipsticks, etc... - before the water
made them bleed and stain other clothes in the same load. Crayons
and the like are petroleum-based. By adding a
simple RFID tag to the inside of the pockets when the clothes are manufactured
(especially children's clothes) the
machine could monitor for a warning message coming from the pocket and
send out an alarm. Rough details - the
machine sends a signal through the load which gets picked up by all the
tags in it. The tags convert the power
received into a small current that powers a petroleum sensor that's also
on the tag. If the sensor picks up petroleum
it loops the current back into the RFID tag to change the signal that gets
sent back, giving the washer its cue to sound
the alarm.
There's an even easier way to use them to solve the red socks in a white
wash problem. Each tag just has to respond
with a universal numeric identifier for its color. The logic board
on the washing machine would be programmed to
know which colors could be mixed and sound an alarm if it found incompatible
types.
233. I'm Full - Please Don't Make Me Do The Math
How many times have you gotten a bill at a restaurant and spent a minute
trying to figure out how much a 15% or
20% tip would be? Seems like restaurants could make this easier just by
having a note print at the bottom of the bill
saying:
** This is for informational purposes only.
A 10% tip would be amount A
A 15% tip would be amount B
A 20% tip would be amount C
234. Carryout Fuel Tanks -
Making gradual changes to the infrastructure.
One of the problems we're faced with when trying to convert to cars that
use hydrogen fuel is a catch-22 kind of
thing - people won't buy the cars until they know there are enough gas
stations within convenient reach, and gas
stations won't add hydrogen fuel pumps until there are enough cars out
there to make them profitable. The solution
might be to phase them in.
Step 1 - Create briefcase-shaped fuel tanks that can be sold at convenience stores the way natural gas is sold now.
Step 2 - Create hydrogen cars that have their fuel systems designed somewhat
like blade servers, where the fuel
tanks bought from the convenience stores could be easily slipped into place.
Step 3 - When the exchange of these new fuel tanks reaches a high enough
level, install a pump to refill them on the
convenience store premises (the way diesel pumps used to be installed off
to the side at old gas stations).
Step 4 - Enhance the new fuel systems in a new model of these cars so they
can be resupplied by either the
blade-like fuel tanks or via a nozzle on the new fuel pumps.
Step 5 - When demand gets high enough, move the hydrogen fuel pump right beside the regular fuel pumps.
Creating a gradual path like this for switching over to hydrogen fuel might speed up the conversion process.
While
we're waiting for more of these
235. MapQuest for Women -
Common stereotyping tells us that women follow directions better when given
landmarks, while men do better with
reference to the cardinal points (north, south, etc...). As such,
the current version of MapQuest is designed better
for men than it is for women since driving directions generally refer to
north, south, etc... An enhanced version of
MapQuest could correct this.
First, a program would be run over the historical database of directions
that have been given in the past to all users.
The program would then prioritize the intersections where users were told
to turn, putting the most frequent at the
top of the list. After this, the same people who travel around updating
the maps would take pictures of these
intersections, focusing on the best landmark they can find. Adding
the pictures to the database would then let users
click on any intersection that had a photo attached and see what they should
be looking for.
 |