Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right
** New ideas added 11/01/04 starting at number 89.
89. Welcome to the neighborhood -
Last season there was a TV show in the US called the District. One
of the devices on it was a map of the District
of Columbia that could have different types of crimes scenes overlaid onto
it. This concept might turn a profit if it
was incorporated into something like Mapquest and offered as part of a
premium service by either auto clubs or real
estate agencies (although some agencies might not want this information
known).
By law, real estate agencies have to tell the buyer about any defects in
the houses they're trying to sell (at least they
do in the US). A recent murder in the house wouldn't be considered
a defect though, nor would the fact that last
year someone had broken into a house three different times (both of these
are real examples of houses in my
neighborhood where the rest of the houses led a more banal existence).
The users of this new service, paid for by
either individuals who wanted to use it for their own benefit or by companies
who wanted to offer it as part of their
relocation service, could simply type in an address and see a mapquest-type
display of their prospective
neighborhood with crime scenes overlaying it. The crimes could be
filtered by type to see if they were minor or
major drawbacks, or by date range to see if the crime rate was going up
or down.
90. Antenna mirrors -
Trying to back out of a parking space in a small car when you've got a
van on one side and an SUV on the other can
be a bit risky. You've got to get more than halfway out before you
can see if cars are coming down the row towards
you. An antenna mirror would solve this problem. It would consist
of two parts - a single metal bar that could be
hooked into the gaps formed by the edge of your trunk or tailgate, and
a wireless antenna that could be raised or
lowered from inside the car at the push of a button. Picture it as
a periscope replaced by a telescoping antenna. At
the top there would be a mirror-sized lense that had combined images coming
from both sides of the mirror into a
single image facing the driver. That way the driver could look into his
rearview mirror and see a mirror facing him that
showed traffic coming from both directions. A timer would also be
included in the kit so that the antenna would
automatically drop back down after about a minute (to keep you from forgetting
about it and driving around with it
still up).
Of course it would be easier if all parking lots put convex mirrors on
their light poles but since we can't make them do
that we should take care of the problem ourselves.
91. Phase change fever blankets -
First some background information from the MIT Technology review -
"Winter presents an interesting apparel challenge for those who want to
play outside. Wear too many layers and
you'll sweat; wear too little and you'll freeze your fanny. Lately,
technology has offered up a solution: a
paraffin-wax-like substance known as phase change material encapsulated
in microscopic balls of heat-resistant
plastic similar to that used in dishwasher-safe dinnerware. Coated onto
fabrics, the phase change material melts and
freezes before you do and, in the process, stores and expels heat energy.
Clothing can now be engineered to respond
to your body temperature—and heat up or cool down to keep you feeling just
right.
Phase change materials work because they are designed to maintain the midpoint
of a narrow temperature range.
One phase change material used in fleece jackets, for example, stays between
about 27 °C and 38 °C when worn -
or around 32 °C, which feels comfortable next to the skin. The specific
range is determined by the lengths of the
hydrocarbon molecules that make up the material; in different proportions
they specify different ranges."
The idea I'm suggesting here is really just an extended application - put
these phase change materials in a blanket
that's designed to keep you comfortable when you've got a fever.
The way it is now, you toss the blanket off when it
gets too hot and then have to hunt around for it later on when you start
getting chills. If the temperature of the blanket
went up and down to match your needs you wouldn't have to keep constantly
waking up to adjust it.
92. Robotic bug killers -
This bug zapper on wheels would be an environmentally friendly device (at
least compared to pesticides) that
roamed around your yard like one of those robotic lawn mowers. Instead
of cutting the grass though it would look
for moving thermal images underground. Whenever it found one that
matched the pattern of a bug in its database
(termite, mole cricket, fire ant, etc...) it would shoot a needle into
the ground at it and administer a quick jolt of
electricity, leaving your yard both pest and pesticide free. If any
controversy arose due to its effect on the food chain
we could always narrow down the database it was using to non-native pests.
93. Timeline theme park -
More museum than theme park, this would be a park with no rides.
Instead you'd pick one of the many themes that
were available and follow it from the past to the present.
For example, suppose naval warcraft was one of the themes. The first thing
you'd see along the water walkway was
a dugout canoe, further on up you'd see a replica of the first warship
that used biological weapons (part of Hannibal's
fleet - they threw bags of poisonous snakes onto the decks of the opposing
fleet), and at the end of the line there
would be a modern aircraft carrier.
Another example, cars. The line starts with a model T and ends with a Toyota
hybrid. Race cars from different eras
would be sprinkled throughout this line.
Another example, medical techniques. From trepanning to MRI's.
One of the more interesting trails might lead you past ideas for inventions that never quite made it into reality.
Think of this as an adult park for those who are too old for Disney (and
also for gifted students).
94. Extend the fuel line -
Instead of trying to line your car up with the gas cap on the proper side,
why not just create a collapsible funnel that
can be more or less permanently inserted into your gas tank. Then
it wouldn't matter which side the gas cap was on.
If you pulled into a station and found out it was on the wrong side you'd
just pull out the funnel and securely clip it
onto the fuel pump hose. It would be a lot easier if the stations
just made longer fuel pump lines but since it's unlikely
that their owners will go back and retrofit the existing lines it's going
to be up to us to solve the problem.
95. Edible plant calculator -
Several programs have been written to identify plants but so far the only
ones I've seen are for specific locations that
don't cover much geography. Someone should be able to write a program
that can cover the world. A GPS on the
calculator would tell the program which database segment to query.
From there the user would key in answers to
simple questions until the program was able to identify the plant, including
some of its more pertinent characteristics -
like whether or not you can eat it. The link provides an example of how
this type of program would work.
I know this is simply another version of the 'Survival Made Easy' idea
but I'm hoping that if it's included often enough
some wealthy reader will decide to start manufacturing them. I want
to buy one.
96. Fire free zone -
Every year large fires break out in the western part of the US. These
usually consume several multi-million dollar
houses, especially when they hit southern California. It seems like
the rich might be willing to pay for a fire protection
service that would drop fire-retardant chemicals all around their neighborhood
(via helicopter) well before the fire
arrives thereby giving them a level of protection that's not available
today. Although the wealthy are covered by
insurance, a fast-moving fire can quickly consume the contents of the houses,
including family heirlooms. The same
sort of protection might also be affordable to those who belong to a homeowners
association.
Down the road it might occur to some municipalities that they should be
stockpiling these fire-retardant chemicals
ahead of time the same way salt is stored by cities that get hit by snowstorms.
It seems like it would be a valuable
public service.
97. Sprinkler security system (tagging prowlers for easier identification) -
When motion sensitive lights are activated by a prowler they usually run
away (or walk if they're smart). Any police
in the area would have a hard time proving the person walking down the
street was the prowler unless someone
called them with an extremely accurate description. One solution
would be to enhance the Fertigator (see link) with a
remote trigger so it could turn on the sprinklers and tag the prowler with
a unique scent. The system could be set up
so the either homeowner could manually trigger it (thus avoiding false
alarms) or motion would trigger it (like security
lights are now). This would save the police a lot of extra work and
catch a few extra criminals.
98. Forget the power lines -
One of the biggest drawbacks to creating wind farms in the US is the distance
between some the best wind sources
(the Rocky Mountains being one) and the place where the electricity is
really needed (Chicago for instance). The
cost of building transmission lines is something no one is willing to pay
for so the windmills don't get built.
A cheaper way to move the power from source to destination might be available
though. If we transmitted the energy
as a laser from the source up to an orbiting satellite and then back down
again to the destination we wouldn't need
transmission lines at all. The estimated power production from the
windmill plants they're proposing in the Rocky's is
360 megawatts. Although this is way out of my area of expertise I'm
thinking that that amount of energy could create
a big enough laser to give us an economically useful amount of electricity
after being mirrored back down to a
receiving plant even if a lot was lost along the way.
An interesting side project might be to pick a spot below an active volcano
- Mt. St. Helens for example - and see
if the energy directed from the satellite at it could burn a lava release
hole into the side of the mountain to keep it from
erupting.
99. Office products pinger -
This shouldn't be hard to do. Sell staplers, tape dispensers, hole
punchers etc... with an active RFID chip in them
that would ping/buzz/honk when an accompanying transmitter was pressed.
This would not only let you find out who
borrowed the item it would remind everyone around them that they forgot
to bring it back. Might cut back on their
forgetfulness a little bit.
There would be another advantage to these chips too. Anyone "borrowing"
the equipment for home use would set
off a buzzer on their way out the door.
100. Removed
101. Toddler tracking system -
I was watching patients in a nursing home one day and heard an alarm go
off when an old woman with Alzheimers
walked outdoors. This made me wonder why we haven't come up with
something similar for toddlers. All we'd need
is an alarm we could clip onto the inside handle of every door that leads
outside the house and a soft cuff we could
attach around the child's ankle (with a childproof safety latch of course).
That way if the child wandered outside, and
we'd stupidly fallen asleep, the alarm would wake us up and we'd be able
to go get them before they fell into a pool
and drowned or stepped into the street and got run over. Think of
it as house arrest for toddlers. A system like that
would definitely have saved a few lives around here.
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