Where
Things Work RightWhere
Things Work Right
** New ideas added 11/01/08 starting at number 321.
321. See Everything -
Advanced picture-in-a-picture - let's see something besides other channels.
The TV I've got now will show me the caller ID of someone who's calling
during the middle of a program so
I'll know whether or not to get up and answer it. The TV also has a picture-in-picture
function that can show
me in a little box on the screen what's on another channel while the rest
of the screen stays on the current channel.
The feature I'd like to see added is wireless imports from other devices
that could be displayed in the same
picture-in-a-picture box. For instance, a button on the remote could
display connected wireless sources as I
surfed through them, showing me who's knocking on the front door, what's
making the baby cry in the other
room, etc...
322. River Generators for Canoe Trips -
Towards more comfortable camping.
The river generator would be a set paddlewheels inside small floats that
would be kept in place by the anchor
you dropped when deploying them. The floats would be kept separated
by telescoping bars to keep them
spaced in such a way that each one downstream from the lead float could
take advantage of the wake created
by those that were upstream. A waterproof extension cable from the
floats to the campsite would provide some
measure of electricity (maybe enough to recharge some of the other devices
you've brought along).
323. Wake Up Soldier!
Helmet alarms.
The U.S. Army is currently researching the idea of creating helmets that
can automatically pick up short thought
command sequences to be relayed from one soldier to another without any
visible motion. Ignoring the possibility
of false commands being transmitted into the data stream for a minute,
another version of these helmets could be
put into production fairly fast. This version would just monitor the brain
waves associated with sleepiness and shout
'WAKE UP SOLDIER' into an earpiece linked to the helmet. If we didn't
want to take the blunt instrument
approach, a soldier's musical preferences could be programmed into the
helmet. When the helmet sensed the
soldier was getting overly nervous it would play some soothing melody;
if it sensed they were getting bored or
sleepy it would play an uptempo number.
** Note: This wouldn't be like the nod-off alarms that some truck drivers
use. If the soldier started to nod off
in the middle of the night it might be too late. We need them wide
awake the whole time.
324. Thieves on Stage -
Motion sensor spotlights.
The problem with the motion sensor lights that are on the market today
is that they don't give you a clue where
to look. The would-be burglar could have ducked down behind a bush
5 feet off to your side and you'd never
see him. This innovation would be for a motion sensor light that
actually shot the beam of light right where it
detected the motion, highlighting the thief. It wouldn't be a bad
idea if it took a picture while it was at it too.
Another advantage - it would tell you if there were any critters around
before you ran out to your car to
get something at night. The critters are alligators where I live and they
like to crawl under cars.
325. Your Last Few Minutes of Life -
A bluetooth tape recorder.
A lot of times we're in environments where the threat level is higher than
normal but there is no specific threat
yet. You can't dial 911 and say "hey listen up, I think something
might happen." This idea would let anyone
who's walking around now with a bluetooth headset sign up for an additional
wireless service for a small fee.
Once signed up you could speak a verbal PIN number when you're entering
a potentially hostile environment.
From that point on the headset would transmit everything within earshot
to a server-based recorder maintained
by the phone company. Once you were safely out of the hostile zone
you'd say a 2nd PIN number to shut off
the recording. If you never made it out of the danger zone, or made
it out badly mangled, then this would give
the police another piece of evidence to help them track down your assailants.
326. Planting Garbage -
I'm not sure if I like this idea or not.
If the manufacturers of plastic bags, cups -basically anything that traditionally
becomes litter - sealed a few seeds
into a small storage section at the bottom of their product then when non-green
people tossed them out the window
sooner or later some of the seeds would sprout. If they were flower
seeds then we'd start seeing colors in unusual
places, if they were crop seeds then the homeless might wind up with an
unexpected bit of extra food.
Aside from letting the manufacturers of these products claim they were
going green this would at least turn some of
the garbage into less of an eyesore. On the negative side though,
more people might be inclined to litter figuring
they'd be doing less harm. Hence my ambivalence.
327. Don't Dance With Your Cousins -
Combining cell phones and genealogy.
One of the genealogy programs I've been working with lately has a feature
that can tell you how closely you're related
to famous people. Norman Rockwell came up as being related 9 generations
back on my side of the family,
10 generations back on my wife's side of the family, and 8 generations
back on a friend's family tree (and his surname
was Smith). This idea is for people who'd like to know which strangers
they're related to when they walk into a bar,
party, whatever... They'd press a button on their phone which would
send both their name and location to a server
running the ancestry database. The server would search for other
people in your vicinity and return a list of those
you're related to and how closely you're related. If the relationship
was close enough it might be an interesting way
to get a conversation going.
Example, suppose my wife and I hadn't met yet and we both subscribed to
the service. If I walked into a bar she
was in and checked my phone it would tell me one of my 10th cousins was
there and give a little background on our
common relative. It could also go one step further and find the closest
celebrity we were both related to (kind of a 6
degrees of separation thing only with Norman Rockwell instead of Kevin
Bacon in this case).
328. Numbered Socks -
Almost self explanatory.
I don't know how many people might also find this annoying but whenever
I do the laundry I have to spend several
minutes trying to figure out which of my many black socks form a pair.
Pairing them correctly might be part of my
OCD but I don't like wearing ones that are different shades of black (because
one was washed more often than the
other). This minor issue could be solved fairly easily if the manufacturers
simply sewed an identification number onto
each pair. That way you could just match them up by numbers.
329. BTW -
Subtitles for text messages.
Sometimes it can be hard to decipher what the one or two letter combinations
people use in test messages (and email
for that matter) mean. It shouldn't be hard to add a translation
feature that would display the message in real words
like subtitles in movies do. The translation software would have
to be periodically updated of course but that
download shouldn't take long.
330. The Simplest Science -
A new kind of textbook.
This idea would start out with a contest. Maybe someone like the Gates
Foundation could sponsor it to make it
worthwhile. The contest would present a list of critical scientific
concepts that every educated person should know.
Contestants would then submit the simplest possible method they could think
of for getting the concepts across.
Methods would be categorized by visual, tactile and auditory to cover different
learning styles. Rewards would be
given to each person who came up with the simplest method of getting one
of the concepts across in each of the
categories. Bonus dollars might be awarded based on entertainment
value. After the contest was over the winning
entries would be published in grade-level textbooks, giving us a set of
learning guides written for all types of learners
based on the thoughts of our most creative teachers (winners).
331. Roach Recorder -
So you'll know what's going on behind closed doors.
This would be an indoor motion detector designed to pick up movements from
miniature objects in rooms. A red
light would come on and stay on until you hit the reset button. It
would also have a playback camera so you could
see what motion was picked up. The objective would be to let you know if
there's one roach running around at night
in your bathroom or a hundred. It would be nice to know there's a
spider in your towel before you pick it up too.
332. Vibrating Collar -
Oddly enough this worked.
During a particularly brutal red tide episode when you couldn't go outside
for more than a minute or two without
starting to cough I decided to test out one of my theories. Went
outside, waited for the red tide effect to cause the
tickling in the back of the throat sensation that stimulates a cough,
pressed a couple of fingers up against that point
on my throat and hummed to create a counter-vibration in my throat.
The tickling sensation went away and no
coughing occurred. Now all I need is a collar that can be switched
on to mimic the humming vibration so I can sit
outside without sounding like a 10-pack a day smoker when the red tide
is up. (That collar is what this idea calls for.)
333. They Are There -
Take 2 lefts, 3 rights, circle the printer and head west.
As a consultant I'm often working at companies where it takes at least
a few days to figure out who's sitting where.
This solution is for a wireless monitor to be placed near the entry
doors that would pick up signals from the network
traffic when people signed onto their system and superimpose the users
names on top of a map of the cubicles. That
way when someone said go see so-and-so I'd just have to stop by the monitor
to see where they were sitting. It would
display the last location they logged on from if they weren't currently
logged in.
Two additional features. A keyboard to type in part of the person's
name so the cubicles whose names began with the
same letters could light up on the board making it easier to spot who you
were looking for. The monitor should also
have a "search all floors" button so it could scan the building and show
you where the person was if they weren't on the
same floor.
For the sake of convenience it should also be possible to bring up the
same thing you can see on the monitor on your
desktop if you've been assigned one.
334. Progressive Puzzle -
The pieces remain the same, the picture changes.
The pieces for this puzzle would be capable of changing to form different
scenes based on the code sent to them in
an electronic initialization box. The pictures would start out simple
and get progressively harder as your skills
increased, going from basic scenery to Escher type prints. This would
give you several puzzles for the price of one.
(If you found yourself in the middle of an easy one you could up the difficulty
mid-game too, having it change the goal
picture on the fly.)
335. Monkeys on the Internet -
Sooner or later everything that can be written will be written.
So what to do with it all? Maybe teach a neural network how to compose
poetry through sampling (sort of like
musicians do). The process would take four steps.
First, an AI program would be trained to pick content from web pages, blogs,
etc.. where people were talking
about quotes from their favorite stories and poems. The more often
those lines appeared in different places (using
spiders to get it) the higher the value that would be assigned to it. Context
cues would also be saved.
The second step would be to train the program the rules behind common poetic meters.
The third step would be to have it grab content from the database it had collected and fit it into a poetic format.
The fourth step would be to compare the result against an existing database
of poems to make sure no duplicate
was created.
After that it could post its creations to a web site. It would be interesting
to see where it would go using the first
line from one of my favorite poems - 'The cowboy awoke from the barroom
floor having drunk so much he could
drink no more." It's a line from 'The Hellborn Train'.
** Note: Think of this as data mining for poetry.
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