Random Ideas

Trade show giveaway: Toothpaste

Trade show booths are always searching for branded items to hand out to prospects. Until they fix the airport bans, how about putting your brand on a tube of toothpaste and/or other travel liquids now banned from carry-on bags?

(Yeah, most hotels will now give you these, but it's the thought that counts and this one would be remembered longer than most T-shirts.)

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Infrared patterns and paint to screw with tourist video/photos

Last week at ZeroOne in San Jose, one of the art pieces reminded me of a sneaky idea I had a while ago. As you may know, many camcorders, camera phones and cheaper digital cameras respond to infrared light. You can check this out pretty easily by holding down a button on your remote control while using the preview screen on your camera. If you see a bright light, you're camera shoots in infrared.

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For virtual servers, virtualize mySQL too

Right now this blog is hosted by powerVPS, which provides virtual private servers. This is to say they have a large powerful box, and they run virutalization softare (Virtuozo) which allows several users to have the illusion of a private machine, on which they are the root user. In theory users get an equal share of the machine, but since most of the users do not run at full capacity, any user can "burst" to temporarily use more resources.

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Rental no-talking lasers at events

Ok, this isn't entirely serious but...

Just got back from a concert by Andrea Bocelli, which was 75% italian opera and then the last 25% his pop stuff. Curiously the conductor told the audience when they switched about how he was getting to the pop stuff we had been patiently waiting for and the audience applauds and laughs. If it's really that way, it's interesting to wonder if they still make more money doing mostly opera because opera commands more money because of implied lesser demand. (Expensive seats ran to $275 and that was a fair bit of the floor.)

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More conference notes -- Just-in-time event registration

Last weekend, I attended a conference (Singularity Summit) at Stanford which was free. They had a large hall ready to hold 1800, but they got enough registrations to put around 700 on the wait list. However, at the actual event there were a few hundred empty seats in the balcony.

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Conference panelist MP3s, egg-timers and other conference enhancements

From now on, whenever I moderate a conference panel or otherwise organize a conference, I will make a rule that all speakers must make an MP3 of their talk before the conference and E-mail it. While it woudl be a good idea to then listen and see how good a speaker they are, the primary purpose is to get an idea of the length. The speaker, recording their talk at home, will notice that their 20 minute talk takes 35 minutes, and cut down the number of slides until it fits a little better. If not, and they mail in an 35 minute MP3, you can tell them what will happen at 20 minutes.

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Lobby art: a giant real-time globe

Some years ago, Al Gore wanted to spend a lot of money to put up a satellite which would transmit a live view of the whole Earth (well the half it could see) to make people more eco-conscious.

I figured it should be possible to generate the same view with some careful combination of weather satellite images and other satellite images. Yes, sometimes the view in one place might be an hour old while it's near live in another, but with clever blending you would never know.

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eBay shipping scam and more eBay dynamics

I've done a few threads on eBay feedback, today I want to discuss ways to fix the eBay shipping scam. In this scam, a significant proporation of eBay sellers are listing items low, sometimes below cost, and charging shipping fees far above cost. It's not uncommon to see an item with a $1 cost and $30 in shipping rather than fairer numbers. The most eBay has done about it is allow the display of the shipping fees when you do a search, so you can spot these listings.

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"Topographic" map based on zillow-like data

Ok, like a lot of people I find it fascinating to browse Zillow and see the estimated values of my neighbour's houses, and yes, I admit it, my friends. Another example of the little shock you get when data that was always technically public becomes truly public thanks to some new internet application.

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Laundromat machine / locker

I haven't been to a laundromat in ages, but we're fixing up a house that has no washer/dryer yet and has a laundromat 200' away. Long ago, when I lived in an appartment tower, I would go to the basement laundry room, and leave my clothes there. Worst case was they ran out of machines and somebody tossed them in a basket. And even though the odds of somebody stealing your clothes are low, most people are not as willing to leave their stuff unattended in a city street laundromat.

So how about combining the machines with a timed airport style locker system. You would insert the coins and pull out a key which you could use to open the washer or dryer. The lock would auto-reset about 10 minutes after the cycle ends, so in addition, you could put in more coins, which would act as insurance. If you didn't get to the machine in time, these coins would be taken, and give you more time on the lock. If you did get to the machine shortly after the cycle ended, you could get back your extra coins in the coin return...

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Teach history recycling old calendars

There are 14 different calendars possible -- With Jan 1 on each different weekday, in both regular and leap-year form.

An interesting idea for schools (and other places) would be to put up a calendar for a year from the past which has the same form as the current year. For example, an old 1995 Calendar would work mostly fine for 2006.

One could use real calendars, or specially made calendars which would talk about the history of the year in question, showing events which took place on the days those years ago.

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Newspaper recycling slot at the base of a kitchen cabinet

In thinking about a Kitchen remodel, in a house which sits on top of a garage/basement where the recycling and garbage bins are, I thought it would be nice to have a chute in the Kitchen to drop stuff into the bins down below. But you don't want to waste a lot of space in the kitchen on those.

One idea is to put the chute under a regular cabinet/countertop. It would look like a large mail slot at the base of the cabinet, under the door (or behind the door so you have to open it up to see it.)

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Scroogle -- Scrabble played with Google

Here's an idea to try -- Scrabble played with Google as the base, rather than the dictionary. Ie. you can play any word you can find in Google (sort of.)

This obviously vastly expands the set of words, perhaps too vastly, and it brings in all foreign languages to boot. It includes vast numbers of joinedwords, and zillions of other things. As such you would want to consider the following limits:

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Rethinking household/office power, beyond 60hz

I've written before about the desire for a new universal dc power standard. Now I want to rethink our systems of household and office power.

These systems range from 100v to 240v, typically at 50 or 60hz. But very little that we plug in these days inherently wants that sort of power. Most of them quickly convert it to something else. DC devices use linear and switched mode power supplies to generate lower voltage DC. Flourescent lights convert to high voltage AC. Incandescent bulbs and heating elements use the voltage directly, but can be designed for any voltage and care little about the frequency. There are a dwindling number of direct 60hz AC motors in use in the home. In the old days clocks counted the cycles but that's very rare now.

On top of that, most of what we plug in uses only modest power. The most commonly plugged in things in my house are small power supplies using a few watts. Most consumer electronics are using in the 50-200w range. A few items, such as power tools, major appliances, cooking appliances, heatters, vacuum cleaners and hairdryers use the full 1000 to 1800 watts a plug can provide.

So with this in mind, how might we redesign household and office power...

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Giftwrapping Robot

Here's a festive idea for a robotics company -- a giftwrapping robot, able to take a standard, not particularly fragile rectangular box and perfectly giftwrap it.

This might be a viable product for online stores that offer giftwrapping options, but I think one decent market would be malls at Christmastime. Aside from making money charging for wrapping, it would be an attraction (expecially in Japan where they love gifts) that brought in shoppers. I suppose some might worry it could deprive the charities that sometimes do giftwrapping in malls of a fundraising opportunity.

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Shipping redirection and order editing

All the shipping companies today support very nice package tracking with web interfaces that let you see your package move through all the depots. Some day they might even send you an alert when it's half an hour before delivery.

However, more than a few times I've wished for something else -- package redirection, either at the behest of the recipient or the shipper. I talked earlier about my Addresscrow system, which would let you change your alias to mean different addresses as you move around, but this is more than that.

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Can I get a dishwasher with soft edges?

I don't know how many times I've gotten a scrape or cut from hitting a dishwasher door, while it's down, with my leg. It's very annoying how the sides are always sharp. They don't make the seal, that's on the front, so there's no reason these sides couldn't be soft, or even hard rubber that won't cut you. Perhaps some dishwashers I haven't owned do this, but I have yet to get one!

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The fourth Wednesday is the best weekday to have your event

I just got an invitation to a new event series that I was told would take place on the First Tuesday of the month. However, I already go to two different dinners that take place on the First Tuesday, and I suspect that was no accident. For social events, people use the weekends, and for other events people prefer the weekdays. They have a psychological desire for the first week of the month.

So I ran a quick set of yahoo queries to find out how many hits there were on the web for "first monday" and similar strings. I figured that would tell when the most events do occur, and help people pick a day that is likely to have the least conflicts.

The results are below:

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Addrescrow -- privacy for physical address and much more

This is an idea from several years go I've never written up fully, but it's one of my favourites.

We've seen lots of pushes for online identity management -- Microsoft Passport, Liberty Alliance and more. But what I want is for the online world to help me manage my physical identity. That's much more valuable.

I propose a service I call "addrescrow" which holds and protects your physical address. It will give that address to any delivery company you specify when they have something to deliver, but has limits on how else it will give away info from you. It can also play a role in billing and online identity.

You would get one or more special ID names you could use in place of your address (and perhaps your name and everything else) when ordering stuff or otherwise giving an address. If my ID was "Brad Ideas" then somebody would be able to send a letter, fedex or UPS to me addressed simply to "Brad Ideas" and it would get to me, wherever I was.

(Read on...)

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