Results tagged “idea” from KPAO

The 4×3 aspect ratio is a rapidly becoming a footnote in history. The majority of monitors and laptops these days are wide-screen. This makes them great for watching movies, but not well suited for applications that were designed in the old 4×3 world.

Take a look at this screen grab from the next version of Microsoft Office - Word 2010:



There are two things to notice:

1. Notice the big, blank, gray bars on either side of the document? Wasted space.
2. Notice the scroll bar on the right? It indicates you're only seeing about a half page of the document on the screen.

I used to deal with this by getting a swivel monitor and rotating my screen into portrait mode. That made it great for reading web pages and working on word-processing documents. However, the bulk of my job is working on specs and presentations that are in landscape orientation. It's easier to keep the screen landscape to work on these.

The idea to steal here is a pretty simple one: just move the UI from the horizontal ribbon across the top to a vertical sidebar next to the document. Word for the Mac already does this to great success. It minimizes the wasted space to the side of the document, and it regains valuable vertical real estate, so you can see nearly 20% more of your document on the screen at once.

As I'm packing for my upcoming trip to Africa, I'm thinking about the 2+ days I'll spend getting there. Not fun. Ironically, the actual "travel" part of traveling is the least enjoyable part of the experience.

I was joking with my wife that I might sneak up behind her this evening and hit her over the head, then drug her. When she came to, she'd be in Africa! But seriously, wouldn't that make a pretty awesome service? Someone else takes care of getting you and your bags to your final destination, and wakes you up so you're refreshed and ready to get out there and embrace the experience. As opposed to wandering around in a zombie-like state from both the exhaustion of travel and the jet lag.

Of course such a service would have to be 100% trustworthy. It would suck to wake up with no possessions or clothes in some slave camp in the middle of the jungle. Maybe I'll stick to the traditional means...

OK, this isn't really news; it's common knowledge. But I have a specific example.

As I was working on my resume, I did a search for all of my issued patents. The system is so slow, that it takes somewhere around 4-5 years after the application for a patent to be issued. A new one had been issued since the last time I checked: 7,360,165 — Addresses as objects for email messages issued on April 15, 2008.

The only problem is, the US Patent Office already granted this exact patent three years before on May 17, 2005. Check out 6,895,426 — Addresses as objects for email messages.

It appears that some lawyer at Microsoft uncovered the original research for the the Email Addresses as Objects patent, and somehow thought that it hadn't been written up and submitted. So they did, and the USPO happily granted it. Again.

While I do enjoy having more patents, this isn't quite the way I hoped to achieve that. In fact, it's ridiculous. The system is broken, and while I have utmost respect for Nathan Myrvold as an visionary design thinker, his Intellectual Ventures is a farce. IV is content to stand by the sidelines making no attempt to implement the designs in the patents they hold, instead leveraging the broken system to extort money from people actually in the arena.

My latest crazy idea involves crowdsourcing for good. Much like you can install applications that let you donate your unused computing power to analyze SETI data or protein folding, I was thinking that people could donate their time to add phone numbers into the USA's Do Not Call registry.

I suppose this could be automated, but such a service would quickly get shut down. Instead, treat the problem more like BitTorrent model. Have a central repository that tracks all of the numbers that are already in the system, and offers new numbers up for people to submit. The person simply clicks a button, and then clicks another to confirm, and they are done.

You'd think that this registry would confirm with a call to the actual number, but they don't. The confirmation comes over email to an address you enter. So you can use your own address (with a + uniqufier if you want), or even a service like Mailinator.

Yes, I realize that the FAQ on the site says that "You should register only your own telephone numbers.", but as far as I can tell, this is in no way illegal. Besides, very little of great import every got done by people sticking with only what they should do.

OK, this is admittedly a small issue. But I have an oven with digital controls. When you turn it on, you first have to set the temperature before it starts to warm up. What I end up doing is setting the temp. to 350° immediately to start it warming, then I go back and change it to the temp. I want.

What I don't understand is why the oven doesn't start warming up right away. Why not have it already defaulted to 350° when you turn it on, and let you change it from there? It's little things like this that separate a mediocre product design from a great one.

Most holidays we celebrate are meaningless and they are just another day off. Labor Day, Presidents Day, even (sad to say) Memorial Day and Independence Day. It's just a day off of work to have a BBQ or go to the beach. I propose a national holiday that is actually meaningful.

It's interesting to listen to people who are either themselves faced with death, or to the loved ones of those whom are dying or have died. Few are enlightened enough to appreciate (or improve) the relationships in situ; But in the finality, it becomes the most important thing — and even the only thing — that matters. Either people appreciate the great relationship they had, or they regret not having a closer one.

Combining the two ideas, we should have a Pretend your loved one is dead holiday. The idea is to confront your relationships as if it were at the end. Like all forms of introspection, it would prompt you to rethink your approach to all of your relationships, where and how to invest your energy. It would help strengthen your good relationships, and mitigate or possibly even eliminate the "bad" ones.

Of course it needs a better name; Pretend your loved one is dead is a bit morbid. Thoughts?

For my Masters project in 1995, I worked on a project called Sportscope. The goal was to work on the vision for something that was technologically about 5 years out.

The basic concept was a device that could be rented at the ballpark and used to get additional data on the players, see highlights, and even order food to be brought to your seat. The core ID revolved around what we called a "hyper-environment". At the time we envisioned electronic tags (like a longer-range RFID) on items in the environment that could be "clicked" on which would them provide more information. While our implementation was in the ballpark, we envisioned other uses, such as providing tourists with information on sites, or as real estate shoppers driving around and looking at properties for sale.

Fast forward to this week. TonchiDot appears to be doing the same thing. But it's not clear they actually have viable technology, as all of the hard questions asked by panelists at the conference were answered with flip sound bites. With all the technologies available today (GPS, cell tower triangulation, bluetooth, WiFi, smartphones...) it seems inevitable that this will happen soon.

Conventional wisdom asserts that being in the Google database is a good thing, and having a high Page Rank (i.e. showing up as close to the top of the search results as possible) is also a good thing. Whole companies and untold millions of person-hours are spent "optimizing" web pages for Google.

But the value is a two-way street. Google provides free marketing to your pages, but your pages also add value to Google. Without its perception as comprehensive source, Google loses its shine. What if web sites had to opt-in to get their pages indexed? That would make search engines like Google look a lot different. Of course that's a meaningless hypothetical. But here's a more realistic one.

What if I created a bunch of extremely valuable content on the web, but then forbade Google from indexing it? A license to access and republish my content would include the clause that they could not pass it onto Google. Other search engines like Yahoo and Live would have access to it. But people searching Google wouldn't see it. Since the content is so valuable, people would eventually find out about it. And they'd either start searching both places, or they might be swayed enough by this deficiency in Google to switch search engines.

Of course I'd be happy to license my content to Google. For a fee. How about a 50% revenue share on all advertising on any search results page that includes a link to my content? Large established knowledge sites out there like Wikipedia or Yahoo! Answers could do this. I wonder why they don't? Is there any legal precedence that could enforce such a targeted content embargo?

This issue becomes even more important as Google gradually blurs (crosses?) the line from providing utility to providing content.

The Police were my favorite band in high school.  I saw them twice in the '80s, both times from far reaches of cavernous stadiums, because there's no way I could have afforded the rich kid seats.

Twenty-five years later, when they came through the Bay Area on their reunion tour, my wife and I splurged.   As established Yuppies, we could now afford the rich kid seats.  The concert was an exorbitant, decadent delight.  We sat a few rows back from Sting, and had enough lunch money left over for beers.

Still, the excess of it all made me feel uneasy.  I'd never spent so much on two hours of entertainment, and didn't think I was the type to do so.  Humble beginnings, and all that.

To assuage my guilt, my wife and I came up with a system that lets us temper our consumptive ways, without having to renounce the pleasure altogether.  It also encourages the positive habit of cooking at home.

A sticky note on the fridge lists the next decadent pleasures we want but don't need, and the cost of each.  Every night we cook at home, we draw a tick mark beside the next un-purchased toy.  Each tick is worth $20, which is about how much we save on average by not going out.

Once we've earned enough ticks to pay for the gadget, we get to buy it, guilt free.  The gadget is essentially monetarily free too, because the money we pay is money we didn't spend at restaurants.  It's even better than free because cooking at home is healthier and yummier anyway.

Later, we tweaked the system to have it pay off our parking tickets, which happen to be part of the cost of living in San Francisco.   This greatly lessens the sting of the ticket: instead of being a complete waste of forty dollars, it becomes the trivial penance of putting off the next fun purchase by a couple more days.  (As the photo above shows, the system also covers moving violations.)

Do try this at home, folks, and please, always remember our two mottos:

1. "Happiness Through Gadgetry."
2. "You don't have to put on a red light."

I love reading Scott Adams' blog. About every 5-10 posts he has one that is a totally creative and somewhat crazy idea or way of thinking about the world, which actually makes a ton of sense. And he recently referenced the Half Bakery, which looks like it's been up for many years now giving people a place to post just such half-baked ideas.

Some of my favorites:

1. Custard-Filled Speed Bumps (of course by "custard" he means a dilatant substance, such as a corn starch and water slurry)
   
2. Ball Dogs - Next time Wimbledon is about to be held, organise 4 or 5 of the sort of dogs who are insanely obsessed with retrieving balls to fill in for the ball boys/girls.
3. 30 cat night - a more granular scale than the famous 3 dog night.

I like the soup-in-a-bread-bowl and salad-in-a-tostada-bowl concept. While eating a bento box lunch a while ago at a local Japanese restaurant, it occurred to me that the bento box should be edible.

Not that any classy restaurant would stoop so low, but perhaps a seaweed sheet could be formed into a bento shape. Enjoy the contents of the meal, then eat the yummy, healthy dish underneath.

Here's another entry in the "steal this idea" series. The Consumerist, for those who don't know it, is a web reinterpretation of the venerable newspaper "consumer action" column and its local news "Seven On Your Side" variant. Except for it runs on a national scale. People have problems with AT&T, and the Consumerist uses its "bully pulpit" to shame the corporation into fixing a problem.

The Consumerist is a fun and sometimes useful read, and can often be more than just a national-scale gripe column. There are tips on credit cards, saving money, short-term deals, and so on. But I do find it curious that they haven't (yet) gone local. Why isn't there a "sfbay.consumerist.com" or an "atlanta.consumerist.com" with local contributors, maybe even volunteers, performing the same service for local consumers? It's fun for all of us to read about Comcast having to finally refund $2.65 to some old lady, but do people in New Jersey really care about lame service at a San Francisco only restaurant?

Go ahead consumerist -- take my free idea and run with it.

Here's a scenario that happens to me occasionally. Get a link to an article or comic or column or some other piece of content on the web which is just one part in an ongoing series. Like it. Start looking at other content. Like that too. Start to get fatigued after reading 5–10 of them. Leave. Forget. Never come back.

My idea is to generate a personalized subscription for each person who signs up. By default it starts at the first post and sends each one to you in email or via RSS with a frequency at least 2× greater than the typical publish frequency. It intersperses the new content in with the old, so you do get the freshest stuff. But you also get a scientifically measured amount of old content that keeps you engaged, informed and entertained without overwhelming you.

Go ahead and burgle this concept.

Medical tourism is increasingly popular. I've known people who have gone to Canada for cheap lasik. And I've read about people going all over for cosmetic surgery, dental surgery, and even essential health procedures that would otherwise cost 10–20× as much in the US. And some of the procedures aren't even approved in the US.

So it got me thinking, why do you have to go all the way to another country for this? Why not float a barge in international waters off the coast of the country and shuttle patients out? It would open up this opportunity to a much broader range of the population, and it probably would be a good business too.

Probably some procedures you might not want to do in heavy seas, though. :-)

Poaching is one of the big factors in driving large animals—rhinos, tigers, elephants—toward extinction. The people who poach these animals are really just interested in the market value of their parts: rhino horns, tiger penises, and elephant tusks. From basic supply & demand economics, if one could flood the market with these items, their value would tank it would remove the economic incentive for people to poach.

So what we should be doing is perfecting the ability to grow these items in the lab. Scientists already are working on techniques to grow replacement organs and edible meat in the lab. I don't think it would be that big of a stretch to apply these techniques to help the plight of endangered species.

The question isn't whether it can be done. It is, "Who will undertake this important work?".

A Soviet patent examiner in the 1960s studied over 200,000 patents and distilled them into 40 high-level principles – the TRIZ 40. There are a lot of them that are specific to physical devices (of course, this was 50 years ago well before the digital age). But they are still interesting to read.

The design of the web site is pretty appalling, but it's the content you're after. I found turning off some of the CSS in Firebug really helped with the readability.

Here's an example:

5. Merging
Bring closer together (or merge) identical or similar objects, assemble identical or similar parts to perform parallel operations.

• Personal computers in a network
• Thousands of microprocessors in a parallel processor computer
• Vanes in a ventilation system
• Electronic chips mounted on both sides of a circuit board or subassembly

Make operations contiguous or parallel; bring them together in time.

• Link slats together in Venetian or vertical blinds.
• Medical diagnostic instruments that analyze multiple blood parameters simultaneously
• Mulching lawnmower

A common meme in society is that traumatic events cause people to radically change their habits. People who suffer massive heart attacks give up smoking and drinking, people in car collisions drive more defensively, and those who have near-death experiences give greater priority to relationships with loved ones.

Since these traumatic events cause positive changes in people's lives, it would seem that the more people who went through them, the better off we would be. Of course it wouldn't be very ethical to put people through actual trauma, but we could simulate the trauma without the actual risk using a virtual environment.

It would also be tricky to require someone to subject them self to this. But in the case of getting a driver's license or as a sentence for reckless driving, we could certainly require it. There could even be incentives from health insurance companies or the government for people who smoke or have bad diets to go through this to encourage them to live a healthier life.