A Simple Answer to Click Spamming

You use internet ads to promote your business and you pay the host on a per click basis. How do you handle someone clicking on your ad multiple times? Simple - you'll only pay once in a two day period for a click from one user account from one IP address. Congress - please act!

The Superbrowser

The superbrowser is your online valet. It sees that the page you're looking at has columns of numbers (for example) and, where the headers of the columns are just text, it puts in clickable links that you can click on to sort the data by that column. Just one example of what a really good browser would do.

Google++

Can Google offer its users more? You bet:

1) Be more geek friendly - allow regexes in the search
2) In Google Finance, put in links that let you sort your portfolio by the change in each holding for the day.
3) Provide an audio search where a user can hum a few bars and google will locate the song.

Better GPS

How would you like it if your GPS handheld let you click on a road to let it know that that road is closed.

Also, would be nice if they could get in reasonably up-to-date crime statistics to give you an idea of the type of place you're going through.

A Gun Instead of a Mouse

Would be useful if the web pages you're looking at are totally mouseclick driven. With a gun that moves the pointer, your hand does a lot less work. This is a really worthwhile idea. Of course it would be even nice with snapping - to the nearest mouse-serving point. Those of you that have done IC design with Cadence know what I'm talking about:)

The Way for TSMC

This could be a trillion dollar idea - TSMC hires a software company to develop software that ordinary people can use to design circuits that they fabricate. Ain't that something?

Rollup Printer

Not really a printer, but it's a sheet of something that you pull out, and, as you pull it out, the gadget writes to the LCDS on it to create a printout - and the thing is springloaded, so if you let it go, it'll roll back. Nice - you stick your USB drive into the car and pull this sheet out and it has the first picture/PDF displayed. You release and pull again, you advance to the next slide, etc.

USB/Flash Based Viewmaster

Here's another cute billion dollar idea that the greens will really love. Know the viewmasters you can get at W-Mart for a few bucks that'll show a few slides? How about one that you can stick a USB drive into to look at pictures and PDFs? If you're like me, you hate printing stuff - the page of directions when you head out someplace, etc.

Even better, the viewmaster has some OCR - so if it senses text in what you're looking at, it can read it aloud - better than trying to look into it when you're doing 80 on the expressway:)

Google Proxima - the Latest

Here's an idea I submitted to Google (or tried anyway):

You have a doc with a list of addresses. Can you provide a tool - online - that can take the doc and take one address the the user provides and then list the addresses available in the doc in the ascending order of distance to the user's address? For example, I searched the web for recycling resources in TExas and came up with a list of addresses in DAllas. Now, I have to put each one into Mapquest to find out which one is the closest.

Fight Bad Breath

of your dance partner. If you've had this experience, you know it's can make an enjoyable experience very unpleasant. How about a gadget that has a nozzle that you mount like a mike, on your collar or button - quite discreet of course - that senses if you tense your abdomen or something and releases a spray of fragrance to combat a noisome stench? Come on Schaeferes Bild!!

The Future of Entertainment

You'll be able to experience thoughts, emotions and feelings of the characters. For example, it remains a mystery why Mrs. Robinson didn't want Ben to take Elaine out. But, in the future, you'll know - of course, it'll be fictitious, but something's better than nothing.

RFID Enables a Secure Zone Around Your House

Weight sensors around your house know if there are people there. Then, those permitted to be there must carry some form of ID that will allow your home to know that they were there. They could have the ID on their key chains, jewellry, wherever they want. This way, you'll know about everyone who got to within striking or stealing distance - the postal worker, the man from the power company. And if they don't have the RFID - people will be notified and cameras will do their best to get a good description.

Multiview Broadcasting

People have tried this before, but folks only used to have one TV at that time. Now, if you have multiple monitors or TVs, why not receive feeds from different cameras at the same action? That would be cool wouldn't it? For example (really, just an example to demonstrate), at the tonight show, one camera is on Jay and one is on Kevin and you'd like to watch both. It'd be more lifelike.

Two Sided Scanner

This is probably where the sheetfeed can make a big comeback. Mostly, you're scanning a doc that's got two sides (the most a sheet of paper can have, kind of like an equation - there are only two sides to an equation) and so this would be really convenient to have to do just one operation to capture it. A billion dollar idea. Now pay me you corporate pigs:)

Mech Powered Cellphone

Might not be much demand for this, but how about putting in a wheel, a bit of which sticks out of of your cellphone that people can turn by rubbing the phone on the carpet, furniture, etc to charge the phone? That way you'll always have some power available if you're stuck somewhere.

More Money for Marshall Brain

A lot more - sell page access - at about 50c a month - pages without ads. Millions buy - more money for him.

Autopatentwriting

Have you looked at a circuit patent? How about some software that takes a circuit and dumps what we're paying attorneys to write? Component 102 is a blah-blah that connects to blah-blah. The blah-blah of blah-blah also connects to the blah-blah of 103. Etc. Could be money in this.

Do a Real Life 10 Day MBA

Get a real life 10 day MBA (contacts) without leaving your job. Get
admitted to a school - take 3 weeks vacation from your job. Go to
class, meet as many people as you can - start emailing profs and
students and build up an email relationship. Then, tell the school
you're not satisfied and get a full refund and return to your job.

Active Noise Canceler

No, not headphones. How do you cancel out a hammer drill? Take a noise source, you could put sensors around it - in 3 dimensional symmetry and sense the noise. Then, further downstream, put audio sources that will generate an out-of phase version of the noise so as to cancel it and make it not audible outside the sphere of the cancelers. But, noise contains energy and, if you don't hear the noise outside of the sphere - it means that the cancelers absorbed the noise - so where did the energy go? The transducers you're using to generate the out-of-phase noise are somehow absorbing energy. How does that work?

TI-RFID and the End of the Hit and Run Era

Because, if another vehicle is within a 1 metre of yours, both vehicles register the information of the other through RFID - once the tags are installed. Won't happen overnight, but this should be done - will be very useful in countriels like India where the traffic is really chaotic.

One Newspaper Crossword Puzzle, Many Readers

How about transparent post-it notes that you can stick on the crossword puzzle and write on - to make your attempt at the puzzle before giving it to someone else. You don't want to spoil someone else's fun. This could be a billion dollar idea - think of how many old people there are. 2/3 of all the people in the history of the world who have lived past 65 are alive today.

Keep Working Forever

Sign up at this website to allow your bones to be claimed after your death and used to make furniture with. We kill trees and use them. So why shouldn't we use ourselves?

Revamping Indian Education

Why is it that the third world - especially India - hasn't shown facility with developing new technology? Have you seen as truly world class product come out of India? Something new? For all the talk of software, I haven't seen one program that I knew was made in India. Why do we sweat and toil for our white masters? Why this lack of prestige? My solution - change the system. Get top name professors from leading institutions like Harvard and MIT and Berkeley to relocate to Indian universities. Now I don't mean Indian professors - oh no. They're good, but we already have good Indian professors - and the systems just gets worse. We need western professors. We need to find out what they need to be willing to relocate. Less pollution, more facilities, whatever. We might have to design cities from scratch. But, it will be well worth it.

Gmail - tagging

Gmail is pretty good as it is. But, how about they let us tag email threads with some keywords. It's not that hard - you could always forward one of the messages to yourself and put the tag words, but they could make it easier. Say you are looking for some information. You do a search, but don't find it. Then, you remember something and do a different search and then you find it. It would be nice to now be able to tag this thread you just found with a couple of words that would make it show up with the first search. Wouldn't it?

On Demand iPhone Videos

Wonder if this is viable - a service that gives you useful on-demand videos on your i-Phone. Say you need to know how to jumpstart your car or help someone who's just had a stroke, etc. Don't have to full-fledged real-life videos. Animations that take about 1/10 of the bandwidth will do.

Who will be the first to embed their car manual as video with a usb-out that you could connect your iPhone or iPod to to watch useful sections of the car manual?

Another Simple One - Better KBB.com

They should pay me for this. Why doesn't KBB let you get to the car straightaway by putting in the VIN. It's so annoying to have to select one thing at a time.

Better Airconditioning

Why don't the companies come up with some robots that'll crawl into your ducts and keep them germ free all year round? That should help healthcare costs in this country and improve productivity shouldn't it? Everytime the AC kicks on, you hear someone sneeze.

Commemorative Supernovae

They say at some point, things will only be limited by the imagination. How about this one.. A company provides you a supernova to commemorate any event. You name the event, they'll look and find you a start that's going to self-destruct at that very event - or, the price will reflect the timing. You want it at 5 PM, that'll cost you $10k. 2 AM (red eye) will be cheaper:)

Renting Out Great Circles

Weightlessness could become a commodity. Certain manufacturing processes might benefit. What must you do? Travel at approximately 8 km/s. If you don't do this at the equator, you have to account for the rotation of the earth in some non-fun ways, but the way this would probably work is for a really long, continuous magnetic levitation track to be contructed along a longitude - probably one that runs across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It would have to be tall enough to not be hindered by icebergs or ships. To get on, or off, you'd have to be travelling at 8 km/s. But, there could be a continuous train of carriages dedicated to different things - science, tourism, etc. Imagine the headlines 200 years from now - meteor brings great circle train to halt.

Intelli-Phone

Your cellphone comes with a laser pointer (maybe; or just a viewfinder display). When you see a number somewhere - say in a newspaper or on an advertisment billboard, you point and your cellphone sees that you're interested in a number and asks if you want to save that number - reads it out. You say yes, or dial, or something like that.

Outsourcing - More Bang for the Buck

That sounds nasty, but, I'm thinking simple things that I wonder why people haven't thought of them yet. How about remote watchmen? Go into a police station and you'll see people in rooms looking at closed circuit TVs. Why not outsource stuff like that? It's an idiot job.

Also, in the future, remote chauffeuring. Dual/triple redundant too. Works like this - say you're prepared to spend $200 a month on a chauffeur. That's a decent amount in the third world. Let's say you can hire 3 people for that money. Now, three of them get control of your car simultaneously - they don't know that they're working with two others. Hopefully, all three make the same (correct) decision during the drive. But, if one of them errs, the other two should still be able to carry you safely.

Surprised They Aren't Around Yet

Artificial hearts. Don't we already have the mechanical and control technology to create something to keep pumping continuously? Once in a while, the patient removes the used battery and puts in a new one - he always has two in his artifical heart - and both the charger and the heart will ensure the battery is okay. Acutally, the battery could be a smart battery that can decide for itself (has enough functionality embedded in it) if it is ready for the job or not.

Not Stuff that Abides

but patterns that perpetuate ourselves. Ever consider that ultimately, we are only software. The mind controls everything. And, the state of mind is akin to a program in a certain state. Now, in the future, looks will count for little since cosmetics will advanced to the state that anyone can look like anything they want and they won't feel bad about artificial body parts because those parts will be practically real. When that point is reached, and man is, for all practical purposes immortal, and man accepts to live with an artificial brain, then teleportation will be real - why, because you can transmit your state of mind electronically to a distant location and have it downloaded into an identical body - you reappear in another place. Of course, there should be laws to prevent replication of the mind - strict controls I'd think - otherwise people would be able to raise armies of like-minded citizens.

Futuristic Fly Catcher

Picture this - you see a fly in your house, you take a can, aim it and spray. The can releases hundreds of micro-flybots that coordinatedly zero-in on the real fly and finish it off. Poor fly. Then, the bots just fall harmlessly to the carpet after reducing the each bit of fly that they contain to simple elements/compounds that can't be food for germs. You'll want to vacuum sometime soon.

God-Based Society

Picture it - everywhere - there will be a camera - but, you can relax knowing that only God will be allowed to watch. This makes you safe, in some sense, because, now, every crime can be solved. On the other hand, "God", in this society is not God as we understand today but a human being elected by everyone else, who manages the data with computers.

Unobtrusive Film Production

How do they make pictures now? Large, conspicuous cameras that tell everyone - here's a picture being made. But, I think we already have enough technology to produce pictures in public without the need for extras and cordoning off. In fact, this will give rise to collectible films. The first take, one member of the public was involved - without realizing. Next take, someone else. Some of those takes will become very rare.

Wanted: Better Surveillance Cameras

especially in high-crime areas. Because... when you see someone in real life, it's not exactly from a surveillance camera point of view. You know what I think - I think people should be asked to swipe ID everywhere. That's the only we know if we can trust them. People who refuse would have to be treated with caution.

Cleaner Kitchen Counters

How about a gadget that lets you cover the countertop with some cellphane/plastic wrap sort of thing when you need to do some cooking? Something based on a roller that's just below the edge of the counter with a roll of the material.

The Liberation of the World

begins with freedom from Microsoft. I guess the folks in charge are just starting to realize it. Dell's just started shipping Linux laptops. In the future, computers will be so generic and super-functional that apartments will come with builtin computers that are acceptable and meets some standards. All you have to do is login to some secure account and start.

Better Cigarette Lighter

in your car. One that can not only power your cellphone charger, but can connect to your cellphone - which has GPS capability - and talk to the navigation system display - what this needs - a cheap display that no one wants to steal - costly and good software that the only the cellphone companies will give you on their phones. Otherwise, you could just put GPS in your car. Eh?

Location Based Reminders

Suggested this before in the Major Design Project class that Dr. Barnwell was teaching: a gadget using voice recognition that reminds you to do something when someone you know is closeby or on the phone. That's not what the title of this post says - that's a similar device that knows if you're at or near a grocery store and reminds you accordingly. I think rich people have this already in their cars.

Dr. Townes on Technology

Many of tiday's practical technologies result from basic science done years to decades before. The people involved, motivated mainly by curiosity, often have little idea as to where their research will lead. Our ability to forecase the practical payoffs from fundamental exploration of the nature of things (and, similarly, to know which of today's research avenues are technological dead ends) is poor.

Enviro Friendly Hard Copies

Remember those magic pads you saw when you were a kid - you could draw stuff and then erase it by lifting the page off the wax? How about something like that that you could connect to the computer and print stuff - text/pictures/plots on? Wouldn't we love that - print something to show to someone else and then reuse the page again and again?

Here's the Next Hotmail

type of idea. For desis or anyone for that matter. You know how you've been asked by friends and relatives one time of the other if you know someone who'll be travelling to India/US around so and so dates because an old person they know will be travelling and needs a companion? Why not create a website where people can register and find matches?

One Kilometer Wide

The size of the tornado that hit Greensberg in Kansas. People said their ears started popping. Looks like the future will call for pressurized bunkers in the basement - where the pressure can be regulated. How come history doesn't recount any such calamities. I've heard that tsunamis in prehistoric times were a thousand feet high - compare with a 100 feet today. I guess once the core of the earth cooled down, things cooled down with it. As for tornadoes, how about erecting solid steel structures that can foil it - the steel structures are, say, 2'x2' and hundreds of feet tall and they'll be raised from the ground at regular intervals to slow down the high speed winds and prevent damage at ground level.

Car Theft Prevention

You realize your car's been stolen and you tell the cops your license plate number. Now, with that info, they use a special reserved frequency to send a code to the transmitter of every similar car and, if it is the car, it'll respond. For example, if it's a blue 98 Nissan Sentra, then, everytime a cop sees one a blue Sentra, he'll use his transmitter to try and talk to the one in the car. The code needs to be really long and the transmitter should be illegal to possess - only the cops are allowed to have it. Also, such transmitters can be installed in toll plazas. Everytime a car passes through one, RFID can be used to get basic info about the car without need for a special trasceiver of any sort - can be completely reflection based, located on the underside of the car. Also, it should be illegal to remove this reflector.

Now, how do you get around this... within hours of the car being stolen, the bad guys are already dismantling it for parts and trying to sell the parts. Hmm...

Watch Downtown Closely

Why haven't they done it yet? Just put some cameras on the high rise buildings that the bums can't get to. How many times have we heard of someone getting mugged on Tech campus and the assailant then running in the direction of downtown? But, if you had surveillance at night, you'd be able to see what happened at the time of the attack and track things down.

Desk Light that Adjusts Depending on the Angle of the Head

When you're looking up, you want the light to not hit your eyes. You want the light to always shine from over your left shoulder. How hard can this be?

Door Knock Detector and Reporter

Device that you attach to the viewhole. When the door is knocked, the device, if armed, will take a picture through the viewhold and make it available on the internet through upload or email. How hard can this be with linux? Should take a shot at this sometime.

After attending Maker Faire 2009, I have renewed interest in this one. Question is - how does one recognize a knock on the door electronically? My mind came up with a sensor that detects vibration - you decide how soft of a knock you want to detect and build a sensor accordingly - it's this shallow cuboid filled with oil or some other viscous fluid, and in it, you have springloaded wires with weights - speaking microscopically of course - at their ends. Knock - weights move - and complete an electrical circuit and you detect a knock. This is probably a MEMS problem.

Other way is to look at the output of a microphone and use that. But, now you're into preamp/no preamp, etc.

Yogic Abortion

aka psychosomatic abortion. Surprised no one's thought of this before. Once this becomes standard, the politicians will be irrelevant in this sphere. Mind over matter. You'd need real thought police to prevent this.

Damn! Just Deleted this One!

When I was trying to delete a stupid blog that I didn't want linked to me!

How's that for an idea - have an undo button on blog management.