Saturday, November 7, 2009

The Game Changer

When someone's doing a monologue on TV (I don't necessarily mean stand up), you see the person on your screen and his background is his real background. But, what if your TV could capture the background of your room and use that? Every once in a way I get an idea like this that could make me billions and I just post it on here for free. I'm sure we can make this one work.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

A New Paradigm for Open-Source Software

Tweakability is the name of the game. If you don't give your user the means of customizing the software your written, it's not really open-source - even if the source code is available. What do we need then? We need to provide a package that contains both the source and the building tool. The user shouldn't have to install anything except press a button to get the end result. That will really give us great free software.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Better Crimson Editor

1) Have a decent forum that's easy to access - like AHK's - shouldn't be necessary if you just have a decent product. It's way better than anything M$ has, but still leaves some to be desired. Unfortunately, my NEdit is a bit unstable on my current Cygwin setup - could be the XWin thing too
2) Allow CTRL-Scrollwheel to change the view-zoom level
3) Allow triple-click to select a whole line. Jeez! why can't they get such basic stuff right?

Friday, August 21, 2009

Better Notepad (M$)

Dear M$,

Please allow the view zoom level to be manipulated with Ctrl-Scroll.

The World

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

New Password Save Option

Most of us don't want Windows (or our browser) to store our passwords. How about an option that lets you store the length of the username and the password. That way, while typing the username or the password, if you accidentally press ENTER when you meant to press SHIFT, it can prompt you to hit ENTER again to submit? Yup, ENTER is too close to SHIFT.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Livescribe App

They want the Livescribe to catch on like the iPhone - legions of people developing apps for it. Here's one that geeks might appreciate:

Write an app that will give an audio reading of the value of a resistor based on its colour code. So, you have to get the camera on the tip of the pen close to your resistor and get the program to look at the code lines and report the value audibly in English (oder andere lingua). This should be a no-brainer considering the other apps that are out there.

Now, how soon do you think it'll be before Taiwan has figured out the livescribe and brought the price down to $10?

Friday, May 15, 2009

Amorphous Solar - Enhanced Community Security

Video cameras to monitor communities are a bit hard because they invade privacy. But, motion detectors should be fine. Give your patrol officer a heads up when he's on the other side of the property and someone's breaking into a car on this side. How - use a motion detector that looks like a rock. Solar panels might be a giveaway - but, maybe you could disguise them as a garden lamp too. So, you want to distribute the solar cell in a random way. Just a thought.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

TSMC's New Business Model

(I hope)

Let their customers bypass both Cadence and Mentor. Here's what they need to do :

Download Berkeley spice and customize it and robustize it - ensure no non-convergence issues with their models. Cost ~300k, time ~ 1 yr, 4 people.

Download the open-source EDA tools for schematic and layout and customize them and professionalize them. Cost ~4 million, time ~ 1 yr, 30 people. Might want to subcon here.

Then, generate libraries that your customers can use - standard cell digital libraries and also some analog stuff - voltage references, regulators, VCOs, etc. These must be proven on silicon and macromodels that can be used with the simulator should be available. The IP should be provided too - so customers can tweak. This is akin to Cadence providing ahdlLib. Cost ~40 million, time ~ 2 yrs, 40 people.

Then, customize the simulator and design environment to make models transparent to the user. The user should never have to worry about models and should also never be able to look at the models. Of course, the user can rig up the simulation to get the characteristics of the devices and thereby write his own model for use with another simulator, but the effort should be unnecessary. Cost ~10 million, time ~ 1 yr, 10 people.

Now, let people download the tool and libraries from your website for free. They can now try out designs and see if they work and if they work in simulation, can go search for funding to get the chips fab'd/manufactured.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

eyePhone

I'm surprised thinkgeek hasn't thought of this one yet. Simple - bluetooth headset built into a spectacle frame.

Take it one step further - a full-fledged head mounted display that you can use glance and blink to control. How about that? Of course, form factor should still be a normal pair of glasses. Something like Mission Impossible? If Cruise actually had an iPhone in that movie, it would have made sense to some people.

Monday, April 27, 2009

TI MSP430 Enables Secure USB Data Stick

Surprised it hasn't been done before. Use the Chipcon radio's RSSI (if available) to get an idea of the distance. Then, (you carry the base station on your belt or in your pocket - it never leaves your person), if the MCU detects the distance between you and your USB stick is more than X, it starts screaming. Simple, elusive. You see, there needn't be any layoffs at all. There's plenty of worthwhile work for everyone.

Monday, February 23, 2009

MSP430 Application Compiler

Now, I'm not talking about compiling C code. Microchip and Atmel might already have this. Not sure about TI.

Here's the idea. You get the user to describe his application in words and you use a parser to tell him what components he needs to put his system together. Of course, you're encouraged to stick to a certain syntax and limited vocabulary. For example.

Pressure sensor interfaced to MSP430, connected wirelessly to PC through USB.

Now, the parser can tell him he can just use the EZ430-RF200 demo kit, suggest some I2C based pressure sensors, etc. Childishly simple.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

PDK Development for Nanotech Circuits

If you're interested in PDK development but in a different, revolutionary domain, not CMOS, you might consider contacting Dr. Eric Vogel of UTD and offering to do some work for him. He develops nano-tech components - transistors, etc, but at small dimensions. There, the circuit designer has the job of characterizing and modeling the devices. You can offer to develop a PDK for him that will make the circuit designer's job very easy and make the design process very modular.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Senior Safety

Don't waste the economic stimulus dollars on healthcare.

Apply for a grant from Small Business Innovation Research www.sbir.gov. The non-profit www.score.org will help you write a business plan or proposal.

Basic idea is this :

Extend on the RF2500 demo kit based on the MSP430. This kit has a target board powered by batteries. the host board is connected to a PC through USB. The demo target board has only a temp sensor. When the demo app is run on the PC, it shows the temperatures on the target and the host boards. The target board needs to be within 50 meters of the host.

Application :

Save healthcare costs by preventing injuries from falls. Target market is fall-prone individuals - mostly elderly

Concept :

Have multiple target boards that interface to accelerometers that report an event to the host when the acceleration exceeds a certain value. These can be located on the person of the user. The host processor can decide if a fall is happening. The user will also be tracked by a couple of robots in a Roomba-like form- factor, which are programmed to stay within a prescribed distance from the user. One will be in front and the other behind. These units contain air-bags that can be deployed in a suitable way to prevent injury in the event of a fall. If the host processor detects a fall condition, it can deploy the airbags to prevent an injury.

The idea is basically simple, but it would require a fair bit of programming and system partitioning for practicality.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Innocence by Association

We've heard the more familar phrase. Here's my predicament:

I want to design in TSMC's processes and market the IP. But, how can they trust small fry like me? Answer, I ally with a big name in my location. Of course, I must foot the bill for development. But, say I go with an outfit like Lockheed Martin, and give them the right to inspect me and take responsibility for me, and tell TSMC that I'm clean, would that work? Has something like this been done before? Interesting. I get to design out of my house, or office, LM gets to check me out and report back to TSMC not to worry, we all make life easier and the world a better place. John Lennon would love it.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Universal Locator Code

You're waiting for a shuttle or something like that. But, you have to wait indoors where you can't see it approach. You want a call on your cell telling you to come out - automatically. How? When you've registered at a hotel (say), they give you a code you can use that will be valid during your stay. Then, when you want to be notified, you dial a number on your cellphone and, since the system also knows where the shuttle is, because it's tagged, and it knows where you are - since the cell-company can get your approximate location by triangulation, you can be notified.

Now Hiring - Get the Best

That should be your logo - the word will spread. If your business is thriving in this recession and you actually need people, use that as your motto and, eventually, the best people will take notice and contact you.

flipblog.com - Better Blogger

One button you can press to have your posts displayed in ascending chronological order - oldest first. Makes sense if you want to tell a story. Duh! Any one out there already offering such?

Signature Hardware - Dell's Comeback Bid

Okay, cellphones are getting more power and more powerful and more powerful. But, the screens can't really get much bigger. The answer - on-demand hardware - at a restaurant, on the plane, whereever. The problem - trust. How do you trust the display device and the input device to not steal your information? Answer - Dell. Imagine a keyboard with just a USB port and nothing else - not even screws to open the thing. Same with the monitor - only a USB port - and maybe a power connector - but absolutely no way to tamper with. And of course, the Dell logo. Now, you carry your computer with you and ask for the hardware, and use it.

American iPod Power

Get your own back at AA by using their reading lights to power your ipod shuffles. A shuffle doesn't need more than about 100 mW of power and those reading lights put out atleast 10 times that. So, rig up something with a suction theme that you can attach around the light and listen without running out of charge.

Accelerated Forging

What better way to prevent counterfeiting than to require that some portion of your product can only be made by a factory whose size and shape can be verified by a satellite. But, how to handle the problem of the thing being located underground? Interesting problem. You should need sunlight to make the product - so you can check for sunlight collection somehow. I can see the Russians or Chinese setting up a state-owned enterprise to actually try something like this to get the Americans. Now, what can of tag can you produce like this? Accelerated comes from linear (or other) accelerator - a machine so big and of such regular shape that it can only be expected to do one task.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Skeleton Startup

Dumb name for a not-so-dumb concept. You're in a lowly position in your organization. But, you've got good ideas. And, there are people in the organization who might be willing to odd jobs if they're paid extra. So, you come up with a plan to create something big and split it up into smaller jobs and ask one of the big bosses if you can advertise the small jobs for people to bid on - and get paid to do. Neat? No need to hire people. No need to think about benefits and all that other junk. You keep building new and useful systems, all while the organization chugs along with its regular work.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Internal Consulting

Virtually every project is strapped for resources. Especially in this tough business environment where you're more concerned with what you're going to tell Wall Street on your next date with CNBC. Instead of thinking of the employment cost as an investment for retaining your employees who you were right to hire, you want to show a smaller loss by laying them off.

Anyhow, considering every designer is faced with a deluge of tasks that he can't completely fit into his deadlines, why not advertise those internally to let other designers in the company bid for? Everyone's looking to make a contribution and some people want to earn more money. Some people want to try something new. Some tasks don't even involve any creativity - you merely need to plough through the time consuming business of simulating a design for some specific case, etc. Spend a little extra money to get it done on time, and let more of your workforce grow faster.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Beagle Assistant

My number one complaint against cellphones - you can't program them to do what you want. The same goes for PCs running Windows. Enter Linux.

When you're actually doing development, you need a good display and a good input device. When your gadget's out in the field, the input and output can be less demanding. Audio is plenty (mostly) and for input - how about location and voice.

Here's what I'd like to do: I record the voices of the people I bump into in the course of a week and get my gadget to recognize them. Then, I put in reminder messages into the gadget telling me what to ask/tell each person. Then, when it recognizes someone's voice, it vibrates (another miss on the beagleboard:) to let me know and I can listen with headphones or hold the speaker to my ear (to save an LCD display interface).

Same with locations. When I drive past a Kroger, I want my gadget to tell me to get milk or groceries.

www.beagleboard.org makes it possible.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

BBC - A Worthwhile Initiative to Sell OMAP

That's for Basic Beagleboard Competence. What better than a huge community of support personnel willing to help people develop OMAP applications around the beagleboard? What if TI offered each of its 30k employees a $1k bonus to achieve basic beagleboard competence - of course, there'd have to be a way to measure that. But, this could be huge. If you get 10,000 of them to jump on, you've spent $10m, but the potential reward could be huge.

Beagle DashCam

No one's talked about connecting the beagleboard to a regular hard drive so far. That's been a big miss in my opinion. And how about not putting accelerometers on the board - another big miss.

Anyhow, here's what I'd like to do - put about 4 cameras - tiny, but high resolution eyes that interface to the beagleboard. Then, you build an evidence capture application. You look for simple violations - these shouldn't be hard. Start off by recognizing a car, a line, etc. Look for people going over the limit, crossing the double white line, changing lanes without indicating, changing lanes in an intersection. Then, though you capture at a high rate and resolution into RAM, you only deposit into the HDD based on need - so, if you sense a collision or violation, then, you'll save a few angles at high frame-rate and resolution. Of course, this might need an alsatianboard, not a beagle-board - where you get your basic app running on the beagleboard and then get the basic board design and crank everything up an order of magnitude - 128 MB RAM to 2 GIG, 600 MHz to 3 GHz, etc. You get the idea - 2 Watts to 20 Watts, etc.

Then, I'd like a couple of buttons on my steering wheel that I can use to speak aloud and index each driving session using a voice tag. Also, if I want, I should be able to blue-tooth or USB the videos to my phone or laptop. HDD sits in the car always or it would be too cumbersome.