Idea #13 -

This one is a little more pie in the sky than standard, but work with me. What if we developed experts systems that were not based around the knowledge of any particular professional, but were instead based around our knowledge. This would be programmatic instances of ourselves, that contained expert knowledge in being … us.

For anyone who wants to try this out, here are a few tools for developing expert systems.

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Idea #12 -

Wouldn’t be interesting if parking lots could be used as solar collectors? There is a huge amount of ambient heat generated in our nations parking lots, there should be a way of using this waste heat to generate electricity. Even if it was only a nominal amount of power, it could if wide-spread enough substantially reduce energy costs for large buildings.

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Idea #11 -

Random Diner - at a preset interval this application sends you an email or SMS message about a new restaurant it thinks you should eat at based on past patterns and location.

If this isn’t already an iPhone App, it should be. We do similar sorts of data-crunching/statistical modeling for everything from shopping to music already, it would be interesting to see this for food.

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Idea #10 -

I want a virtual trainer. Enter the particulars about my nutrition/exercise goals and my vitals and it spits back an appropriate program. It could also match me with others in the area with similar profiles for encouragement.

Combined with a sensor like FitBit, this could be some serious firepower in our personal fitness arsenal.

Some applications that are almost there: Gyminee, ISFOnline, Traineo

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Idea #9

Why don’t we do more “time-based” web design. An example would be Woot, where it’s most valuable if people check the site on schedule. We use archival models a lot when designing web products but we ignore that people love immediacy as well.

An example would be a site that only exists (404’s otherwise) every other Thursday but when it does, if you see it you can win fabulous (OK decent) prizes.

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Idea #8

I want a hype filter. It would likely be a plugin/greasemonkey script that works in two ways. The first lets me completely remove mentions of an “overhyped” topic from my information feed. The second gives me a de-duped digest of that topic. Topics determined by keyword or something.

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Idea #7 

I want a cheap document reader (Kindlesque) that wirelessly syncs my email, pdfs, docs and feeds to read on the go. I don’t need/want any fancy bells and whistles — it just needs to be fast, cheap and sturdy enough to take a few knocks and bumps.

As it stands there are a few options: The Kindle (which is focused too heavily on books), the Peek which uses a really expensive subscription model and doesn’t support enough formats and the Readius (shown above) that doesn’t pass the “cheap” test.

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Idea #6

Shouldn’t there be a common import/export format for Social Network friends. It should be as easy to “transport” my friends from network to network as it is to move my contact list around.

As it stands, FOAF, Portable Contacts and XFN exist but the implementation that will win will be the one that plugs into your network without as much overhead.

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Idea #5

Wouldn’t it be interesting if we had a rumor filter? It would let you see if news has been flagged as incorrect or incomplete. There would also be a plugin that would let you see if you’re on a page with “bad information”

It would work a lot like plugins that now exist for services like StumbleUpon that allow you to see how others have “rated” a particular piece of information but instead of generic appeal the ratings would be in terms of truthfulness/completeness.

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Idea #4 

I want a tool that let’s me take pictures and geotag them. From now on if anyone else takes a similar picture they’d be able to get a map to/from the location. Think of it like a “Make your own Google Streetview.

As it stands there are a Eye.fi and a tool by Microsoft have one half of the equation taken care of.

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