Ideas for Other People

Print Your Own Money

2006-11-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

If one can design and print stamps that are accepted by the USPS, why not legal tender?

Modular Electronics

2006-11-12T15:08:00.001-08:00

Modular electronics allow one to just put electronic components near each other and let them cooperate without wires. Just put the monitor near the CPU, or the DVD player near the TV, or the turntable near the amplifier and components themselves work out how to communicate with each other.

Yard Moss

2006-11-12T15:08:00.000-08:00

Moss instead of grass. Shave instead of mow.

Light Sponge

2006-11-12T15:06:00.000-08:00

The light sponge accumulates light that would otherwise have gone unobserved or ignored and emits it later.

The International Channel

2006-11-12T15:03:00.000-08:00

The International Channel is a TV channel that features a different country every week. All that week, it broadcasts a channel from another country. One week it's Moldova, the next Mauritania.

Domestic Predator for Cupboard and Closet Moths

2006-11-12T15:00:00.000-08:00

A creature bio-engineered to be a predator of the annoying household moths. Instead of grumbling about holes in sweaters and finding worms in the cereal, release some of the predators inside the house and let them stand guard against the moths.

Clawfoot Furniture Socks

2006-11-12T14:58:00.000-08:00

Clawfoot furniture socks are metal clawfeet that can be mounted over plain table and chair legs, so that they will have feet.

Magnetic Bricks

2006-11-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

Magnetic bricks make building very easy but attaching themselves to structures and one another. The constructions could be destroyed easily by reversing the bricks' polarity.

Animalian Vacuum Cleaners

2006-11-12T14:55:00.000-08:00

Animalian vacuum cleaners look like real or fantastic animals so that vacuuming will be more amusing and so that cats and young children can be further frightened.

Importance Glasses

2006-11-12T14:50:00.000-08:00

Importance glasses allow one to find lost, important objects. Things like keys, remote contols, and other items that are touched often will register as "important" to the glasses. Wear the glasses to spot the missing objects easily, or just wear them to see what's really important. Sadly, it would not work for important but rarely touched objects like car titles or deeds.

Colored Light for the Refrigerator

2006-11-12T14:47:00.000-08:00

Fridge lights--why should it be white? Wouldn't the late-night snack be more dramatic if the dark kitchen were bathed in a red glow.

Readable Clothing

2006-11-12T14:44:00.000-08:00

Readable clothing was originally invented for travelers who want to pack light, but now it's marketed for air travelers who are prohibited from bringing books or paper with them. Partners could wear each other's novels and gaze upon each other while reading. Blank clothing could come as blank, graph paper style, or legal pad-style.

Shampoo/ Conditioner in Pill Form

2006-11-12T14:37:00.000-08:00

Shampoo and conditioner in pill form allow you to travel light and gets you past the security guards who think the products might actually be nitroglycerine, or whatever fluid it is that seems to frighten them so much.

Power Windows in Houses

2006-11-12T14:36:00.000-08:00

Power windows in houses--why not? It would be nice to have a horn for the house too. "Beep Beep! Get out of my yard!"

Screen Windows for Cars

2006-11-12T14:34:00.000-08:00

Screen windows for cars. Keep those kids and limbs and pets inside, keep the bugs out, all the while feeling the breeze.

Big Secret

2006-11-12T14:32:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to divulge my best invention just so you all can steal it.

Exercise Machine Money

2006-11-12T14:27:00.000-08:00

All power produced by toiling on exercise machines is logged and stored. Exercisers could apply the money to their gym fees. Or gyms could become work collectives where people come together to generate power for a purpose. Or the exercisers could be chained to their machines to produce power for the evil gym operator.

Posterity Generator

2006-11-12T14:25:00.000-08:00

A device that gradually accumulates posterity and significance for an individual and then releases it after the person's death.

Half-hour Watch

2006-10-15T06:50:00.000-07:00

What time is it? Around 9:30. A half-hour watch is perfect for those people who just need to know roughly what time it is. Instead of dealing in seconds and minutes, this watch rounds up to the half-hour. Great for: weekends, nappers, unemployed, and creative types. Also, a great entry-level watch for those who haven't worn one before.

Invisible Therapist

2006-07-30T08:36:00.000-07:00

I had two invisible friends when I was little. I called them Homensay and Hunkieberry. I can't picture them and don't know now if I could picture them then. But they were comforting to me then, and it's comforting now to know that they existed at some point (and may return to me in my senility).

Sometimes, I think it would be nice to have an "invisible therapist." I've never been to a real one, though I've thought about it at some point. I even called one, but he had a strange voice and I couldn't imagine telling that voice anything private or really taking to heart anything it said.

The "invisible therapist" wouldn't really be invisible. It would really be a virtual therapist. As a subscriber, you would be able to create your own settings, so that if you wanted a heavy-set, red-headed woman in her 60s, with a Charleston accent who reminded you a little bit of your Aunt Carol mixed in with your high school French teacher and who had a cackly laugh, you could create those features of her. The actual therapy/advice/behavior would be based on someone in your local area, or it would draw off of a customized educational and intellectual background you could have programmed in.

Night Vision Windows

2006-07-29T06:58:00.000-07:00

When the sun goes down, these windows turn on their Night Vision. You will be able to see trees, animals, and lurkers all bathed in the blue light of Night Vision. Meanwhile, from the outside, the pane goes black, so that nobody can see inside. Good for: babysitting, counting money, cleaning guns, and walking around in underpants, of course.

Catwalk

2006-07-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

This Plexiglas shelf fits over your keyboard with just enough room to slip your hands under it to type. Kitty can walk right over your keyboard without asdddddddddklj jklllllllllllllllllllllllllllfdd

Throw Therapy

2006-06-15T19:56:00.000-07:00

It's the therapy where you show up and throw breakable shit to make you feel better. Lots of throwing and breaking.

It can be used in coordination with other therapies or entirely on its own.

In the advanced version, your therapist is saying things to calm you down that do not quite work, and you are at liberty to throw at him precious annoying breakable objects because he is wearing his protective gear.

The Commute-i-cator

2006-06-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

The latest advancement in car technology won't make you safer or more comfortable, but it may make you less frustrated.

Cars will be equipped with signage that can be selected for a given circumstance with the press of a button. When a particular button is pushed, a sign will appear as a hologram outside your car, in a place where the driver you want to communicate with is likely to see it. Among signs to that come with the Commute-i-cator are:

Thanks for letting me get over!
Please use your turn signal next time.
Please don't drive so slowly.
Please get off my ass.
The left lane is for passing, so since you're not passing it would be good of you to get over into the right lane now.
You're driving kinda stupidly; maybe you should hang up your cell phone.

Drivers will also be able to customize signs. Consequent law suits will likely lead directly to the demise of the company responsible for this product.

A Nice Place To Go

2006-06-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

Someone should make a beautiful and relaxing place that doesn't have any downside that is a place where you can go and everyone is a nice person and the bugs are nice people too or maybe they aren't really there and you can relax and eat ice cream and maybe have exciting sexual encounters too and bring the children and the grandparents and fall in love for real and for a long time and age some but only when you want to and it is reversible with various speed settings but sometimes maybe most of the time just drink coffee looking at other people or listening to birds or ride your bike a little and you don't have to die and you don't want to.

Headline Overuse Prevention Software

2006-06-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

In an effort to crack down on tired headlines such as "Food for Thought" and "East Meets West," someone should develop a Google-esque program that could quickly scan Lexis/Nexis and other newspaper archives and immediately spit out real-time numbers on the number of times a headline option has been used during the past week, month, year and so on. With the right amount of pressure, newspapers could then adopt policies regulating overused headlines so that lazy copy editors would be locked out of old chestnuts like "Not Your Daddy's [your product of choice here]."

The Indie Network

2006-06-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

In the way that True Value, the hardware supply company, enabled independent stores to buy a wide array of products through the "True Value" network and remain independent, there ought to be individual networks of product-supply companies that cater to small companies around the world. Clothing supply, food, music, etc. Each group would act in some ways as a distributor and in some ways as a trade association for the little guy, using the collective buying power to get better prices, assisting with promotion, and allowing each store complete freedom over its own product line.

Modular Utility Wall Channels

2006-06-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

Someone should develop a system of putting services (water, sewage, electricity, info wires, etc) into the baseboards of walls in a way that makes these systems easy to access for upgrades and repairs while simultaneously making them difficult to damage and tamper with.

eVacuum

2006-06-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

You google your name and the first search result is a picture of you shooting tequila out of your old girlfriend's navel? It's time for eVacuum. Based in part on Janke's Society for the Proper Destruction of Art and based in part on "The Children of MySpace", the eVacuum would, once activated (or loaded or run or installed), "suck" all photographic evidence of the user's embarrassing past off the web. The user provides full name, nicknames, past one-night-stands and photo-prone exes, SSN, DoB, high school and college (official name plus mascot), plus descriptions of actual and possible past debauchery. The eVacuum scans all the search engines then performs a proprietary cleansing script that wipes all relevant images.

The Ultimate Trendy

2006-06-05T15:27:00.000-07:00

This is a concept for a school of thought within all design-esque trades.

The idea would be to create a design so perfectly in keeping with the moment that within the first sight of the design, within the looker there would be a rush of satisfaction bordering on the transcendent that moved immediately to disgust upon the first wearing or use of the object.

The aim is to be absolutely current. Not only people but trends pass away, so the goal is to place into an object the exact temporality of an age, a mini-age, a micro-age, for the object to live a birth, climax, and death in the span of a clock's second.

Within minutes, the object would gain retro-status and be offered at Christie's for a worthy price.

The Secret Society for Proper Destruction of "Art"

2006-06-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of all those who have had to suffer through art classes viewing the wretched work of the uninspired -- works of art that had been made into multiple copies (e.g. handed out on paper around the room or on CDs to their friends) or works that seemed indestructible due simply to the mal-spread love of family members of the "artist," this Society would be dedicated to the destruction of objects of beyond-failed art. After subscribing to the service, fulfilling one's novitiate (years of study and practice in the trade of utter destruction), and enduring harsh hazing rituals, a member would be allowed to declare one object per year as "in need of destruction" and be permitted to set the minions of the society to work on seizing computers, sketches, and photographs, on detaining loved ones, and, mostly, on obliterating all traces of the artwork. (Of course, requisite backup alerts would be established in the case of attempts to reconstruct the evil thing from memory.)

IFARQ

2006-06-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

The Institute for Answering Rhetorical Questions would be a think tank dedicated to generating suitable replies to the onslaught of rhetorical questions we must deal with everyday. How many time do I have to tell you to turn the lights off when you leave the room? Are you insane? Is the Pope Catholic? How should I know? What part of "No" did you not understand? What's the big idea, Mister? All that and more, answered by IFARQ.

When petting is not enough...

2006-06-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

The slip-on cat tongue could take two forms:

1) for the extreme cat lover, an actual slip-on tongue to cover your tongue. When you want to show your cat more affection than petting will enable, just slip this large "cat-tonguesque" tongue over your tongue and bathe away.

2) for a more moderate show of affection, the slip-on tongue could fit over two or three fingers so that your petting the cat would feel more like a bathing from another (very large) cat.

Many name possibilities, though "Pussy Stroke" has a nice ring.

"It's a Titty Bit Nipple Outside"* shirts

2006-06-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

You've seen them on mannequins for years now, and the day is coming when, in a mall near you, shirts with fake nipples built right in will hang calmly on plastic hangers, price tags swaying gently in the manufactured breeze. Jean Harlow iced hers; the XX's of tomorrow will pull theirs on over their heads. And right behind the shirts: bras that keep the real ones laying low. Say goodbye to all your alignment woes, ladies.

*The name of this product traces directly to one Liam Berry, who, in the early 1990's at least, used the phrase to describe weather from time to time.

The Modern Book

2006-06-05T10:06:00.000-07:00

Some savvy publisher will soon nodoubt start publishing books with AC cords already attached. This way each paper book never runs out of batteries. Plus the books become essential and modern, fulfilling a promise to readers: giving them a way to tap into the thrills yielded by electricity and wires.

Auxiliary devices, such as highlighters and dog-ear-makers also attach via complex systems of USB2, firewire (880), and SD technologies. It will be complex to upgrade a library and each new book added to a library would threaten to bring the bookshelves down upon the head at the top of the reading chair in the room with the books kept at a precise temperature and constantly searching the world for operating system upgrades.

Headphones and eyeglasses and boots too. All plugging into the normal paper book. tres moderne. Yes: we will bring the archaic text into the 21st century and beyond!

A Moment of Applause

2006-06-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

On a specific date at a specific time, I'd like everyone to stop what they are doing and start applauding. It would probably be good to applause for a chosen cause, but then there would be opponents of that cause who would refuse to clap and say things like, "If all those people would stop clapping and do some work, things would be better." So, let's just applaud for applause's sake.

Print-on-demand newspaper racks

2006-06-05T06:53:00.000-07:00

This would cost a lot upfront, so it may be something the entire newspaper industry should undertake as opposed to one company. It could also be a project for the industry/a major company/the city and some other organizations interested in cutting down on paper waste/fuel use/traffic. New York is the obvious choice.

Anyway, the idea: install wireless printing hardware underneath major newspaper rack areas and kiosks. Obviously not every rack could support this, but in areas with heavy foot traffic or in areas that are difficult to get in and out of with a delivery van or in areas that are far away, this could be a solution. Rather than heft reams of newspapers every pre-dawn into delivery vans, the finished paper could be beamed to each printer, which could in theory (I guess, since this is all pretty much theory) support many different papers at a time. That printer prints a certain number of papers and inserts them through the bottom of the rack. The rack has a sensor. That sensor detects (either by weight or some minimum fill line) when the rack needs to be refilled. Over time, the sensor could provide very reliable numbers on how many papers are sold, say, after 3pm, so that it could cut down on paper and ink waste. After a certain time, even, the machine would have to print on demand. It would be like having to wait a couple of minutes while the diner brewed another pot of coffee. No big deal. The machines could run on solar power generated by the racks themselves.

Obviously, a lot of issues: cost, practicality, different paper and format than the good old newsstand broadsheet. Those are somebody else's concerns.

The Audacity Project

2006-06-05T06:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what this would actually be, but I've had an empty file on my computer for a long time called "The Audacity Project." I'm sure I had some idea behind it at some point, but I no longer remember. Apparently, there is an open-source audio editor called Audacity, for which one could conceivably create a project, but this is not what I had in mind when I created that file on my computer. I'm thinking that it would be some kind of far-reaching social movement, but that will, of course, be up to the person who actually does something with the name of the idea.

Temporary Gum

2006-06-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

By the miracle of nanotechnology, each piece of gum is equipped with pleasure sensors that measure the amount of pleasure a chewer is gaining from the gum being chewed by assessing certain neurological cues available to the discerning pleasure sensors in the chewer's mouth. When the amount of pleasure has fallen beneath the pleasure threshold set by the chewer, the gum instantly dissolves.

The Cloud House - Part 1 of a Series: Non-functional Architecture

2006-06-04T10:22:00.000-07:00

After studying the motions of humans within their dwellings, a crafty architect/sculptor with a large budget and a penchant for useless beauty builds on a tall tower in a cloudy region on the outskirts of a city surrounded by mountains a large, smooth structure within which all walls are designed to channel clouds to mimic the motions of living within a dwelling. The clouds arrivethrough a large funnel designed to assist them in entering and every ceiling, floor, and wall is a curved surface designed to produce various motions: splitting and rejoining clouds, allowing them to chill in front of the tv, complete with a tv that is turned on and off by various movements of the clouds, a kitchen with a stove, a bedroom where perhaps the bed assists (through heat and water) in the procreation of more clouds. There is no video camera to capture the motions but extensive work has been done to be sure that this cloud house, inaccessible to humans because of its height, is doing the work of making clouds have a home.

The REAL Anti-Gravity Chair

2006-06-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

This must exist already.

You squeeze into your lycra body suit, the one embedded with ultra thin magnets customized according to your proportions. You lie on your chair, turn on the high-powered electro-magnets within it, and float.

(idea designed with lemmingly)

The Pound

2006-06-04T08:34:00.000-07:00

A hard condom case that looks like a very large coin. The etching on the coin is customizable: monogrammed, create-your-own-country, logos, etc.

Bemusement Park

2006-05-11T06:02:00.000-07:00

Take a date through the Tunnel of Doubt, drive a BumperMallow, ride Sea Legs, or work up a hunger by surviving FlipFlop. Don't forget to visit our concessions area: Fried Beer, Funnel Crab Cakes, Spun Salt, and an assortment of Civil War foods like Hardtack and Joy Juice.

modern & pomo dollhouses

2006-05-11T05:30:00.000-07:00

Apparently, there are already some nontraditional dollhouses on the market. Why not create a line of dollhouses based loosely but not exactly on famous houses like Falling Water or the Norton House?