Beds on an Airplane

I spent quite a bit of time on an airplane this last week and the one though I kept having was "I need a bed".  From my eyeballing calculations it looks like if you arranged the beds bunk style you could get just as many people in the plane.  You could keep planes with seats for the day flights and run bed planes on red-eye and over seas flight.  I would gladly exchange my cramped sitting position for a cramped sleeping position, heck you could even take some of my square inches away and I would still be happy as long as I could lie down.

Paint with the Best of Both Worlds

Oil based paint is durable and long lasting and leaves a very smooth surface when dry.  Acrylic is easy to use, lo-odor and cleans up with water.  I want a paint that cleans up like acrylic and leaves the smooth, brush stroke free look of oil based.

A Lawn Mower that Works in the Rain

Having recently tried to mow my lawn while wet there has to be a better way to design the blade or body of a mower to allow for mowing of wet grass.  I was thinking about a Zamboni type approach where a propane flame would quickly dry the grass as you mowed.  Thinking twice about it I think it would make for one of the quickest ways to start your yard on fire.  So leave it to some bright young engineer to redesign the blade for easy wet mowing.

Removable Tattoos that look like Hickies

Great gag gift for the next White Elephant party you go to.  And beyond awesome for zit ridden adolescent boys with limited social skills.

Turn Off the Music with the Phone

I've seen bluetooth connection between a cell phone and some new cars.  When the phone rings and if you are listening to the radio the radio shuts off/pauses play and the phone conversation can be conducted.  What if you could set up the same thing at home or in the office.  You could be cranking iTunes in your office while you do some monotonous work and when the boss calls you extension to ask you a question iTunes would know instantly to shut off.  You would have to connect your phone to your audio playing device somehow.  It could be nice for home as well where the TV volume went down when the phone rang for easier finding.

Use the Xbox to Train a Dog

With the invention of Xbox's Kinect system an individual can control a video game using their body.  An infrared camera picks up your body movement and the game responds accordingly.  So I propose you create a game that uses the infrared to "see" your dog.  The game would give basic commands and then wait while your dog moved into the position.  It would then give verbal praise or better yet Microsoft could develop a doggy treat dispenser that you could buy with the game that would dish out goodies when your dog completed a certain command 3 times in a row.

Tie-Die-Sparkly-Glow-In-The-Dark Silly Band

Last idea from my kids and the title says it all.  My wife asked my oldest what would be the next Silly Bands and my daughter responded with the suggestion above.  They would be cool, trust me.

Mosquito Diet

A local street urchin suggested this idea for our second to last day of children suggest good ideas.  The idea is to only eat certain foods that would repel mosquitoes like cinnamon and peppermint (oils derived from these two are natural repellents).

A Garden that Plants Itself

From a group of children collaborating together.  What if you could go to Home Depot and buy a garden box that was ready to go, "Just Add Water!"  You could make gardening super easy and the Chia corporation now has the business model to spring into the new millennium (despite killer sales in the Chia Obama head).  You could pick a theme like "The Italian Giardino" with tomato, basil and oregano or "Mexican Backyard" with cilantro, peppers and corn.  And just for kicks you could have the "Surprise Salad" and mix the box up with whatever.

Shoes that Stretch as you Grow

I totally love this idea from my other daughter, probably because I spend millions of dollars a year on the endless need of properly sized shoes for my kids.  You could either have inserts that you put into the shoe that you took out as the kid grew sizes (probably only do 2-3 per shoe).  Or you could use a spacer in the middle of the shoe that you could take out or put in as needed.

A Machine that Reads Your Mind to Draw a Picture

Continuing on our good idea from a child week here's another one from my daughter.  What if there was a machine that would read your thoughts and then draw a picture based off what was there.  I could see implications in business where a boss tries to explain to a group of employees how s/he wants things.

Keep Kids in Their Seats on the Bus

Another one from my daughter:
Seat belts on buses for every kid.  It would save the yelling voice of the bus driver because he wouldn't have to scream at the kids to turn around and sit down.

Harvest the Minds of Children

Sounds a little scary doesn't it.  My good idea a day is for myself.  I will use all the children I know to generate the next week of good ideas.

Starting with this one from my daughter:
What if there was a dog that was very good and it never did anything bad and it did everything you wanted it to do.

And lets turn her inspiration into some thing a little more complicated:
A dog obedience school where instead of teaching your dog how to sit and stay but you taught it to get you a drink from the fridge or answer the door on command (great for those pesky door to door guys).  The best trick I can think of for our house would be find the phone and put it back on the charger.

Question:
Has a fantastic idea ever been suggested to you by anyone under the age of 10?

Pandora for the Car

Pandora radio is an internet based, users driven radio station that allows you to listen to your favorite music.  If you haven't tried it you should give it a go at pandora.com.  At the moment you could potentially run Pandora on your smart phone and plug that into the Aux port on your car stereo but there is no official tie between Pandora and any of the car manufacturers.  I propose a great business partnership between Toyota and Pandora.  That way you could control your music from your steering controls.  It would be like OnStar only better because you would use it.

Out of Bed Alarm

Anyone who puts kids to bed knows they don't always stay in bed.  Today's good idea is an alarm for the kids bed that would sense when they were out of bed.  It would be weight based so if the kid gets off the bed an alarm goes off and the only way to shut it off is to get back on the bed.  That'll keep the little rascals out of the fridge.  You would also have a timer on it so when the kids get up in the morning the alarm is turned off when the head to the little persons room.

Fake Worms that Move

I just went fishing with the kids and burned through the 18 worms we had purchased at the bait shop in about an hour.  With little kids it would be awesome to have a fake worm that was both super durable and moved like a real worm.

Go To Bed TV

Americans spend way too much time watching TV.  I propose a TV timer that not only limits the times the television can be on but also shuts off at a certain time.  That way you know when you need to go to bed and you can't stay up watching a dumb show later than you should.

Harness the Power of Children

There are a lot of different ways to generate electricity.  The physics behind it all are pretty straight forward.  A conductive material passing through an magnetic field will generate current.  All you need is a way to move the conductive material or to move (change) the magnetic field.  Why not harness the never ending energy stream coming from our children.  You could create playground equipment, like swings for example, that would be hooked up to a battery system and as the child swings they create a current that charges the battery.  At night the lights in the park would be run by the energy generated by the children during the day.

Astro Turf in the House

I think they should develop a type of carpet that you can spray off with a hose but still looks decent (not really like AstroTurf at all).  You could market it to kids who are learning to use the bathroom and dog owners.

How Busy Are You Calculator

This would be a web site or app that you could use to see how busy you really are.  It would have two modes one to see how busy you are to everyone using the system (you are in the 75% percentile of busy people) or how busy you are in reference to yourself (you are the busiest you've ever been or you seem to be not busy at all).  You would just type in the things you have to do and the amount of time you think it would take for each task and it would spit out an answer.  It could also have a due date option where you could enter in what day it has to be done and it would calculate how much sleep you have to give up in order to accomplish everything before the due date.  Of course wouldn't adding a "How busy are you calculator" just make you more busy?

Probability Calculator

I've got two kids that kind of defy genetics.  Both my wife and I have brown hair and darker eyes.  We have two kids that have blonde hair and blue eyes.  It would be totally awesome if there was a online calculator where you could plug in your physical characteristics and those of your significant other and then it would spit out probabilities of your children having certain traits.  For example I have brown hair and my wife has brown hair and out of our parents only my wife's mother had blonde hair as a child (it went brown with time).

Laughing Baby App

Having a bad day?  Then you need a pick-me-up like Laughing Baby App.  This app would just be short video clips of laughing babies.  You would just hit a button that would play a clip.  When the clip was over the app would ask if you were feeling better.  If you answered no it would play another clip. If that doesn't make you laugh you might be a robot.

A Joke

Today's good idea is this joke I came up with:

What's a pencil's favorite state?

Pencil-vania

And if the pencils got together and had a university who would be their biggest rivals?

Pen-State

I read a book, that I have mentioned before, called "How to Think Like Da Vinci" that suggests a number of ways to maintain or regain creativity.  One of them is to make up jokes.

Question:
Do you have a joke you've made up?

Things that should be waterproof

Here are a few items (and reasons why) I think should be waterproof:

Smart phone - make calls without worry in the rain, take it fishing or to the beach and not worry if you get wet, the baby needs something to play with and you forgot all the toys in the bag that went to church with you.

iPad - read you e-book in the bath

Keyboards - if you spill your drink it's no big deal
*they make a number of waterproof keyboards (some can go in the dishwasher) but I think with the amount of coffee consumed in America at the computer all keyboards should be water proof.

Massage Therapy App

There should be an app for massage therapy.  It would drain your battery quick but what if you could set the vibrate on for long periods of time.  Then you could take your phone, after a stressful day, and rub down your shoulders with it.

Advertising on E-Book Programs

I've have a Droid for close to a year now and I love it.  Knowing I would be in the car during spring break as our family road tripped I decided to download a bunch of different games to play.  It was great, mostly for my wife because I did most of the driving but none the less it was easy to pass the time playing mind puzzle games.  Most of the games I downloaded were free but come with the stings of having advertising on them in some form or another.  So the e-book idea works very similar.  Instead of paying $9.00 for a book you can only read on your kindal/iPad/whatever you get the book for free or for a reduced price of $1.00 and then it comes with advertising.  For a company looking to hit a niche it would be a gold mine.  Want to target teenage girls who love to spend money on posters of hot movie stars?  Spend your money with the next Twilight book.   This is very closely related to the advertising insert in a hard bound new release blog I did a few months ago.

Ocean Front and Back Property

Property on the beach always amazes me.  You have one house with a sandy back yard the butts right up to the beach and it's twice as much as the house right across the street.  Or even better hotel rooms on one side of the hotel cost twice as much to stay in as the ones that look out over the parking lot.  Why not change that?  If a hotel can charge more for a room with a view then does it matter if the view is real?  Perhaps you could use mirrors or fiber optics or video technology to project the beach from one side of the building to the "non-view" rooms on the other side of the building.  You could set it up so the projection was in the actual window.  You would have to pull the shades over it and everything.

Under Ground Roads Everywhere

Imagine a sub division where all the streets were underground.  Your parking was below your house and on the surface yards were bigger, kids road safely wherever they wanted and instead of wide slabs of asphalt, trees and grass took up the space in front of your lot.  I know it would be expensive to start with and perhaps a sub division is a bad idea but think for a second about a place like Manhattan.  That place is worth a ton of money and every stinking inch of it is developed.  What if you could convert all the street space into extra buildings by burring all the traffic?  The space the roads take up could probably be sold to developers in order to pay for the tunnels.