A Baby Monitor with Sound Cancellation

I've mentioned the physics behind noise cancellation before.  It's pretty simple, sound is energy in wave form and any wave that is met by a wave of equal but opposite magnitude will cancel out.  Luxury cars have this system to deaden the noise getting into the cabin.  The car "listens" for noise and then the speakers emit a sound of equal but opposite magnitude.  Why not incorporate this technology into the standard baby monitor?  Then when the older kids are going crazy or the dog barks or the doorbell rings you could rest easy knowing the sleeping baby's room was sound buffered.

Server Farm in Siberia

Server farms are hot.  Computer equipment in general is hot so you can imagine having hundreds of big daddy computers all running at the same time.  I've only been in one server farm before and it was way cool (both literally and figuratively).  It takes so much energy to keep a server farm cool so why not use mother nature to a server's advantage.  There are three options here to harness the power of nature's cool.  You could locate a server farm in a place like Siberia or Nunavut.  Then instead of having to cool the air into the server farm you simply blow the Arctic chill in.  The second option is to locate the server farm at high altitude.  I like this option because LA for example has a mountain range just north of the city that reaches heights of 11,000 ft.  At that altitude nightly temperatures reach into the 40's year round.  The third option, and probably the best, is to find a cheap place for electricity and then dig a hole in the ground.  You could build a server farm 10 ft underground and just use a heat exchange system to harness the constant 50 degree temperature at that depth.

3D Glasses for your Bike Ride

I love to ride my bike, it's great exercise.  The problem is the weather.  They make these little stands you can buy to turn your road bike into a stationary bike.  So when the snow hits you can set your bike up in the garage and ride away.  Boring right.  Well my brother-in-law has this pair of 3D glasses that you can hook up to any device with one of those red, yellow and white video outputs.  Surprisingly they were less than $50.00.  Now lets add a third piece of equipment the odometer/speedometer on the bike (any serious road biker will have one).  The business idea is this have a speedometer on your bike with a video output for 3D glasses.  You set you bike up on the bike treadmill and the speedometer sends your 3D glasses an interesting ride through the Grand Canyon or over the Golden Gate bridge.  It would be way cheaper than buying a stationary bike with the game built into it.

Turn Your Doorbell Off

My wife and I have recently had a line at the front door of door to door sales people.  A few have had the good luck of ringing the bell while our 11 month old was napping.  This makes us cranky.  While talking this idea over we really were blown away that they don't have these yet.  It would be simple to hook the doorbell up to a switch that you could turn on and off.  That way when the baby goes to sleep you just flip the switch and anyone who hits your door button gets...well nothing.

IRobot Weeder

They have robot vacuums and robot sweepers and robot moppers I want a robot weeder.  This marvel of engineering would mark each of your plants using GPS.  Then as the summer goes along it would roll through your flower beds and anywhere it located a plant that wasn't mapped on the GPS it would spray round up.

Air Conditioned Car Seats

While on long trips during the hot summer months I think it would be nice to have little vents in my seat that was hooked up to the A/C in the car.  That way your back and seat would stay nice and cool.

Air Conditioning for Your Bed

Today's product idea would be a specialized blanket for your bed.  It would have a special tube that would have a special head that would connect to one of your room vents.  Then as the A/C came on the air would flow through the tube to a ventilated sheet on the bed that would disperse the cool air.

Select a Call on Your Cell Phone

I think it would be super nice to be able to go through my phone book on my cell and select certain individuals to always have ring through or always go straight to voicemail.  For example if your wife were pregnant it would be nice, no matter what quite meeting you were in, to have her ring through in case of emergency while everyone else who tried to call wouldn't even get a vibrate.  Or while on vacation everyone from work couldn't get through while the kid who is watching your dog and garden at home would always ring through.

Shmore Scoops

I love to eat shmores.  I love them so much I built a patio in the back so we could have a fire pit just to roast marshmallows.  I have two dilemmas with shmores, the first is making sure the chocolate is pre-melted before I even put the mallow on my cracker.  I've seen quite a few work arounds on is one thus it's the lesser of the two. The second is worth a little more thought however.  You just place a perfectly browned marshmallow on your cracker and take a bite as the mallow then oozes out of the sides all over the place making your treat an emergency that needs to be eaten at once.  They make scoop shaped corn chips, I think the same technology should be applied to gram crackers.  That way you would have more of a dome shape shmore and contain more marshmallow in the treat.

Projected Missile Game on your Windshield

You know when you are driving and another driver does something really stupid and you wish at that moment your car was equipped with heat seeking missiles?  Well what if you could have the missiles without the jail time?  They (the auto industry) has at least a handful of projected images on the windshield in front of the driver.  I think it would be great to have a little missile projected on the windshield that would "blow up" the car in front of you.

I thought I would throw this in here as well, since it's kind of a good idea and I've heard it from quite a few different sources and it goes along with the missiles.  The idea is to have a red LED reader sign on the back of your car that you could send people messages on.  Like "You're tail gating me, please back off before I slam on my breaks" or "Way to merge there buddy" or "Thanks for letting me in".

Baby Monitor App

Thanks to my sister in law for today's app/business idea.  The app would basically just work like a video baby monitor.  You could use two phones if you wanted (one as the camera, one as the monitor) or you could set up a web cam as the camera and just monitor with your phone.  Then you could check on your baby as you worked in the back yard or moved to the garage or even check to see how things are going with the baby sitter before a movie started.

Beach Rental With Extras

Great business idea: a beach rental with it all.  First you start with a instruction book that comes with local area hikes, touristy things to do, sights to see, etc.  You would need to include how long to allocate for each activity and what to bring.  Then you add really cool things.  For example if you were in Hawaii your beach rental could come with surf boards, sea kiaks and two bikes.  If you beach house was on the Oregon coast you could include crab traps, some fishing gear and clam diggers.  A cabin up in the mountains could include sleds, snow shoes and perhaps some cross country skis.  All would come with directions for use and a liability waiver.

Pessimistic Weather .com

I've heard the great thing about being a pessimist is that either you are always right or when you are wrong you are pleasantly surprised.  Well how about pessimisticweather.com.  This would be a really depressing web site that would always have rainy, snowy, sleety weather for every zip code.  The idea is every time you looked out the window you would be pleasantly surprised.

Lost Flip Flop.com

I recently lost two flip flops.  The good thing is when I bought them I got two pair and they were slightly different.  Luck shines her light on me and I lost the right of one pair and the left of the other, so I still have a single pair of slightly mismatched flip flops.  So my idea today is to start lostflipflop.com where anyone can post a single flip flop for any one to take or donate in order to make a full pair.  Please include where you got it, the size and a photo.

3D Any Old Movie You Can Think Of

3D is pretty straight forward, your eyes need to see two slightly different pictures to perceive depth.  So it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to digitally separate an image out into two.  Then you could take a really cool older movie like "Goonies" or "Indian Jones" and go 3D.

Question:

What old movie would you 3D?

Play Place in Neighborhood Clubhouse

So maybe I just like play places, but seriously this would be awesome.  The kids could play YEAR ROUND.  It would be way cooler than parks and pools and cheaper too.

You want one, don't you?

Play Places in Hotels

When we stay at a hotel our kids always get bored.  The hotel play place would be just like the ones you find at fast food resturants. You could sit on a bench and read a book while your kids climb and slide and wear themselves out.  Plus a play place would be way less maintenence than a pool!

 Would you pick a hotel with a play place over a hotel with a pool?

Prescription Delivery

Sometimes it's hard to pick up prescriptions.  When you're really sick the last thing you want to do is go wait in line at the pharmacy (and infect all the people around you). So why couldn't they have prescription delivery?  I know they have presciption by mail places, but those only work if you have long term prescription.  Delivery would be for things like antibiotics. You'd pay a little surcharge and get your meds delivered right to your door within hours.

When you or you're kid is really sick, would you pay extra to avoid the pharmacy?

Scuba Training at the Aquarium

This idea is one that is kind of being done in Denver and Atlanta.

Denver has a wonderful aquarium thousands of miles away from the ocean.  What better place to get scuba certified?  The aquarium could make extra money by providing the classes after regular hours and those getting certified would get the best tanks west of the Mississippi to train in.  It's a great business idea.  In fact I bet there would be way more people wanting to get certified if the aquarium advertised it, "Swim with the Sharks!" or "Hand Feed the Fish".  The problem is now you have to be pre-scuba certified to participate.

Air Conditioned Pet Packer

A few years back I had the very interesting job of moving an employee across the US.  I had a horrendous time moving her furniture and car but the worst was getting her cat's on a plane.  It was too hot for the poor little things to ride cargo and they were too big to be sedated and carried on the plane as luggage.  We eventually did find an airline that could take them but it was a royal pain in the butt.  So why not make an air conditioned pet packer.  This business idea would take a bit of engineering and probably be kind of heavy but worth it to a sliver of the market that wanted to travel with pets.  Your local kennel could rent them out for special occasions.

Auto Shine Shoe Shiner

They should make a device that automatically shines your shoes for you.  Then a hardworking business man could come home from work take his stinky shoes off and slide them into the Auto-Shine 356, push a button for the color of shoe and then sit back and watch engineering do it's thing.  Then your shoes would always look nice.

The Food Alarm

We need one of these really bad.  Today's business idea would take quite a bit of development but would be very worth it in the end.  The alarm would work as follows.  A infrared sensor would track you children as they entered the kitchen area.  All the shelves you keep food on would have a weight sensor.  If a child took something from those shelves, thus lowering the weight of that shelf, and then left the kitchen area, tracked by the infrared, the alarm would go off.  This would alert parents that a small infrared heat source had lowered the weight of a food shelf and then left the kitchen area too quickly to have eaten that object.  This would be great since my 3 year old snuck chocolate chips upstairs yesterday in his sticky little hand.

The Whiner Alarm

We are constantly telling our children to put away their whiny voice.  What would be nice is some aversion training.  You could have an alarm in the house that would listen via microphone to the pitch and volume of the children in the house.  When a certain child reached a pitch and frequency that was considered a whine the alarm would go off.

The Prediction Machine

I have often though about mathematical probability and the stock market.  Lots of it is just mumbo jumbo but I've recently come up with a fool proof plan to day trade.  And to prove to you I'm not kidding I am going to show you just how it works by choosing 3 well known stocks and giving exact closing prices at the end of trading on 7-8-11.

Here they are:
AAPL(apple) 359.71
 VZ (Verizon) 37.48
F (Ford) 13.88

Pretty amazing right?  Not if it's a bug in the blogger set up that allows you to set your post date and time in the past.  Which brings me to the real good idea a day.  Dummy Degrees.  This would be a web site where for a small fee you could special order an official looking degree from a fake university that had funny stuff on it.  For example "Bachelor of Farts" instead of "Arts".

Silent Velcro 2: Magnet Straps on Shoes

My little sister suggested the crazy idea of making Velcro silent.  I think it had something to do with not waking anyone up at night or bothering anyone in a movie theater.  Then it hit me: MAGNETS!  They could be placed in the strap the same place the Velcro is.  Then not only do you get the silence of magnetic fields holding your shoes on but the mythical benefits of magnetic insoles.

Solar High Ways

Today's idea comes from a company in Idaho that does solar highways.  I think this is absolutely a fantastic idea.  Think about the amount of energy you could harness if all the roads in town could soak up photons all day long.  I especially love the LED light addition.  My only concern is how to make the glass over the top transparent and still have traction when it snows.

Here's the link:
http://www.wimp.com/solarhighways/

Collapsible Camp Chair with the Strap Built In

They make bags to put your collapsible chair into, they also make a strap that connects to any chair (chair not included).  As I packed my chairs around in their bags during the festivities of the 4th I realized they need to make a collapsible camp chair with the strap built right into the chair.  The strap could wrap around the chair so it doesn't unfold in transit but would rid the user of having to worry about a bag.

Happy 4th of July! More Holiday's with Fireworks and Parades

I love the 4th.  I love the food, the weather, the not having to get gifts for everybody and mostly the fireworks.  I think about the big parties that go on and all the money being spent on food and entertainment during the holiday and I think economic growth.  So why not use the economics of fireworks on other holidays?  I think a fireworks show for Thanksgiving would be a great idea.  First off you can do fireworks at like 7:00 pm and then everybody would want to go get coffee or hot chocolate or dinner afterwords.  It would be a great economic day for the restaurants and cafe's around where the show was.  Not to mention there's less competition for consumers.  If you were the only town in a 100 mile radius that was having a fireworks show and parade for Thanksgiving, I bet you would get a pretty good turn out.

Question:
Which holiday would you want fireworks on if you could add one?

Neighborhood Runner

With the ageing Baby Boomer population it seems there are more and more condo developments and planned neighborhoods that cater to their needs.  Today's business idea would probably work well in such a community.  The neighborhood runner would be an individual that would make a daily run to specific places every day like the grocery store, the dry cleaners, the pharmacy, Target, etc.  The members of the community could email or call in what they needed every day to the runner and then they could just make one big run to the grocery store.  The kid delivering the groceries would make a killing in tips and the residents wouldn't have to go out every time they needed milk.

Question:
As you age (and hopefully have more discretionary income) what chore will you pay someone else to do for you first?

Using Google Street View for House Painters

This business idea is for people who paint houses.  You would take a nice neighborhood in town and go through street view on Google maps.  You would get a picture of each house and then use photoshop to change the house color.  You could update colors on houses that look older or go bold with color on the ones that look more modern.  Landscapers could do the same thing with mediocre lawns.

Fridge in Couch

Today's business idea is a tribute to ingenuity and laziness.  Instead of having to go to the fridge for a drink during commercials your couch could have a small refrigerated compartment in the arm rest.  You would just open up the arm rest and grab a cool drink when you were thirsty.