A Better Looking Video Conferencing

I've used quite  a few different video conferencing programs for work and there's a problem with every one, they all make you look uglier than you are.  Bald spots get worse, bellies are bigger, moles seem to grow and multiply, extra appendages appear out of no where, posture is bad, the list goes on and on.  They need to develop a video conferencing program that makes you look better.  It could fill in bald spots, remove facial blemishes, slim down those love handles and even give your skin a tanned hue.  It would be a great project to partner on with a dating web site.

Shut the Door Alarm

As the kids run in and out of my back door with the A/C this summer I constantly find my self yelling "Shut the door!"  They should make an infrared scanner for the back door that measures the highest point of heat movement as one walks out the door.  Then if that highest point is lower than say 48 inches the alarm automatically says "Please, shut the door." until the door is closed.

Gym in the Mall

A few months back I posted about the worlds best mall and all the stuff it would have.

http://goodideaaday.blogspot.com/2011/06/mall-with-it-all.html

For some reason I or my faithful followers did not come up with a gym at the mall.  I know they exist out there but I think this is a really good idea and deserves to be discussed.  First off you give people one more reason to go to the mall and that's great for retailers in the mall.  It consolidates life, if you need to grab a new pair of running shoes for the gym you don't have to get in your car and drive between stops.  Also, it could be great for the holiday season and couples.  If one member of the couple wants to shop and the other is bored or doesn't want to go they could just hit the gym.

Just the Facilities Gym Membership

I work close to a gym and I live close to a gym and they are not the same.  I've had memberships at both never at the same time.  The one close to home I use for racquetball, lifting weights, swimming, etc.  The one by work I use to shower at when I bike to work.  I need one of the gyms around work to offer a "facilities only" pass where you could come in and shower (and nothing else) and only charge $10.00 a month.

Question:
Have you ever ridden you bike to work?  What issues did you face?

Prius in a Pickup

I think the evolution of cars to lower consuming models is awesome.  I love electricity and personally think with as many ways as their are to supply electricity it will be the majority source of energy in the future.  I do have one problem with all the new electric hybrids: they are all ugly.  If you want guys to start buying green machines make sure he can still pick up chicks in it.  The last thing a guy wants to do is the right thing if it makes him the laughing stock of his softball team.  As a father I have come to grips with this exact problem when we made the very smart decision to purchase a mini-van.  It's smart on paper but nothing makes a man feel more like a middle aged woman than when he's behind the wheel of a seven passenger Sienna.

Water Proof Fanny Pack for Animal Trainers

We went to the state fair the other night.  One thing I'm sure of, they poison the food because I've never gotten heart burn so fast in my life.  Anyway, they had a sea lion show and I got to thinking about the packs and buckets the trainers used to hold their fish.  They need to make a water proof fanny pack that you could put ice and fish into while training you sea lion.  In order to make the business viable you would probably need to market to whale and dolphin trainers, penguin trainers and perhaps the sushi industry (door to door sushi chef).

Funny Youth of America, Sell Your Facebook Posts

My little sisters-in-law have one hilarious friend.  The kid has some of the most creative Facebook posts I think I've ever seen.  So we were reading his posts and realized they were funny enough to sell.  So marketers and companies that need to generate lots of followers could hire really funny high schoolers to make posts on their pages.  The real marketers could then make posts about what the company was doing or big events or whatever but most would be hilarious observations from 17 year olds.

Drug Camp

This is a twist on a classic theme.  I know there exists many camps where teenagers can go to get off drugs.  Often the camp includes dragging the kids out into the middle of the desert and dropping them off with no food or water.  So my drug camp is a little different.  It wouldn't really matter where the camp was (the woods, the desert, the set of Water World) all the "counselors" would be messed homeless people who had used drugs for most of their lives.  By surrounding teenagers with what drug users become they would decide on their own not to use them anymore.  To really drive the point home, we would allow the homeless "counselors" to run the mess hall.  Most of the time the head chef would use the menu money on supplying his needs and the campers would have ketchup packets for lunch.

Trucker Camp

This one comes from my dad.  He suggested a camp where you learn to be a long haul trucker.  I would add being the captain of a tanker for a week and a train conductor for a week.

Question:
Is there any other profession you would like to spend a week at?

Empathy Camp

This is a good suggestion from my wife.  Empathy camp would be a camp where you could spend a week being the mother of four.  This would help people understand what it takes to get four kids to the grocery store, through a couple hours of church or keep a house clean.  After a week they would be perfect candidates for the insane ward of the local mental hospital or ready to face the world with way more empathy then they started the week with.  I think it would be good for marketers who wanted to "get inside" the mind of their consumers.

Which is Better? Eyeglasses

If you go to the eye doc at some point you'll do the classic "Which is better? Number one or number two?".  When you go out to pick out glasses you should be able to do the same thing.  They should make a software program that takes pictures of the eyeglass selections you make and then you could sit down with the assistant and she ask "Number one or number two?"  That way you would have photo's of your face with the glasses on them.  You could even send the pictures to your wife's smart phone or email and have her tell you which one she likes.

Grey Water from the Dishwater

Grey water is water that has been slightly used that can be repurposed to serve another need in the home.  I think if you filtered out the big stuff the water from your dish washer you could use it in your toilet or perhaps to water your garden (rinse cycles only) or in a utility sink etc.

Group Blocks on Twitter

My wife Tweets all the time.  Because she is getting more and more popular each day she often gets followed by strangers and sometimes those strangers are adult entertainers trying to hitch a ride on someone else's shooting star.  There should be a way to do a general block on twitter.  Like if you didn't want a bunch of Bieber crazy 14 yr olds following you because that's creepy, you could click a button and make your twitter account a little more exclusive.  You should be able to limit what you see and who can follow you based off a movie-like rating system.

Little Dry Suits for Kids

Online you will find a plethora of wet suits for kids but no dry suits.  A wet suit allows a bit of water in and  dry suits are air tight.  It could be short sleeve and knee length because really if you can keep the kids core body protected you can probably keep them from shivering.

Question:
Have you ever worn a dry suit?  How hard are they to put on?

Sunday Paper Advertising on the Web

One of the things I find just a little annoying about the web is I can't do a "quick look".  You would find the "quick look" in all the advertising that comes in a Sunday paper or a heading in the yellow pages.  In the case of the paper I can take a huge stack of advertisements flip through them toss the ones I don't care about and browse the ones I like.  With the yellow pages I can open a section flip through a couple of pages in a matter of seconds and know who takes AMEX, who's got 24 hr service, who specializes in my type of garage door opener, etc.  Online, even with a google search, you have to bounce in and out of the web sites to get the same information.  So there needs to be a special deals page that can be personalized to you.  I for example would have sporting good stores and any place that sold decent men's clothing.  I would jump on there and be able to scroll down the page in a matter of seconds and see if Cabela's or Macy's or Big 5 were having a sale that week.  If you wanted more detailed information you could simply click on a link that would take you to that stores advertisement for the sale.  If a company wasn't doing 20% all men's socks that week the site would say "no sales".

Shiver Strip for Kids

It seems like no matter how warm it is when we go swimming my skinny little kids start to shiver uncontrollably at some point during the outing.  You would think they would then want to get out of the pool but for some reason they still want to play in the water.  What I need is a shiver strip.  This would be a temperature strip that would change color based off the core body temperature of you child.  The shiver strip would be a sticker to stick to your kid on their chest or back.  If a kid's body temperature ever dropped below a certain point the shiver strip would turn bright red.

iTunes Sharing with Your Car

I can share my iTunes library with my home computer and people at work.  I easily load up my iPod.  I want my car to come with a hard drive to hold my music as well.  I have seen a lot of hacks for this kind of thing on the web but my (quick) research didn't bring up any car companies that are putting devices in the car itself to hold information.  Yeah they all come with aux inputs and yes you can easily plug your ipod into one.  But I always forget mine and still haven't moved all my old CD's over to my iTunes yet.  It would be great if I could pop a CD into the car and have it save the whole thing (or parts) to a hard drive for instant retrieval at a later date.

Using Electromagnetic Waves in the Wash

A few days ago I posted about using light waves to determine if clothing matched.  Today lets use the same technology to keep our whites white.  I once washed a brand new (nice) work shirt (on accident) with a blue sock.  The sock got blue on the shirt and I was unable to remedy the situation.  It would have been nice if my washing machine was equipped with a sensor that would alarm if it "noticed" a item of clothing with a significantly different wavelength of light.  It would work kind of like sonar bouncing light waves into the wash as it cycled and if it ever came across a blue sock among a sea of white it would either alarm or shut off the cycle or both.

Water Proof Pocket in your Swim Trunks

Today we are headed to the local water park.  They don't allow outside food or drink which means I'll need to carry my wallet so we can purchase overpriced pizza for lunch.  Problem is I have a leather wallet and I can't be splashing around with cash, frequent eater cards from the bagel shop and my library card in my pocket without expecting major water damage.  Not to mention my car key fob.  The answer is a water proof pocket in my swim trunks.  The answer today is a zip lock bag.

Mismatched Clothing Alarm

I seem to have a lot of ideas that have something to do with the inability of men to dress themselves.  Here's another.  Each color of the rainbow is an electromagnetic wave that it's own wavelength.  The alarm could be as simple as a camera that captures an image of what you are going to wear on a date that night and then, using the wavelength of each color determines if those colors clash.  Then you could send the picture to your computer and an accompanying program would give suggestions on what color to change by changing the color of your shirt or pants to one where the wavelengths don't clash.

Question:
What's the worst thing you or someone you love has ever worn in public?

Am I Crazy.com

This would be a great web site for individuals who frequently look back at the things they shared at a party and say, "Dang, I probably shouldn't have shared that."  You would simply type in something you were thinking about talking about and the social setting (party, work, at a family reunion) in which you would be doing the talking.  The web site would rate how crazy you are on a scale on 1-10 based off how inappropriate or weird that thing was and the social setting you were willing to spill the beans in.  For example you could type in that you were thinking about complaining about your neighbors dog to close family at dinner on Sunday.  You might get a 2.  Or you could type in how you want to share the details of a recent mole removal session at a speed dating event, that would probably score closer to 7 or 8.

Sound Proof Barrier in the Mini-Van

After traveling way too far in the last 5 days via mini-van I think the market for this particular product is huge.  It would simply be a sound proof, see-through barrier that would separate the driver and passenger from the chaos of the back seats.  I also suggest a simple padded, portable, institution like room as the back chamber of the mini-van.  Throw a couple fruit snack packages in there every few hours and you've got yourself a family road trip.

Volume: High Low and Broken

There should be a volume control on your button that makes the person on the other end sound like they are breaking up.  It would be easier than memorizing the half sentence, "I...an't he...u. You're...eakin...p".  I guess this would only be useful for jerks and people shooting TV shows (where this kind of thing happens all the time).  Another option would be to change service to AT&T.  Oh, burn!

Friend Helping Friend List

This is a good suggestion from my brother-in-law.  He is fantastic at fixing and maintaining computers but not so hot at fixing cars.  He suggested there be a feature on facebook or another site where you list your talents and skills to your friends and offer a barter of some sort.  For example he would say he's good with computers and then say two hours of fixing your computer is worth 3 hours of fixing his car or a new Wii game.  I'm fantastic with handy man stuff so I would list replacing an in sink erator with a large pizza and a dozen donuts or 1 hour of babysitting my kids.

Question:
What would you exchange?

Take the Train in your Car

We've done a lot of traveling this summer.  We do the best we can to kill the time with book's on tape, coloring books, etc. but as the driver I can't really play video games on my phone while I drive.  What if there was a train set up kind of like a ferry that you could park your car on for trips.  They could run these trains between decent size cities, where it's too short to fly the family economically.  Salt Lake City to Portland with a stop in Boise for example.  Then you could catch the train, pay a fee, play cards with the family the whole way there and then when you get to where you are going you have your car there.  I could see how this might be nice for tourists trying to get around LA on their way to San Diego.

Five Point Seat Belts and Reclining Seats for the Kids

Protection is priority number one when it comes to seat belts.  However, watching my young children fall asleep in the back with their necks crooked over and faces smooshed into the window I have to think there's a better way to do it.  What if you could have five point seat-belts (like the ones little babies and race car drivers wear) and then recline the seat?  The real question is would a five point seat belt offer the same protection if you kid is lying down.  Then the parent could have a button for each seat and when they notice one of the kids drifting off you could hit the button and recline their seat.

My Mini Fan

Today my good idea is one that is already on the market, sort to say.  My office is hot in the morning and perfect in the afternoon.  Because the office has been remodeled all the A/C is tied together so in order to change my office temp, I would have to change the entire buildings temp.  So I rigged up this little pretty with some old electrical/computer parts.  I took a 12V transformer and wired it up to a 12V computer fan from one of our old PC's.  Then I wired in a switch so I don't have to plug or unplug the fan in order to turn it off or on.  Not only does it cool me off but, as you can see in the picture, it draws air away from my computer keeping it cool as well.

Business Fanny Pack

Yeah, remember when the fanny pack was the thing.  Mine was white and neon green and I used it to hold my Game Boy.  So today is a little tongue in cheek but here we go anyway.  A fanny pack that can carry an iPad, a smart phone and pen and a pad of paper, some business cards and some gum.  It would be leather of course and we could market it as a purse that men can carry because it's not a purse.

Auto-Auto Reply

I've worked with five email programs in the last five years: Entourage, Outlook, Thuderbird, Gmail and Mail for Mac.  None of the five have an automatic "out of office" auto reply.  For some reason each program requires you make a special rule for your incoming mail and then type out a reply and then turn the rule on.  With as much travel that is done now it seems like there should just be a button you hit that turns it off or on.  Then if you wanted you could go into your settings and make special rules or change the text or whatever.

Business Casual Shirt and Pants

They do this with kids cloths all the time.  They sell pants and a matching shirt.  They need to do the same thing for men's cloths.  A lot of my counterparts have a hard time putting a decent shirt pant combo together (I work with one).  This way you could walk into the men's department at JC Pennies (because lets face it, these guys probably aren't shopping at Macy's), grab a combo off the rack, pay and head to the Game Stop to check out the new XBox games.  You could even do belts and socks to match.

Food Lockers

I've done pretty good with managing my weight as I get older.  At work I don't really have access to food other than lunch so it makes it pretty easy to control myself.  At home with the fridge and the pantry I struggle with grazing.  I have dinner and then every time I pass the pantry I grab a handful of nuts or a granola bar, etc.  What if you could put your food in lockers that would only open at set times during the day.  Or even just lock up between the hours of 1-5 pm.  You could set it to not allow access to food during the hardest parts of the day and help you eat regular balanced meals when you were suppose to.

Question:
Can you think of an emergency where the food locker would cause problems?