Virtual reality input device

How can you create a device that lets you run and jump in a virtual world? I think that there are a couple of ways, you could put someone inside of a ball that is in a cube frame with small balls in each corner. Jumping is easy as the system could detect the increase in weight as you began to jump and then the decrease in weight as you jumped. The system could simulate hills and provide friction by increasing the friction of the balls in the corner of the cube framework.

Another alternative is to have a circular platform of balls with a textured surface. Friction would be controlled by applying pressure to the balls at the edge of the platform.

Laser video

About 10 years ago I read an article about a company that created technology that used lasers to project an image directly on the retina. This would let you make a completely immersive environment. I haven't seen any applications of the technology yet, but they are pretty obvious. Microsoft just announced that they would create video and keyboard inputs for a cellphone computer that would be a sub 100 computer for impoverished nations. I think that this is a great idea. I have been waiting for a computer brick for a long time. You leave the brick in your briefcase, use video glasses for the video and a virtual reality keyboard.

Mesh networks

Mesh networks are pretty cool. The basic idea is that instead of having a base station which everyone communicates with, every node in the network is a transmitter and a receiver. That way you can have hundreds of devices which communicate a short range.

These could be used as detection devices, if you are trying to see the interior of a building or a cave structure, you unload a few hundred and they each use heat/motion sensors, the mesh would give you a complete picture of any individuals in the building.

It is more interesting for cave structures because they could be mobile and randomly spread through the cave structure. As long as there is a chain of the devices that go up to the surface, the signals from the ones deep in the cave structure could be read outside of the cave structure.

RSS feed for ebay and other shopping sites

No one uses RSS, but it is really nice. For those of you who dont know, it effectively pulls content automatically. There are lots of things on my wishlist to buy and I periodically search to see what the prices are. I would love to have an application that could search eBay (or amazon) and basically monitor when new items are added, existing items change in price etc. Don't use the term RSS, just make it happen automatically.

Ratcheting rope tensioner

I got this idea after trying to tighten the rope around my recycling boxes. It is a ratcheting tightener that would snap onto a rope. The mechanism is pretty simple, the key is that it comes into two halves which you snap together around the rope/wire you want to tighten. As you twist it, the rope tightens. You could make them disposable for sending packages or you could make them industrial strength for tightening wires or rope.

My friends who know how to tie knots told me I should just learn how to tie knots..

Real time product placement

So it turns out there is a company that is already inserting products into films and certainly you have seen the rectangular ads in the background of every sports event these days. However for regular shows there is not real time product placement.

There are a couple of ways you could do this. You insert tags into the original copy of the video so that scanning software can recognize where products would be allowed to go (size and type). People can buy advertising of a certain type which would then get inserted on the fly.

Things like beer cans, cereal boxes, cars driving around in the background, storefronts etc could all be inserted in real time as people pay for the advertising. Even movies are going digital so this wouldnt be just limited to TV.

Digital to analog converter with built in crypto functions

Maybe this already exists by now. To prevent piracy of digital media why not create a digital to analog converter that does the decryption in the chip. That way the digital signal is never in clear text. The hard part of course is managing all of the keys. The chip itself would be easy.

Rudy's BBQ

Texas has great BBQ. For those of you on the east and west coasts, you simply cannot get good BBQ. Maybe someone in southern and northern cali will franchise a Rudy's BBQ. (http://www.rudys.com/index.html).

Movies and food

The Alamo Drafthouse is an Austin based company. They serve food while you watch a movie. Their screens and sound systems are horrible but they make a ton of money. They also sponsor all kinds of fun movie related events such as Mister Sinus 3000 (no longer available due to a lawsuit). They had a screening of harold and kumar go to white castle with free white castles.(http://www.originalalamo.com/online_tix/show_details.asp?show_id=1990). They had a screening of Jaws with the audience floating in tubes on the lake with scuba divers that grabbed peoples feet.

They just started franchising (http://www.alamodrafthouse.com/franchise/index.html), this would make a great business wherever there is a "creative class". You need a net worth of 750K and 360K in liquid assets.

Better search

Have you seen minority report? They have a scene where Tom Cruise is searching data using a virtual reality interface, he can grab results that he doesn't want and makes them go away. Or think about Star Trek and how they do search using a voice response system.

I just want something very simple. The search interface would work something like this:

I can enter my basic search request (like in google or for email).

I get a list of results, I can further filter by requesting things like:
Only keep emails from Bob
Only keep emails like this
Remove this one this one and this one
Add back emails from Nancy
Add back this one this one and this one
Remove emails before last week
Add back emails from December 25 to December 30th

etc

Today the basic interface is that I enter rules like This OR that AND the other thing. Or in outlook I use a cumbersome interface to add filters.

If I had time I would write it myself. I heard google desktop is pretty good but haven't tried it yet.

Single person car

So the idea of a single person car isn't really new. But what would people be willing to buy?

If you could have a single person car that was:

Cheap enough that each adult could have one, but also be able to afford an SUV, less than 5K new.
Safety is critical, the car doesn't have to be that small
The person sits in the middle to move them away from the sides of the car so getting hit by an SUV is not a big deal
The front and rear wheels are close enough that if the car is tboned, the other car hits the wheels first
The wheels extend beyond the body so the wheels absorb some of the shock (think dune buggy) in the event of a head on collision
Light enough so that if it gets a direct hit, the car will slide rather than crumple.
High structural integrity so if the car rolls the passenger is safe.
The center seat can slide to either side so the driver can exit from either door.
Ideally 2 of them could fit into one standard garage spot, but that may be too small.

Real estate overlays

This one is obvious, I just wish someone would do it. Use google earth/google maps to aggregate the following data:

MLS searches would show up as dots on my map, allowing me to do searches based on location.
Additional overlays such as
Crime
Restaurants and other businesses
Schools
Color coding cost ranges so I could visually see density of prices
Census data (ethnic makeup, average income, density of children)
Sex offenders

Additionally most cities are making plats available, so overlaying plats would also be very useful.

Real estate searching is still so damn primitive. The only downside of any real estate technology is that we are about to enter a real estate bust, so getting in may be like getting into a telecom startup in 2001.

Real time traffic maps

Alright, so it looks like there is a company that is doing some real time traffic mapping based on publicly available information. There are also groups trying to create devices that will be installed in cars to transmit the speed and coordinates for cars all over.

The problem with the first is that it only deals with major arteries. If you know the major artery is clogged, how do you know where else to go? The second one is a solution to the problem, but there is no way they are going to get an installed base.

There are a couple of possible solutions to this that will get you an instant installed base.

New Cell phones (like nextel) have GPS. You would need to build software into the cell phones that would know when the user is driving, but once that is done you will have an instant source of millions of drivers that will give you reasonable coverage over all roads, not just major arteries.

Onstar is installed in many GM cars. No one is buying it, but it is there. On star has all the pieces necessary to create this system. If you can cut a deal with GM you could potentially also get coverage.

In conjunction with the publicly available traffic info, a reasonably robust and comprehensive system is definitely possible that can cover the entire country.

Ideas are cheap, execution is the key

They say that anything that you are thinking about inventing someone else has already invented. The goal of this blog is to put out ideas for inventions. Some of the initial ones I thought about a long time ago and it seems like they are appearing in the market. I don't have time to pursue any of them so if you can, more power to you. I still enjoy thinking about them though. The key thing to remember is that ideas are cheap, the difficult part is executing. If you make a billion dollars off something you find here, maybe you can drop me a couple Million.

Thanks!