Free, maybe good ideas.

microfinance designs

2012-02-09T00:51:00.001-08:00

The consumer products made by micro-entrepreneurs typically lack in creativity and professionalism, so the product ends up being "made by a poor person" as opposed to "good product that happens to also be made by a poor person"

How can good ideas and designs and processes easily and cheaply end up in the hands of these craftspeople?

I assume technology and micro-payments can solve the problem but am not sure how.

do it again app

2012-02-08T22:50:00.001-08:00

not sure of the name yet, but basically a download that is free, which comes with a few pre-configured voice recognition memes, such as "DIA: open up Internet Explorer"

Set up the keystroke you want to activate the speech recognizing macro (i.e. open up the microphone to listen to you). Speak "DIA: open word" for the free ones. "DIA" stands for do it again. If you pay $0.99 you remove the DIA for the free ones. You can purchase your own pre-set up ones after that for $0.99 each but you never have to pay again. You can create your own for free in the paid version.

The memes are your own repetitive behaviors on your computer, like "open MS word"; "type "To whom it may concern", which can record your actions in the do it yourself version or you can purchase pre-configured ones that work on your computer. You just have to learn the instruction that comes with the free one, or record on top of the pre-configured one and the speech recognition is even better because it's your voice.

other ideas that when you've saved one second two hundred times, like "open facebook" maybe is worth $0.99?

Enough memes x $0.99 x enough customers == value in the service

Gadget space

2012-02-04T21:21:00.001-08:00

Note this can also apply to cleantech

Gadget space

2012-02-04T21:19:00.001-08:00

Idea is to rent your gadget which cost 1000 and pay you 20 per week to
use it and play with it, and people can come in and see it for a 100
annual membership fee. We guarantee the product return in same
condition since usage by guests is only for those that afford the 100.
10,000 members is 1M in revenue.

pension idea: terrible idea

2012-01-28T22:17:00.001-08:00

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/12/02/3567530/american-airlines-pensions-in.html

So this article seems to show that the wealthy don't benefit so much from pensions and thus my idea is plain stupid.

create your own project map

2012-01-11T00:27:00.001-08:00

I do like the idea of helping companies create their own Google maps for projects and customers they have to show their reach.

pension plan restructuring scheme

2011-12-29T01:36:00.001-08:00

A company that uses technology to communicate via mobile and web with
US pensioners. First step, go to the largest US companies that have
pension obligations and are looking at underfunded plans. Second
step, communicate on their behalf with pensioners to convince these
pensioners to reduce their expectations for pension payments from the
company now and into the future in exchange for something like better
terms on local products (whatever). For every dollar of reduction in
obligation, a dollar flows through to the company's bottom line. The
company I propose earns a commission for each dollar reduction and
requires that the corporate put a second commission toward social
security. The government and the pensioners therefore will be more
likely to back the initiative. The company also thus skips the unions
that created the large pension obligations in the first place.
Companies reduce their need to raise debt and help reduce US debt.

organize my life

2011-12-28T00:21:00.001-08:00

For $20 per year, subscriber can set up schematics that generate
1-page PDFs of the various systems in their life. The pain being
addressed is self-evident. The value in the subscription is the
ability to

examples:
Contacts
Health problems
Health providers
Backup of computer data
Home network
Financial providers
Online identities
Music
Software
Stuff
Job options
Career planning
Children activities
Memberships
Magazine subscriptions
Devices

Back-end can be highly scalable. Usability testing can occur with
beta registrants.

Visitors can set one up for free, the credit card is not required but
a unique ID for Facebook / LinkedIn / Gmail / etc. login is.
Registration for email ID is relatively difficult to prevent people
from setting up multiple accounts, so gaming it is less likely.

No privacy concerns since no actual data or password is kept at the
site, except in the case of health since insurance companies might use
the information against people if health concerns are logged somewhere
but not reported to the provider.

Over time, data analysis and sharing can occur with suggestions to the
users based on their inputs. This benefit only available to
subscribers.

I just haven't thought of a compelling name.

beamerican, bearmenian.com

2011-07-25T01:53:00.001-07:00

Two sites, which source products made in that respective country and
provide a sense of identity to the purchaser.

electricity in USA

2011-06-26T01:41:00.001-07:00

4,066,914 gWh electricity output in US 2011
365 days in year
11,142 gWh per day
309 M people in US
36,059 kWh per person per day generation
60.1 equivalent number of 60 W bulbs for 10 hours - seems appropriate

Not sure what I do with this... bueller?

investor ideas

2010-02-09T02:50:00.000-08:00

The opportunity to put together a really good cleantech and water stock list remains IMO.

http://www.investorideas.com/news/water/2081.asp

spare change

2009-09-29T05:51:00.001-07:00

Why put the spare change donation boxes at the register? I don't want
to get rid of my change there, I'd rather get rid of it on the street
or on my way out when I realize how annoying it is. The Red Cross
Christmas people, now banned, had it right.

negative externality voluntary social credits

2009-09-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

Just as carbon has become a commodity, perhaps social good can become a tradable derivative. Negative externalities are produced by lack of education, poverty, child labor, and lack of water, just to name a few. Emissions reductions are the positive commodity intended to counter the negative. Reductions in poverty could be funded by project finance flowing through a market. VSCs, voluntary social credits, could be created by an otherwise frustrated UNDP, and sold to companies who wish to offset the externalities created by their activities. Allocated social credits could also be freely distributed to developing countries.

You get the idea. There are similar models out there on a private basis, but nothing at the scale of emissions. The investment banks would love this, since presumably, in dollar terms, the size and scale of social services trumps so-called "ecological services", which are estimated to be three times global GDP.

some fav sites

2009-08-21T05:36:00.001-07:00

http://www.socialyell.com/
http://99designs.com/
http://www.odesk.com

shift to local

2009-08-20T11:07:00.001-07:00

http://www.10percentshift.org

not my idea, but I really like shifting to local purchasing!

attempt at cross linking

2009-08-08T01:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.xing.com/profile/Armen_Vartanian

http://www.armenvartanian.net/

http://www.plaxo.com/directory/profile/25770773634/.../Armen/Vartanian

http://www.islamicfinance.de/?q=taxonomy/term/577

http://armenbeirut.blogspot.com

http://twitter.com/armen

http://www.linkedin.com/in/nemra

ideablob

2009-08-05T23:07:00.001-07:00

http://www.ideablob.com

So I like the implementation of ideablob, but the ideas on there are
somewhat weak. I will post SMI on there, and hopefully increase the
quality of the ideas (on an averaged basis).

mine some ideas

2009-08-03T23:06:00.001-07:00

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/what-would-an-energy-moon-shot-look-like/

I really like the graph here - can we mine the ideas somehow to
creatively combine them?

combined intranet and internet search engine

2009-07-21T05:25:00.001-07:00

It seems like it would be so easy for google to incorporate internal
documents into our searches rather than a separate intranet indexing
tool. The architecture would basically allow a user to select whether
or not home / work network is included in her search, and then the
browser would know how to present data within and outside the network.
It just seems like our emails and files on our computers are much
more in line with our brains and what we're looking for, as well as
the work and emails of our colleagues. This also forces us to store
personal material outside work computers. This browser should be a
download and/or an upgrade to Chrome that costs no more than $20.

This would be a tweener product
http://code.google.com/p/tweener/
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Tweener&defid=676171

product that will transition people to actually use all the knowledge
in their organization.

Knowledge management
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management
anyone?

A few searches on this topic only yielded:
www.searchtools.com
and
2007 articles on moma, google's intranet engine
and of course, google's enterprise tool.
http://www.google.com/enterprise/search/gsa.html

employing the homeless

2009-07-19T04:23:00.001-07:00

In 2007, I posted an idea how to employ homeless, and got worried that
I would fail due to moral concerns:
http://stealmyidea.blogspot.com/2007/01/data-collection-for-difficult-to-verify.html

Someone is doing it! http://www.linestanding.com/ as referred to in
the article:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/13/line.standers/index.html

I assume they didn't steal my idea. Alas, always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

baby monitor decision

2009-06-27T22:48:00.001-07:00

The criteria to decide on a baby monitor were:
* rechargeable battery
* 900Mhz or 2.4Ghz to get through cement walls

For a while I couldn't decide between audio and video, and decided video would be too distracting in social settings plus the benefit is marginal. In addition, I happen to believe that the electrical field due to the transmitter is harmful, despite no science to support my belief. A video transmission is a lot more data than audio so thus I didn't want video.

My conclusion is that we should purchase the Sony BabyCall 900Mhz audio monitor:
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-NTM-910-BabyCall-Nursery-Monitor/dp/B00006FWVN/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

The downside to the Sony is that there isn't a second receiver unit, but on the other hand that might be a benefit so that the responsibility is always one person's.

Concern that is true of all baby monitors: interference from mobile phone signals, especially blackberry, when near the receiver unit

yahoo green ideas

2009-06-24T06:56:00.001-07:00

http://green.yahoo.com/makeitgreen/gallery

City Transport

2009-03-02T09:46:00.000-08:00

writhing in beirut traffic today, I thought back to our trip to san fran over christmas, when I concluded that certain cities, including beirut and san francisco, would really benefit from a massive rethink of their transportation. Specifically, I believe that these cities should get rid of vehicles on their streets and implement an above-ground track network combined with a one driver, one pod system, all run by distributed computing powered by solar and wind, to limit downtime risk. The pod units would pay for themselves, because as standard or luxury units they could be customized for the wealthy since they like their bling. And, just like today, the wealthy have to deal with traffic like everyone else so they wouldn't be any worse off in such a system. They could get the pod limo. The economic could work out, too. A monthly fee replaces the amount people pay for gas, so that replaces the maintenance fees. People can sell their cars to places that can't use such a system, so they can pay for their pods themselves. Or, the rails can be made from scrap metal recovered from older cars that are taken off the streets and these sellers would get a discount on the basic pods. The system will also be scalable so long as the algorithms are - a big assumption I know. No earthquake risk to underground systems. The computers optimise everyone's routes simultenaously, maintain safe speeds, and give drivers a sense of control because they can choose their route and this choice affects everyone's route choices instantly when the computer recommends some options. Please, someone take this idea and run with it.

energy / matter and physical concepts

2009-02-28T09:22:00.000-08:00

Saw a book today in beirut, about how robots will provide love and companionship functionality (and vice versa). Reminded me of my belief that soon, computing, communication, and the brain will become one and the same. It seems to me there's a good business to be had for preparing pharmaceutical companies for a new delivery system, via the brain rather than via the body. Most of the compounds needed for medicinal treatment already exist in our body so our brain form the compound by command instructions. And that's just an example of mind over matter, for real.

Smart collective wikis and groups

2008-09-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

the dems are totally screwing up the election, and yet every liberal I know seems to have better ideas than obamas strategists. I say, fire the strategists and use the web to continuously poll intelligent strategic thinkers, and combine their collective thoughts into a strategy. I believe that this dynamic system would create the equivalent of a benevolent dictator strategy, which is exactly what bush has created as a persona. The dems than stop trying to appeal to the voting masses and instead use a collective wisdom of smart people who understand better than the arrogant 45 year old planners who've lost touch with reality. This post makes nearly no sense but I'm confident there is a nugget here. Some other time I'll think about it more.

missing matter / cosmology

2008-07-15T02:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080512-mm-matter-found.html

Last night while the heat, a result of a lack of working air conditioning, kept me up, I thought about time. We all assume it's infinite because the concept of infinity exists, but what if it's not? If all the matter of the universe were moving throughout time, it could be that the reason we can only find 90% of the matter of the universe is that we can only see the portion that exists at any given point in time, and the rest is spread throughout the time that has been and that will be.

http://www.physorg.com/news98468776.html

sports communication, strategy, and collective intelligence

2008-06-20T04:33:00.001-07:00

Last night while watching Euro 2008 Germany vs Portugal, as a fan of
Portugal, I was disappointed by the team's apparent lack of a
strategy. The coach probably had some ideas, and if he could
communicate them to the players might have helped. But what if the
coach actually couldn't process all the information on the field? My
point is, an interesting technology would be a system to gather
collective intelligence on a game, so that armchair quarterbacks all
watching the game can send what they think should be done to the coach
based on each vantage point. Or even more interesting, to send
commands to the players themselves as to who to pass to (or whatever)
in a soccer game, or maybe the system tells the player which fellow
teammate received the most number of "votes" and then the player
decides using this information combined with his own experience and
perspective. Ok I'm rambling, but you get my point. Sports could be
taken to a whole new level of collective experience.

By the way, in American football, helmets now allow headsets so don't
think this idea isn't too far off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_helmet

The competition

2008-06-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.springwise.com/

This site has it right! 8,000 spotters of great ideas, actually being implemented around the world.

loading speed in emerging economies

2008-05-28T00:20:00.000-07:00

An additional dimension to search alogorithms for searches originating in emerging economies should be "speed of loading". Based on connection speeds to a country (in general), images are damn slow to load from Dubai sometimes because of the number of hops. If "speed" were included in results' ranking, people would be much happer with their search experiences.

love these ideas

2008-05-14T03:13:00.000-07:00

This photographer takes shots when you're unaware, based on your provided schedule. Yes yes there is the "stalking" argument, but I like the idea!

http://methodizaz.com/

I wish Dubai, with all its food waste, would implement a service like this.

http://www.thespeciale.com/works.html

They pick up waste food, sort it, and provide it to the needy at your request.

Related service is the aptly named:

http://usedeventstuff.com/aboutus.html

And finally,

http://theboxbutler.com/

is a pickup and delivery storage service. You pay for each delivery, assuming you've given enough notice.

dna chips in floss

2008-04-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

i floss not because i should but because the dislodging of food stuffs reduces the likelihood of bad breath.

i do know that halitosis is caused by "bad" bacteria:

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/study_identifies_good_and_bad_breath_bacteria

if J&J www.jnj.com or whoever integrated cheap dna chips

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_microarray

into floss, color coding could be used to identify whether the bad bacteria are still there so as to prevent overflossing. huge benefit (that's for you marketers) is knowing that the flossing works.

CI / traffic

2008-02-13T07:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/511037-rolling-on-my-20

I agree with this guy, and believe that collective intelligence is a while from sustainable financial growth. But who am I to question Sand Hill road...

Today's idea: SMS collective intelligence regarding traffic. Free SMS's using shorthand to notify a system of traffic snarls, with specific enough information that the computer can provide routing ideas to people who request such routes. With GPS built-in for only some phones, this would work best with such devices but if you provide your location in shorthand then it can still work. And, the more people that write in from similar locations, the stronger the recommendation can become. With voice recognition this could be even more powerful - and safer.

can we say... verticalnet?

2008-01-09T08:56:00.001-08:00

1999 and 2000, vertical web sites went public with high valuations and - it turns out - little actual value. will social websites go the same route? or - and here's the idea - how about a fuckedcompany.com for social sites? now that would be ironic, don't ya think?

Restaurant Industry Latest Vertical To Get Social Networks
With social networking being the new black, every social networking niche that can be filled is being filled, from dog owners to fashionistas. http://www.fohboh.com

p2p traffic control

2007-10-27T01:35:00.001-07:00

If 5 people anonymously report another driver's aggressive driving or misbehavior via technical means -- SMS, phone, etc. -- and with a license plate #, the driver will receive a ticket based on the judgment of a reviewer of the information. Step 1: receive data; Step 2: associate data with a license #; Step 3: once data set is 5 valid points for the same time/date period, report data set to a reviewer who makes a judgment.

RE: New York Times Article. One Answer to Global Warming: A New Tax

2007-09-21T05:53:00.000-07:00

Since the tax would never work, I'm in favor of cap and trade, but a market which allows foreign buyers. And, if EU members are allowed to meet their carbon requirements on the US marketplace, the exchange rates will totally favor the EU buyers and therefore US companies will be forced to implement carbon reducing mechanisms since they won't be able to buy the credits already bought by the UE players.

From: metap@aol.com [mailto:metap@aol.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 6:46 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: New York Times Article. One Answer to Global Warming: A New Tax

Dear Friends,

Attached below is Mitt Romney's current economic advisor arguing in favor of a carbon tax.

As I re-read this last night, I was listening to Paul Krugman, who is no friend of Mitt Romney by the way, argue for the same thing on NPR/World Affairs Council's "It's Your World" Radio Program.

As Krugman put it, a carbon tax is the obvious thing to to, which is why nobody politically supports it.

Mankiw says it in his own words at the bottom of this piece: "The first and more difficult step is to convince American voters, and therefore political consultants, that “tax” is not a four-letter word."

Best,

Paola

September 16, 2007

Economic View

One Answer to Global Warming: A New Tax

By N. GREGORY MANKIW

IN the debate over global climate change, there is a yawning gap that needs to be bridged. The gap is not between environmentalists and industrialists, or between Democrats and Republicans. It is between policy wonks and political consultants.

Among policy wonks like me, there is a broad consensus. The scientists tell us that world temperatures are rising because humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Basic economics tells us that when you tax something, you normally get less of it. So if we want to reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax. Q.E.D.

The idea of using taxes to fix problems, rather than merely raise government revenue, has a long history. The British economist Arthur Pigou advocated such corrective taxes to deal with pollution in the early 20th century. In his honor, economics textbooks now call them “Pigovian taxes.”

Using a Pigovian tax to address global warming is also an old idea. It was proposed as far back as 1992 by Martin S. Feldstein on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. Once chief economist to Ronald Reagan, Mr. Feldstein has devoted much of his career to studying how high tax rates distort incentives and impede economic growth. But like most other policy wonks, he appreciates that some taxes align private incentives with social costs and move us toward better outcomes.

Those vying for elected office, however, are reluctant to sign on to this agenda. Their political consultants are no fans of taxes, Pigovian or otherwise. Republican consultants advise using the word “tax” only if followed immediately by the word “cut.” Democratic consultants recommend the word “tax” be followed by “on the rich.”

Yet this natural aversion to carbon taxes can be overcome if the revenue from the tax is used to reduce other taxes. By itself, a carbon tax would raise the tax burden on anyone who drives a car or uses electricity produced with fossil fuels, which means just about everybody. Some might fear this would be particularly hard on the poor and middle class.

But Gilbert Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts, has shown how revenue from a carbon tax could be used to reduce payroll taxes in a way that would leave the distribution of total tax burden approximately unchanged. He proposes a tax of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, together with a rebate of the federal payroll tax on the first $3,660 of earnings for each worker.

The case for a carbon tax looks even stronger after an examination of the other options on the table. Lawmakers in both political parties want to require carmakers to increase the fuel efficiency of the cars they sell. Passing the buck to auto companies has a lot of popular appeal.

Increased fuel efficiency, however, is not free. Like a tax, the cost of complying with more stringent regulation will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher car prices. But the government will not raise any revenue that it can use to cut other taxes to compensate for these higher prices. (And don’t expect savings on gas to compensate consumers in a meaningful way: Any truly cost-effective increase in fuel efficiency would already have been made.)

More important, enhancing fuel efficiency by itself is not the best way to reduce energy consumption. Fuel use depends not only on the efficiency of the car fleet but also on the daily decisions that people make — how far from work they choose to live and how often they carpool or use public transportation.

A carbon tax would provide incentives for people to use less fuel in a multitude of ways. By contrast, merely having more efficient cars encourages more driving. Increased driving not only produces more carbon, but also exacerbates other problems, like accidents and road congestion.

Another popular proposal to limit carbon emissions is a cap-and-trade system, under which carbon emissions are limited and allowances are bought and sold in the marketplace. The effect of such a system depends on how the carbon allowances are allocated. If the government auctions them off, then the price of a carbon allowance is effectively a carbon tax.

But the history of cap-and-trade systems suggests that the allowances would probably be handed out to power companies and other carbon emitters, which would then be free to use them or sell them at market prices. In this case, the prices of energy products would rise as they would under a carbon tax, but the government would collect no revenue to reduce other taxes and compensate consumers.

The international dimension of the problem also suggests the superiority of a carbon tax over cap-and-trade. Any long-term approach to global climate change will have to deal with the emerging economies of China and India. By some reports, China is now the world’s leading emitter of carbon, in large part simply because it has so many people. The failure of the Kyoto treaty to include these emerging economies is one reason that, in 1997, the United States Senate passed a resolution rejecting the Kyoto approach by a vote of 95 to zero.

Agreement on a truly global cap-and-trade system, however, is hard to imagine. China is unlikely to be persuaded to accept fewer carbon allowances per person than the United States. Using a historical baseline to allocate allowances, as is often proposed, would reward the United States for having been a leading cause of the problem.

But allocating carbon allowances based on population alone would create a system in which the United States, with its higher standard of living, would buy allowances from China. American voters are not going to embrace a system of higher energy prices, coupled with a large transfer of national income to the Chinese. It would amount to a massive foreign aid program to one of the world’s most rapidly growing economies.

A global carbon tax would be easier to negotiate. All governments require revenue for public purposes. The world’s nations could agree to use a carbon tax as one instrument to raise some of that revenue. No money needs to change hands across national borders. Each government could keep the revenue from its tax and use it to finance spending or whatever form of tax relief it considered best.

Convincing China of the virtues of a carbon tax, however, may prove to be the easy part. The first and more difficult step is to convince American voters, and therefore political consultants, that “tax” is not a four-letter word.

N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He was an adviser to President Bush and is advising Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, in the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Email and AIM finally together. You've gotta check out free AOL Mail!

create your own market and underwriting

2007-09-18T01:07:00.001-07:00

How about a service, to underwrite individuals' ideas for markets. For example, someone bets on Dubai's future, and when enough people bet on different outcomes with margin, the market begins.

peer to peer services

2007-09-04T06:10:00.001-07:00

Today on CNBC's Squawk Box, comcast was expected to announce its "do it yourself" cable installation kit. BO-O-ORING. What would be really awesome is for comcast to outsource its installation to the nerds out there who know what they're doing, as opposed to the installation people. If we trust a stranger from comcast in our home, if the right certification is done, couldn't we trust a qualified installer in our home? Think about it: (1) nerd wants to moonlight as a cable installer. (2) identity and address are verified, perhaps using those super-anal people at paypal; (3) nerd sees installation job for comcast and goes out same day to take care of it, gets paid less than what comcast pays their idiot technician to do the same job, and it gets done faster. Web service charges a fee for all the different services it coordinates.

Philosophy: in the days of human villages, people trusted and relied on one another for services.

weak nuclear force engine

2007-08-05T23:00:00.001-07:00

As usual, I'm gonna post an idea without any research... and perhaps this falls in the realm of zero point energy devices... could the weak nuclear force be harnessed or set up to create a greater than zero net work device or even an engine?

evil idea #2: corporate email marketing

2007-07-27T07:32:00.001-07:00

I recently received an email from a friend containing marketing materials for her company's services. Knowing the friend, I know the forward was sarcastic. But, it triggered the thought, as to whether corporations own their employees' email accounts. Too lazy to look up the legal precedent, I'll just assume that corporations have won all their cases on the matter, that is, they do indeed own the accounts. If so, then they should have the right to email everyone in their employees' address book. This would be targeted marketing, since it's likely anyone in an employee's address book knows where the employee works and thus is prequalified, and is more likely to open the email. Believe me, the line between corporation and individual disappears in such a scenario, but hey it would generate sales, and if treated right, would not harm the corporation so long as all the other corporations choose to do the same thing regardless of what the lowly employees think.

collective investment scheme

2007-07-18T09:51:00.001-07:00

From the world of web 2.0.... people sign up for this site, and commit to investing $100 (or some such small denomination of their choosing) as part of an investment process which "closes" at a specified time. Each person then selects 3 out of 10 presented ideas that they would be willing to invest their $100 in, if 1 of their 3 choices is selected at the time of "closing". The idea that is selected is based on the collective choice(s) of all the users whose total commitments add up to $1M. Challenges: regulation; liability.

ecology markets

2007-07-15T04:34:00.001-07:00

While we're on the topic of markets, why not an ecology market? Could we measure the value of protecting species? What would be wild is seeing what people bet on their own futures. For example, let's say that the existence of 100 elephants in 10 years is linked to a $100 payment, a price set by the World Wildlife Fund (or some such NGO). The initial contracts set by the WWF, say, by country, would form the basis of a voluntary market but one based on real money, so naturally the pricing will start as arbitrary but then settle based on volumes.

MENA shareholder activism

2007-06-28T23:49:00.001-07:00

If they really wanted to create leverage with Israel and make money, MENA investors would identify value stocks that sell their product to Israel, and then find clients for these companies in the MENA on the condition that they not sell to Israel. Then, the value of their stock would increase and moral actors (from the MENA investor's perspective) would be better off.

free radical emissions trading

2007-06-22T10:40:00.001-07:00

Forget CO2 trading and footprints.... if you want short-term benefits, reduce your free radical footprint. I suggest starting a calculator and voluntary trading system for each of our free radical footprints. Free radicals directly harm us and cause short-term problems for ourselves and others around us. And they happen to cause environmental harm, too, so a secondary market for CO2 credits would be created by free radical contracts.

the future of man

2007-06-08T01:41:00.000-07:00

I've been saying for a while that men will be eliminated when women can self-fertilize. Sound crazy? Perhaps not. Ironically, humans might themselves accelerate this end. See article on intersex fish

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12906

While I'm on crazy topics... if you believe in the stereotype of women being bad drivers, perhaps the explanation isn't mysogynistic in its nature, but rather that men design cars and transport systems.

http://www.designnews.com/article/CA421194.html?industryid=22213

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To serve man...

rewarding consumers for promoting brands

2007-04-19T10:37:00.001-07:00

If consumers are truly linked to brands, then they should be rewarded for promoting their favorite brands. Here's how it could work.

* Consumers (from here on, each of which is referred to as a "person") join a brand's club either through a loyalty card or through the brand's credit card (and we all have at least one!)

* The person is rewarded for promoting the brand, either by wearing it out or through another mechanism.

* How does the brand company know they're being promoted? (1) RFID (privacy concerns? what privacy concerns?!) (2) contests using personalized merchandise, like Puma sweatshirt No. AXPYD

I'm all about the beginning of the end, like with letting people market to one another in email.

WiFi business models

2007-04-10T23:26:00.001-07:00

So here we go again... WiFi's becoming free everywhere right? Except it sucks most of the time. Classic [sic] behavioral economics. The wealthy are already paying for faster access.

oh, damn

2007-03-15T03:03:00.000-07:00

http://www.coolbusinessideas.com/

real or fake / collective wisdom

2007-03-14T02:01:00.001-07:00

Not money making this time, but interesting exercise would be to put a good copy of a work of art next to the actual work, and see if the viewers of the exhibit consistently select the "real" work. The exhibit would test not only the concept of quality, but also that of collective wisdom.

ads in email

2007-03-08T06:19:00.001-08:00

Ever since the 2000 superbowl ad for epidemic, I've wondered about whether privacy concerns would kill the idea, not to mention the download process. I still say that a great idea is paying people to choose which ad goes into an email based on their knowledge of the recipient. The idea can be can be privacy-friendly since they they choose to include an ad, and you can give the recipient an opt-out that disallows receipt of the service's ads.

wiring the home

2007-03-05T22:48:00.000-08:00

With flat cable available, wiring a home should be easier. But, what if we wrapped pipes with this cable, so that, as pipe was being installed, the home was wired too. Then, a data service installer clamps a ring on to the pipe that connects to the 6- wires to create a connection. This could be done for security service, too. Does hot water flux create electric fields? Hey I didn't say all ideas on SMI would be good ones!

unified IM

2007-02-13T00:01:00.001-08:00

Widgets, IM, chat, Skype, Zango, ium, Beejive, etc. all are IM apps that no one can unify. Microsoft and Cisco have announced plans for unified IM.

Why isn't the discussion about the analog [sic] with the phone industry? Give away SIP phones for free, and integrate all (technically challenging, I know, but here comes the part how you do it) the IM apps, including widgets, in a paid service like mobile phones? People pay for voice, SMS and IP, so why not pay for IM?

damn it! banks did it before I could post

2007-02-07T00:02:00.000-08:00

Years ago, I said Fleet could take away business and get new customers by allowing customers to transfer money to other customers for free. Finally, they're allowing for this, as well as $0 equity trades. BofA, unlike those greedy Fleet bastards, realized that they'll make a lot more money by charging the true marginal cost of such transactions: ZERO. B.S. bank fees might, finally, disappear.

collective art reviews

2007-02-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

Somehow, we all know what good art is, i.e. the concept of quality. At art exhibitions, what if there was some way to collect the opinions of all the visitors, to provide a collective review of an exhibit rather than rely on the views of a critic? Sorry, critics.

WAP wine prices for active price comparison

2007-02-06T23:56:00.000-08:00

Implemented easily with current technologies, why not pay $0.05 per bottle just prior the moment of decision by sending a text/SMS with the name, year, winery, and store (that's for the Company's marketing purposes) and make a wiser purchase for wine?

GRR / cell phone swapper

2007-01-12T01:28:00.000-08:00

Don't you hate it when someone actually steals your idea?? Years ago I posted on www.craigslist.org a request for someone to take my contract because I hated Verizon (www.verizon.com), and I got a lot of requests, because everyone hates the contracts. The answer's finally here: cellswapper. Take that, US telco bastards.

http://www.ajax-blog.com/cellswapper-solves-a-very-annoying-problem.html

the local internet content company (LIC Co.)

2007-01-10T05:58:00.000-08:00

We should form local holding companies to invest in and/or acquire local web sites that provide repetitive content. Argue you might that consolidation stifles multiple viewpoints, but the editorial staff of one magazine would be more economic than multiple overheads resulting in shutdown of all viewpoints.

data collection for difficult-to-verify maps

2007-01-07T09:06:00.000-08:00

One problem with free wireless maps is the expense to verify the data. If these maps had a cheaper system to update their info, users might be more likely to use and refer to them. My suggestion: pay homeless people $100 to verify locations with one the cheap wireless network verifiers. This inventory of verified WiFi nodes would be valuable to multiple mapmakers. Plus, the right network of homeless people would be itself a valuable resource for other map-verification. Problems: unions/labor laws; plus, for-profit vs. nonprofit nature of the business.

IF (instant fundraising) instead of IM (instant messaging)

2007-01-06T06:49:00.001-08:00

Last night I saw a documentary in which a woman couldn't get surgery at a reputable hospital in an emerging country (I know the country and also the hospital, and vouch for this statement) because she couldn't afford the $30 for the surgery. Assuming the context is true, it would have been ideal for an NGO volunteer to SMS/email the woman's request to a system, which checks a database of donors and/or sends a broadcast SMS/email to a randomly selected group of would-be donors whose credit card info already exists with the system. Donors can pre-select amounts and frequency of contact online to avoid spam. The donor then replies yes if they wish to commit. The volunteer approves the surgery, and confirms by SMS when the surgery is successful. The donor can then log in to the web site and obtain instantly gratification for their donation. The system could have a 15-minute reply period that allows the volunteer to provide an answer to the woman quickly. The system pays for itself via micro-commissions. And, multiple nonprofits can use one online system to avoid upfront investment. The technology could also be applied to the commercial space. There are many ways to specifically implement this, like getting a "pledge" from donors and they get to see the result only if they confirm their donation online.

franchise for a traffic information system

2007-01-05T04:18:00.000-08:00

Most people in traffic have or create their own ideas and secret routes to get out of the miserable, human-induced jam. An SMS-based system, this business would offer drivers stuck in traffic a means of testing their route before using it. Cheap sensors on many key routes could be placed by a local distributor of the service (capex shouldn't be too high) with a number, or code. Drivers can SMS the system to ask if that route is congested. At $0.05/pop, micro-transactions at the local level would build a solid franchise business. Add-on technology could include driver-generated information, which, if corroborated by a minimum number of other drivers, would become part of the system. Add-on sales could include sale of the information to the media. System could also be combined with a web site. Assumption: sensors would require little maintenance and the software would actually work.