Dream Recording Clock

The best way to remember your dreams is to get in the habit of writing them down when you do remember them. Doing this regularly will cause you to remember more of your dreams. But this can be difficult early in the morning, especially if you are groggy.

My idea is for an alarm clock, that after waking you up, automatically starts an audio recording. So instead of having to grab a pen and paper, you can simply dictate your dream. The system will save the recording to an mp3 file that can then be transfered to a computer.

This little push may be all that some people who want to have better dream recall need.

As an added feature the clock could allow a person to record a message on it before going to bed. The message would be a reminder to do something in the morning. Then, when they are done recording their dream, the message will play. This could be a useful feature just by itself for people that tend to be forgetful while still waking up.

Ultimately something like this would be a niche product. However, I think its a niche that a large enough number of people would appreciate.

Electronic Tupperware

Tupperware has not changed much over the years, but it could be a lot better.

For me Tupperware has two problems. One, at times it can be difficult to know/remember what is inside the Tupperware (especially if you were not the one to 'pack' it), and two, it's easy to loose track of how old the contents are.

My idea is to have Tupperware lids with a slot to 'clip on' cheap LCD displays. The displays themselves do not need to be anything fancy. Really they just need to be capable of showing a single line of text.

A consumer would purchase a 'keyboard' when they first invest in the Tupperware. The keyboard/keypad would be magnetic and could stick onto a fridge. There would be a slot where the displays could plug in. When a display is plugged in, the consumer simply needs to enter in the label they would like to be displayed. To make things more convenient the keypad would automatically append the date to the label.

Simply by looking into the fridge a hungry person could know what was in each container and how old the stuff was.

The displays, when not in use, would dock with the keyboard and would likely be magnetic themselves. The keypad would then charge the batteries that power the displays. As for how the keypad gets this power itself? Perhaps it could be charged off of batteries as well, or integrated into high-end fridges and just draw power from the mains.

The amount of engineering to create such a product would be minimal. Ultimately the key would be in marketing it. But to me at least, this product is useful enough that all you would need to do is let people know it exists.

Restaurant Wait App

After thinking about my last idea for a bit I came to a conclusion. While it would be useful and some places would be honest, there needs to be accountability or else many places will simply fudge the wait times as they do now.

There is a fairly straightforward solution, an iphone or google droid app.

When a restaurant quotes a wait time, the user boots the app and enters in the quoted time. The user then presses another button when they are finally seated. Based on GPS coordinates the phone will try to identify the restaurant and suggest the location, but if it is wrong the user can enter it in manually.

This information would be uploaded to a website and restaurants would be ranked by not only their actual wait time, but also their honesty.

There is also sorts of ways the information could be displayed for users. It could show break downs based on time and day. It could also rank the restaurant with the times normalized by different metrics.

If a particular restaurant is all ready in the database, the average wait and honesty score of a restaurant would come up when the user starts the app.

While it would still be possible for restaurants to manipulate the data, it would be much more difficult and they could not simply 'lie.'

The app could even support comments and reviews of places along with average price per person in order to be a complete solution.

If people used this app, less than honest restaurants might begin to see customers turning away from their door. This method of accountability could encourage honesty with wait times and allow the method I outlined the other day to work to its full potential.

Online Restaurant Wait Time Report

It's annoying to drive up to a restaurant and see a huge number of people and just know there is going to be a long wait. The restaurant probably loves the business, but there is a down side for them. After this happens a couple time at the same restaurant I become less inclined to going back even in the off-hours. They just lost a customer. However, if I knew for a fact there wouldn't be a wait, I might still be inclined to go early. Or if I knew that the wait usually died down past a certain hour, then I might consider pushing back my dinner.

Many restaurants are already digitalizes table assignments and food orders. They punch in when people are at a table, and enter in when they leave. Its not hard to imagine that this information could be entered into an algorithm and converted into a 'wait time.' This information could then be dynamically updated on the restaurant's website.When trying to decide where to go to dinner, you could just load up the websites of your favorite websites and see who has the shortest wait.

If they wanted to be really helpful they could provide past averages based on hour and day. So perhaps at 4 pm on a Thursday night, you see that they have a 45 minute wait at the moment, but usually by 6 pm its only 10 minutes. So you decide to do a later dinner.

I could even imagine people creating a website that would spider crawl the restaurants in the area and reports all the wait times at places to eat within a 25 mile radius of your address.

Now restaurants could just lie. It seems to me that they already do this when you ask how long the wait is. Its obvious why. They don't want you to leave, and if you hang around for a bit, even if the wait is twice as long as they said, you will probably end up staying until they seat you. But if they were honest on the site they might ward customers off before they even arrive. However, I am of the opinion, that they are sacrificing long term business for short term business when they lie about the wait.

A system like this would reward places that can keep the wait time down and are honest about it. The wait will become a point in their favor. If they honestly report when their busy hours are, some people who might just walk away when seeing the wait may instead show up at a less busy time. Meanwhile if a restaurant is always reporting fake wait times, well people will hopefully catch onto that fairly quickly.

Some restaurants would need to upgrade their computer systems (or install them completely) to be able to get something like this to work easily. A system that could not be automated would likely be too much work for a restaurant to be worth it.

I think this could be a great feature. It could help make the decision of where to eat, and I could imagine choosing a restaurant that reports its wait time over one that does not. Ultimately there is very little preventing many restaurants from setting up a an Online Wait Time Report system right now.

Scam Review Site

There are various sites where people can report scams, but thats not what this idea is about.

If you are familiar with Snopes I envision a site in a similar vein. If you are not familiar with it, basically it is a site that investigates and either debunks or confirms urban legends.

The Scam Review Site basically would do the same thing but with scams.

They would look at as seen on TV products, email Scams, and basically anything that seems to good to be true. They could classify things either as Dangerous Rip Offs (for scams that will steal your identity), Total Rip Offs (for scams that charge you for nothing, or contain hidden fees or hard to cancel subscription), Partial Rip Offs (for scams that sell things that sort of work, but not nearly as advertises), and finally Real Deal (for things that seem like scams but aren't).

The site would rely on a combination of independent investigation and user feedback. Ultimately there are likely too many scams out there to deal with them all, but the site would focus on the 'popular' ones of the day.

A good tag line for the site could be "When it seems too good to be true." And that is basically how you would want to market it. The idea you would want to market is that if someone is online and sees something that seems absolutely amazing, and they ask themselves How can they offer such a great deal!, they will then go to the Scam Review Site to find out what the real deal really is.

As I mentioned earlier I have seen websites that talk about scams, but nothing that seems to be comprehensive. And definitely nothing as recognized as Snopes is in its field of urban legends.

It might take a while for the site to gain momentum, but if made accessible and properly marketed, I could envision it being a big hit.

Cruise Control Pacing

This idea is a spin off yesterdays.

Often times as driving I find myself on cruise control and behind another car. I am frequently perfectly happy staying behind the car.

However, there is a problem. I may find myself creeping closer to the car. So I slow down the cruise control by one increment. But now I begin lagging behind. So I increase it a bit, and once again begin creeping up on the car. It is especially frustrating while driving long stretches on fairly open roads.

A nice feature could be a 'pacing' button. A Doppler Radar installed in the front of the car could measure the speed / distance to the car ahead of you and attempt to match speed with it and maintain a steady distance. It could even modify the distance to allow for proper braking time, if need be, based on the current speed.

The system would of course need to have a delay. Otherwise a car speeding by could send your car speeding up. It would have to only react to a signal that has been detected consistently for the last thirty seconds or so.

One issue that this idea could have would be with people who use radar detectors. If the guy in front of you has a detector he may suddenly slow down out of concern that police are nearby, and that could be annoying.

I could also see this idea adding a not-insignificant cost to the cruise control system. This minor improvement may not be worth the cost.

However, if it could be done for a reasonable price, it could remove another annoyance from the road.

Dynamic Cruise Control

Cruise Control is a nice feature.

It makes driving the car less work and more fuel efficient.

However there are certain times when it is annoying to have to adjust it. One of these is when the highway curves. Generally when taking any significant turns you want to reduce your speed to continue driving safely if the road is not banked.

I would like to see a cruise control system that would dynamically reduce the speed while the wheel is turned. When the driver straightens back out the speed would pick back up.

The system would likely have a threshold so that it would not activate while passing another car. The system could also include a sensor to detect if the car is at an angle. This could be used to tell if the car is on a banked road. If the road is banked the system would not have to reduce the car's speed as much.

For people who did not like the cruise control automatically adjusting the speed a switch under the dashboard could turn the feature on and off.

A dynamic cruise control could make using cruise control more convenient and safer.