The main reason I haven’t posted in a while is that I put most of my thoughts on twitter now, feel free to follow me twitter.com/davepreston.

Between facebook, twitter, and whatever other new Web 2.0 sites I can find, I haven’t been putting my “great ideas” down in this blog.

Enough excuses. Most of those Web 2.0 sites have a profile picture (including wordpress actually). I decided tonight that I was bored with my old profile picture and wanted to change it. That’s when I realized how annoying that would be. So far I’ve updated twitter, flickr, and facebook. There are probably a dozen other sites that I’ve used my old picture on and I’d like to be able to update all of them at the same time.

Reasons this is a bad idea:
- Actually, I can’t think of anything bad about this idea other than the fact that the site that did the updates would have to have your password for all your different sites. But that seems to happen all over the place these days and is a problem that should be addressed in a different post.

- The only other reason not to write one is that probably someone already has. I’m expecting a comment on this blog or a reply in twitter any minute now .

For those of you that don’t know about Pownce it’s web 2.0 blend between blogging and Instant Messaging. It fills the void when I have something to say, but not enough time to write a full blog entry. It also provides for the opportunity to reply to particular messages.

Replies are the focus of this post. I think it would be cool to have a bot that listened to a pownce feed for a specific directive. When it gets a question that it knows how to answer it could reply directly in Pownce.
  It could be done in several ways. It could wait for messages directly to it (Pownce allows for direct messages) or it could look at all the messages for keywords like “define:, weather:, ticker:, etc.”. If it saw “weather: Portland, OR” In my public feed it could quickly look up the weather and reply to me in pownce. Google has something similar for definitions. If I enter “define: happiness” into google it will quickly tell me about a state of being happy. I just want this type of thing in Pownce so I don’t have to switch over to my web browser.

  In the spirit of this blog here’s why it won’t work:
    The main reason this won’t work is it’s not allowed .
  According to Pownce’s legal page “User will not use any robot, spider, scraper or other automated means to access the Site for any purpose without Megatechtronium’s express written permission.”

  Bummer. I guess I need to get their express written permission. Perhaps I could use Twitter instead since it offers similar functionality but doesn’t have a robot clause in it’s TOS page. I’ve used Twitter, but I like Pownce better and I think it’s reply feature is a lot more sophisticated than Twitter’s.

By the way, Pownce is currently an invite only beta, but if you would like an invite, post a comment to the blog so I can invite you, or go to inviteShare which is a cool site to share invites to limited beta sites. That’s how I got an invite to Joost, but that’s a post for another time.

  Some of the smaller headphones go deep into your ear to block out the sound.

  I figure why keep trying to imitate the real thing. Why not just shake the eardrum itself directly instead of a speaker which then shakes the eardrum. Why not wire up a headphone jack directly to your eardrum?

   Off the top of my head I can think of a few good reasons

  1) It sounds easy to go overboard and damage your hearing (of course that’s a good argument for not using headphones of any kind)
  2) If they change the format or connectors you may need surgery to keep up

Actually, those reasons aren’t that awful. I’m talking myself back into this being a good idea . I’m not sure I’d sign up immediately, but I’d give it some thought.

  3) what if your headphones get pulled out of your ears, and it’s connected to your eardrum. Ouch! (maybe Apple can come up with some magnetic release like their power cords.)
  4) Lightning strikes could be deadly.

I want a search engine that searches for songs. But I don’t want to search by name or artist. I want to be able to hum a melody and have a search engine find songs that are similar.

Wow. There’s a site that does this already according to the link below.
(I promise you I don’t just search for odd things and then write about them. I really have wanted this for quite some time and just got around to writing about it today.)
It just goes to show you that “there’s nothing new under the sun.”

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9667815-2.html

The site is: http://hsearch.nayio.com/ I’m going to try it now.

UPDATE: Sadly, it seems to be unavailable. The site loads. It even will record and play back my audio input, but just gives an odd error when I try to search. There’s no way for me to even debug it since it’s an activeX control .

Maybe they fell prey to one of my reasons it wouldn’t work. That the RIAA would come after them for recording their users trying to sound like other songs. They would probably need to pay royalties .

Because of that I’ve taken to sending myself emails for things that I need to do. I also leave emails marked as “unread” to remind me to do something. The problem with that is that my inbox gets so cluttered with “tasks” masquerading as emails that I miss important emails or my response is delayed.

To solve these problems I propose the following online application:

• You enter your tasks on the site and can define frequency, reminder time/type, description, etc. etc.
• Manage friends making it a social network around tasks (not really necessary but everything has to have a social network to be cool these days )
• Reminders are key for me so there has to be a way to set reminders to send me an email, or add an RSS entry into the feed so I see it in my reader.

I liked this idea so much I even started writing it. I spent a limit time considering the data structure and “wasted” untold hours trying to install Visual Studio 2005, but that’s a topic for a different blog.

Tonight before I got back into writing the app I decided to do a search for similar businesses to see if there was anything I could learn (of course I didn’t expect to learn anything given my vast amount of existing knowledge )

www.simplespark.com is a great search engine when looking for new companies.
In this case it turns out that there are several companies doing precisely what I described above!

Once again giving me a good blog post instead of a great business idea.

In case you are wondering www.rememberTheMilk.com and www.beeplet.com apparently do what I’m talking about. However, it does look like beeplet is having issues at the moment. I can’t get to their site. remember the milk looks like a very cool site. I’ll have to see if it can help me remember stuff.

UPDATE: I just tried adding a weekly reminder to update my blog. It let me do that and even gave me a link. I am super bummed though that RSS was NOT one of the options for reminder. IM was, and email was. For now I have it set to send me email. I’ve come full circle, but now I’ve completely lost interest in writing my own. I guess I’ll just have to hope beeplet comes back online (or do another search for the dozens of copycats that I’m certain are available.

  Building on the distributed screen saver concept I have a multi-phased idea:

1. Build a very slick screen saver to be given away free.
   The amount of installs must be very high so people should feel they are getting a high-end screensaver for nothing (for now).
2. Build a distributed platform into the screen saver so that you can sell off compute time on any machine that is running the screen saver.
   If #1 worked well, we should have a compelling distributed platform, then we have to get the compute sales up.
3. To keep the pipeline going and keep people interested we start giving money to the users based on how much computing their computer has done. This will encourage them to leave the screensaver installed and running (perhaps even running in the background during use throughout the day). We’re basically paying them for their spare computer cycles.
4. At some point we could have the option of disabling the distributed portion and just selling the screen saver. Of course that wouldn’t be optimal because we want a constant stream of income.

So, in the tradition of this blog. Reasons this idea won’t work:

1. It sounds hard.
2. Creating a compelling Screen Saver is easier said than done.
3. Limited market - I have no idea how big the market for distributed computing is, but not many people need the immense computing power that distributed computing provides.
4. Limited computations - Distributed computing is limited to attacking problems that can take advantage of massively parallel processing.
5. Reduced costs of supercomputing.
6. The type of people who are likely to install screen savers for this type of effort are likely already using Folding@home or SETI@Home. Getting them to switch would be tough, particularly if you don’t start paying from the beginning. Of course, if you’re going to start paying from the beginning you’ll need investors (who disregard the previous 5 points )

  Not all USB devices are as cool as that. I’ve seen USB fans, USB aquariums & USB coffee warmers (actually the USB aquarium is kinda cool although I wish it were more realistic). People have even compiled entire lists of Pointless USB Gadgets.

  I happen to think that an interactive head would go into the way cool USB pile of USB gadgets. It could have a camera embedded into it as well as a small speaker. That would allow it to be hooked up to IM or skype. I would get visual feedback as well as audio. I think that would provide a much richer experience for the user. I thought this flower pot (that perks up when your buddy comes on IM) was USB, but apparently it’s wireless. That would be even cooler, but probably increase the cost significantly. The interactive head is basically an extension of the flower pot. Not only would the head “wake up” when my buddy came online, but my friends could speak to me vicariously through the head.

  In the old days, you’d just lock the car and go quick, but with horror stories like this casino parking lot or this university parking lot I feel guilty refilling my soda mug while the kids are in the car.

  That led me to Valet Babysitting. You would pull up to the store, perhaps a specific set of parking spaces which would indicate your desire for the extra service. A qualified childcare professional would meet you at your car, hand you a 2-way radio for use in emergency, and take a seat in your car. You go into the store for a short trip, and the babysitter makes sure your kids are safe. If it was enough of a draw they wouldn’t even have to charge for it, but I know many a mommy that wouldn’t mind having a mark-up on their purchase based on how long they had taken in the store.

  If a person had enough land in Second Life they could create animals that would run away from people (but stay on the property). Then people could be charged to hunt. People pay large sums of money in RL (Real Life) to go on safaris. They would likely be willing to pay a small fee in SL for a similar experience. The fee could be based on time hunting, or could be based on per kill. Larger prices for less populated (and smarter) animals.

  After a person has killed an animal they could opt for a small fee to have the animal mounted, thus another Second Life occupation, Second Life Taxidermy. Along with the stuffed animal, they could have a certificate of authenticity that showed date/time of kill as well as location and various other hunt details.

  I did a quick google and was surprised to find no mentions of anything like this. Of course I haven’t spent enough time in SL to know for sure, but it sounds like the most promising SL great idea yet. Way to go Samuel and Ken!

  Her idea is to provide a service where customers can call a toll-free number and dictate their e-mail messages. After speaking their message the automated system would “type” out their message and send it to the desired recipients. The customer could set up an address list in advance to avoid having to speak out awkward email addresses letter by letter.

  I’ve heard of a service that would allow you to send audio files recorded over the phone as attachments to emails. However, I haven’t heard anything about it recently. 

  I would say the most likely reasons that this won’t work are:

1. Speech to text software isn’t that great and paying customers would get frustrated with being misunderstood. (some people say Microsoft Vista is getting better at speech recognition, but others aren’t as impressed)
2. Someone else is likely already doing it.

  Either way, it’s still a good idea. Way to go honey!

Update: I did a quick google for dictate email and found www.copytalk.com and www.myjotter.com without much effort. They appear to do exactly what my wife was describing (plus more).  I know I could have done that search before I posted the original, but that would spoil the fun .

  I was helping a friend move today and realized that in Second Life people probably have a need to move from time to time (need is probably too strong, but Second Life isn’t really a need in the first place is it?). Anyway, I assume that like in real life people decide that they don’t like their neighbors, or just want a bigger place. It’s probably a hassle to move their stuff from one place to another. People would likely be willing to pay a small fee to have their stuff moved into their new digs.

  I figure there has to be some way to enumerate people’s belongings programmatically so instead of physical movement, or a time consuming process of collecting each thing and putting it in a box I could “magically” move everything from one house to another given some small amount of information.

  Now, let’s figure out why this won’t work:

1. I have only spent a few minutes total in Second Life so I don’t have much idea of how things really work in there.
2. It’s a complete guess that you can programmatically enumerate belongings. If that isn’t the case, then this could be an arduous (read, not fun) task.
3. Linden Labs (Second Life authors) may already have a feature that does this for you. I doubt it, but it’s possible.
4. People may not really ever move in Second Life (this doesn’t seem likely)
5. If it’s that easy to write the programs then lots of people will do it and give it away for free (it only takes one open sourcer to make this business model fall flat).

  On the other hand that’s why I started this blog. I have (what I consider to be) these great ideas all the time. They don’t all have to be gold mines, just one . Of course, I would actually have to do some investigation into it to know which of the above items is true, but for now I’m happy with knowing that I have a great idea (that will never work).

  Probably the most interesting thing about this concept is the realization that “blue collar” jobs in Second Life aren’t hard work. They may be tedious, but if they can be automated that changes the game (err, life) entirely.

Update: I just found probably the biggest problem with this great idea. It came when I was reading through the Terms and Service for Second Life. This is in section 1.4 of the terms of Service:
            You agree that Linden Lab has the absolute right to manage, regulate, control, modify and/or eliminate such Currency as it sees fit in its sole discretion, in any general or specific case, and that Linden Lab will have no liability to you based on its exercise of such right. 
  I don’t know about you, but I’m not very comfortable basing a business plan on Linden Labs current squishy statements about my ability to convert Linden $ into real $. I’m actually very surprised that I’ve never read about that clause in any of the mainstream articles I’ve read about Second Life.

 They provide you with:

• A debit card (mastercard) for purchases
• Free ATM usage on any Allpoint(tm) Network machine (there were dozens nearby for me although you are limited to the Allpoint logo’d machines)
• Something they call electric checks. This is something I’d like to try. You enter the recipients info and it sends them an email. They check the email and then get the money transferred directly to their account.
• Overdraft protection (no big fees, but it does charge you interest)

The one thing I can’t figure out is regular old checks. The site mentions “online bill pay”, but they also call it a “paperless checking account”. That sounds cool and all, but what do I do when my water bill comes in the mail? Can I send a regular old paper (eek) check to them somehow? Or do we expect the local municipalities to go check their email to receive an electric deposit?

btw, I’m not affiliated with ING Direct in any way other than the fact that I use their services. I’ve used their savings account for several years now and love how easy it is (and it’s a pretty good rate). I’ve also tried their CDs which you can buy in very small quantities. I even got a home equity line of credit on my previous home (the entire home equity line was secured online and on the phone).

The process I usually use is to call my wife and ask her. That works fairly well, but I don’t think she would mind if I outsourced this particular part of her job .

Anyway, the point is that you can make money in the game and then transfer that money back into real $. I’ve had several ideas about ways to make money. My creative skills are mediocre, so I don’t think I’ll make a mint as a fashion designer for avatar clothing. A more likely opportunity would be writing custom scripts for movement of objects in Second Life.

More on this later.

I’m a software engineer by trade, but my ideas aren’t limited to code. In general they revolve around ways to save money or make money. Preferably lots of it.

Unfortunately, very few of my ideas are really any good and even the ones that are good usually require more effort than I’m willing to put into them. So, sadly my “great” ideas generally come and go at an alarming rate. One of my ideas has always been to at least write them down. So, this blog is actually one of my ideas coming to fruition (without the making money part .

 –Dave