$Million #5

idea: Random news generator

If there is one thing I hate, its sensationalist journalism and more specifically sensationalist headlines. With that in mind, I recently read about this, which is a Python script that grabs excerpts from news articles online. So I thought "Why not take this another step and automate it?"

I'm imagining a website that shows you a random paragraph from a random news article on a random news website and you decide from that paragraph if you want to read the article or not. Simply tracking if the user clicks the link or not will tell you how interesting it is and then you can rank the top stories of the day based on the content alone. No titles, no fluff, just content. That could even be the tagline for the site! Nice.

You could even take this another step further and add a social networking aspect that lets you see what your friends are reading, save and share articles, customize your news sources, create RSS feeds, et cetera, et cetera.

All I need is a catchy site name and its golden! Who wants to make this for me?

Random Comment

Haven't posted in a while but wanted to put this somewhere and I thought "Hmm.. I do have a blog, isn't that what it is for?". I was looking around weather.com today and noticed this line in the Chicago weather report:

WIND CHILLS WILL RISE TO 20 TO 25 BELOW ZERO BY FRIDAY AFTERNOON.

Wow, they will RISE to 25 below on Friday? I'm guessing there is a ton of snow on the ground too. So glad I moved away from that to 40 degree winters.

$Million idea #4

idea: Free concerts to promote voter turnout

Again, not really going to make $1,000,000 but it will get more people out to vote which is priceless, right? Well, maybe... I'll tell you on November 5th. So I'm perusing the Detroit News today like I always do (Detroit Free Press -- you are horrible) and come across this article:

Jay-Z to hold free Detroit Concert To boost Voter Turnout
Barak Obama is getting a little celebrity help in encouraging new voters to register: a free concert this Saturday night by platinum-selling rap artist Jay-Z at Cobo Arena. The 8:30pm show is free, but tickets are required, and will be distributed beginning Wednesday afternoon at Obama campaign offices in Metro Detroit. (source)

That is a fantastic idea and really one that has been done before with the Vote For Change tour 4 years ago (Pearl Jam in Grand Rapids was AWESOME!) and countless others I'm sure. These tours help to get people registered but does it actually do anything on election day? Really, why not just go the extra step and do this on election day.

Instead of doing your concert a full month before the elections, why not pick out 10 major cities in the swing states and do concerts the night of the election with free admission going to people that have voted that day. You could even have a show for each genre if you like to appeal to a wider crowd. Point being that getting 60,000 people at a show is not hard to do and if 1/2 of them voted just to be able to get in free then you are talking 300,000 extra voters and every one wins.

$Million idea #3

Idea: Shower-only gym memberships

So this one probably isn't going to make someone $1,000,000 but it would be extremely useful to people like me which is really all that matters, right? Right.

I have this thing where I can't get myself to pay $80/mth to workout indoors surrounded by smelly sweaty people and artificial light. Treadmills will never compare to running outdoors on a sunny day. I usually don't get home till after 6 when daylight is dwindling so I'd love to just take my lunch break and go for a run but my co-workers having this thing about not smelling. When are gyms going to start offering shower-only memberships for $5 or $10/mth -- I'd totally pay that. Plus, you would be getting me in the door which means I am easier to market to, more willing to buy extra stuff, and greatly increases my chances of upgrading to a full membership. Win, win.

The only thing that they would have to change is how they police their workout rooms to make sure shower-only customers aren't sneaking in. Simple, make little silicone bracelets for customers allowed to work out and hand them out with their memberships. What do those cost to make, $0.30 a piece? Done and done. Someone get on this, please?

$Million idea #2

I have this problem where I hate talking on the phone because there is no history of what was said. I love email, text messages, and IM chat for this very reason -- you can save your conversations for later. What is even better about Gmail, for example, is the searching and sorting of your conversations. Can't remember that funny joke your friend told you 2 years ago? Search their conversations and you've got it. Phones have never had that luxury.

Enter $Million idea #2....

For lack of a better comparison (and I know every one has seen The Office) I'm calling it the Beasley for now. Outside of phones and pranks, Pam's main job is coming to meetings and writing down everything that is said. Take this idea and apply it to your cell phone. If there could be a background process running that simply transcribes your conversation and then either saves it locally or offers to email it to you, that would be fantastic. Seeing that Google is trying to organize everything about you, I'm kinda surprised that they haven't created something like this for Android. To me, the hardest part seems to be getting an effective transriber application to fit on the limited space provided on most mobile devices. Apple seems to be taking care of that issue.