$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?

$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 #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.

$Million idea #1

Twisket: 2 in 1 Laundry Hamper

File this one under "Can't believe this hasn't been done yet". I always had the problem in college (and anytime I have been responsible for my own laundry. Thanks Mom!) of only having one dirty clothes hamper. Why is that such a problem? Well one hamper means that I have to either carry all my clothes down 6 flights of stairs to the laundry room or leave clothes in piles all over my room. While I agree that the clothes piles are part of the aura of Laundry Day, it is probably not a good solution. Neither is buying multiple hampers or baskets -- who wants to spend the extra money and take up the extra space in your already tiny room or closet?

Enter the Twisket (name was conjured up during drinks, don't hold it against me) which is just a marketing-appealing way of saying twin baskets. The idea is actually quite simple:




Normally you would have a giant basket of clothes like the one on the left here. Nothing special about this hamper really, its full of clothes and takes up the normal amount of space in your closet or room. I know, looks pretty cool already, doesn't it? Just wait though, it gets better...





The problem with this hamper/basket is that when you need to separate your whites and darks, it is worthless. If only you could break the hamper in half to use the top and bottom as 2 baskets (one for whites, one for darks). Hmm, so kinda like this:

Why YES! Exactly like that! Awesome, so now you can take your whites to the laundry room and leave your darks in a basket in your room without taking up anymore floorspace than you had prior. Hooray! However, there is one more problem. The top basket in the drawing, the clothes would drop right through it when you take it off the second one. That's not a very good basket if it doesn't even hold anything...

Innovation to the rescue again! The top basket has an extra layer on its walls that folds down and locks in place to provide a floor for the basket and allows you to carry stuff in it. When you put it back on top of the bottom basket, just fold the flooring back up and it locks into the side walls again.

There you have it, complete with horrible and crude looking images, the first $1,000,000 idea I am sharing with the blogosphere. I have been holding onto this little gem since college and never really got around to finding money for it or even building a prototype.

Even though I'm freely giving it away, if you take this idea please let me know! I'd like to keep track of how much money I've given away with this blog.