(Not So) Used Ideas

This one’s a little “out there” but fun. It’s been sitting around in a notebook for a while, so I can’t really tell you when I came up with it. The idea is this:

You’ve been sitting for hours watching a baseball game. It’s been a good game, but it’s been tied for a few innings and we’ve gone into extra innings. It’s starting to get cold, they’ve probably stopped selling bear, and you’ve had all the peanuts you can shuck. So what now?

Well, the idea is that when a game goes into extra innings… perhaps just when it’s been a few innings (say they just finished the 10th), it’s now times to force something to happen. Even better, it’s time to get those cold, dedicated fans into the action.

So if a game goes into the 11th inning, and for each inning thereafter, each team has to pick one fan from the stands to come into the game for one of the professionals. This should shake things up, but the game still might go on for a while. Perhaps it’ll end up with all fans on the field?

I guess it might be a disadvantage to the visiting team to have to use one of the fans, even if they try to screen them, as they might be fans for the home team and help throw the game. So perhaps the vaunted “home field advantage” should come at a price. If you can’t win the game using that advantage by the 10th inning, you then get the “home field disadvantage”, this would be where only the home team has to replace a professional with a fan.

Of course that would give the visiting team an advantage, but you’re a hometown fan, if you really believe in your team, you know they can win no matter who they have on the field.

In global strategy, we were doing a business case on an Australian wine company. As I was sitting there trying not to yawn (I’m not a wine drinker), I came up with the thought “why doesn’t anyone sell Jug brand wine?” It wouldn’t have to be in an actual jug, though one of those oversized wine bottles would work. But the idea is that it’s a tongue-in-cheek brand. It would just have a plain white label with “Jug” written in a simple, black font.

I can just see the website now: drinkjug.com

I got a Kindle for Christmas and I’ve ready quite a few books on it since. I also have the Kindle app for my iPhone and it’s handy that they allow me to sync my place between the two, so I can read on my iPhone when it’s dark and on my Kindle most of the time.

But this feature has it’s limitations. It all comes down to the concept of “Sync to the Furthest Page Read.” In 98% of the cases, this has worked exactly as I would have hoped. The furthest page I’ve read to is the last page I read to, but it hasn’t worked in all cases.

I was reading a book where I was following the hyperlinked footnote notations to the endnotes at the end of the book. Well, even when I followed the link in the endnote back to the page where I was reading, the next time my devices tried to sync, the “furthest” page was that page at the end with the endnote. So I was unable to pick up on my iPhone where I left off on my Kindle.

I’ve emailed them that they should explore this concept, but what should someone do? Have we really figured out the whole ebook referencing abilities? There’s no more page numbers, but rather indications of how far in terms of percentages you are through the book. Or should I say the file. There’s a lot of stuff tacked on to the ends of some ebooks and they are lumped into that percentage. I finished all of the real material in one book at was just at about 78% completed.

There should also be some way to indicate in the Kindle (or any ebook) when you’ve “finished” it. Kindle doesn’t have any way of knowing what books have been read or which have not. It goes along with other sorting problems that leaves you will a long list of books that gives you little information to go on…

I was taking a class at Stanford’s d.school last week and the creative project we were working on had to do with airport security. We spent some time breaking down the entire process and discussing what were some of the feelings we might have of each. One of the things that struck me, is that most people are probably upset but the arbitrary nature of it all. We’d be happy to go through a little hardship if we felt it made a difference. But you know that it’s all just arbitrary. For every kid shaken down for a bottle of water they tried to take through, we can tell stories of someone who forgot they had the water in their bag and made it through.

What can one expect? One or two individuals, no matter how much training, are at the mercy of time, patience, etc.

Which made me think of all the press about the “wisdom of the crowds” and wondered if that might not fit here. How about the plane departure area for each flight be a large oval, with all of the passengers who’ve gone through the “screening” sitting around the edge, watching each new person come in. They all closely scrutinize each new person. The crowd gets to decide whether someone is allowed through (and onto the plane). The crowd decides whether someone has to take off their shoes, open their bags, etc.

That crowd should be better suited and capable of figuring out who needs to be given a closer look, no?

How about a website that lays an interface over the avalanche of books that allows people to create playlists of books and articles for people looking for exposure to a particular topic.

While that alone would be useful (to me), how about taking it a step further. Why not expose Pandora-like functionality where I enter a book I read/liked/was told to read and it would show me similar books. This list might be used for additional readings or perhaps readings which would be more appropriate.

How would that work? Well, say you’ve just read a Malcom Gladwell book and you want to read more on the subject, it might recommend you read Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer whom Gladwell drew from.

Or vice versa, suppose someone recommends you read about motivation and drive – they just read Drive by Daniel H. Pink, but it seems a little too difficult for reading on the beach (or bus), wouldn’t it be nice to know that reading Linchpin by Seth Godin might give you some of the same takeaways?

Or I guess in my case, when I have a stack of unread books on my nightstand and a megabyte (what’s the equivalent new term?) of ebooks on my Kindle, how do I know which to read next? I might not want to read two books that are very similar back to back, or I might want to read something lighter after plowing through a scientific treatise.

Who’s going to build it?