Thereby I came up with the idea for the box bladder. This would we a product jointly developed by the powerful Cardboard Box Cartel and the
Huffers & Puffers Union. Each box would have an uninflected air-bag like bladder inside when sent to Amazon or Cactus.com. There, items are placed in the box and after being taped, the person or robot packing the box hooks up an air hose to the valve recessed on the box side and fill up the bladder, snugly wrapping the contents in the box. The consumer, on the far end of the supply chain, could simply release the air valve (like a bike tire, inner tube or sex doll) and the bladder would deflate.

Okay, get cracking!

I was trying to take a good photo of my baby girl as she sat in my lap today. I was using my iPhone and everyone knows how hard that can be to take a good shot with. An earlier piece pointed out how eventually, which the ever cheaper price of displays, that they’d have displays on both sides of the phone and in this instance, I would have been able to see what I had in the viewfinder. But I couldn’t.

The photo didn’t come out all that great, but as I emailed it to my wife back at home, I thought for a moment that not only did the photo show little of my daughter and I, but it didn’t show much of what was around us. So my wife had no way of knowing where we were.

So I almost took a picture of what we had been looking towards at the time of the photo, which happened to be Treasure Island here on San Francisco Bay. But when I stopped myself from doing that, I realized that with the decreasing price of camera lenses, why doesn’t the phone just do it by itself?

The new iPhones have cameras on both sides, so that should be trivial, right? Just a software thing. But what about other cameras? SLRs? Doesn’t have to be the same high-end lense/photo, but why not just add a bunch of smartphone cameras to all sides of the camera? That way you could get context for your photos. The camera could somehow store them in a way that software on my computer could connect the two. Just as they have GPS coordinates embedded in photos, why not photos of what was on either side or behind me?

Never know what you’ll see as things move closer to free.

Perhaps there’s only so many people this would appeal to, but as someone who’s never played an anythingVille game, I know I’ll enjoy the updates of my friends showing up on the Wall (Mr. Gorbachev tear down this Facebook Wall!)

Short of going online and ordering a physical gift to be shipped in a physical truck by a physical person to their door, how about some way to solidify the virtual?

How about a physical entity you sit on your desk at home. Maybe a cute, colorful plastic “flower” arrangement that I can connect to my computer and select for it to bloom with daisies. Every morning the flowers would open, at night they’d close up to sleep.

So that’s still just me and my expensive flowers that never need to be refreshed or rebought. What about the virtual shenanigans? Well, have a friend send a tweet, click on a link, post their feelings on Facebook, whatever and voila, they could change those daisies to roses (to show their love).

Little plastic petals extending and retracting to show you a physical manifestation of their remote and virtual feelings.

Possible names:
- Pokesies
- iBouquet
- ForgetMeNots

Possible other products:
- A smiley face orb with changing facial expressions
- a little flag pole where different flags get raised
- a lamp where friends can adjust the brightness and color

You have an iPhone, dowload the app, put the phone in your hands, then clap. That’s simple. If you’re American Idol, create your event in the app, allow your audience sitting at home download the app, sign-in to the event, then wait for the clap. Measure claps from all over the world. Really know when something is popular.

Possible app names:
TheClap
PopClap
ClapTrap
Applausible

So what’s next? How about drops in the cost of the touchscreens themselves? The nintendo DS has had more than one touchscreen.. They keep being able to make bigger/cheape screens.. So why not two? If you need to use two apps (or same app) at the same time, just turn to the back of the phone and power up the 2nd screen. Then just switch between them. Open that safari link to the other screen with the hours for your favorite restaurant and then pop up the google map directions on the other.

It’ll happen…

But should one have to pay this sales tax?

The thinking for has always been that the state is losing revenue that it needs to pay for services, etc. Which I understand. But the thought I had today was how much I avoid shopping at stores like Babys R Us because I drive all that way, burning fossil fuels, adding greenhouse gases into the air, using up city streets, state highways and interstates all to find a store which doesn’t have what I am looking for. So if I don’t make that journey, aren’t I saving the various forms of government hard and soft costs to deal with that added strain I place on the infrastructure and environment?

But what about the “cardboard commerce” and all of its overhead? Well, cardboard is supposedly one of the most recycled and re-used materials, so perhaps it’s not as much of a cost as the plastic bags that many of these stores add to the world. What about the transportation infrastructure? Well, properly used, I would imagine that a UPS truck delivering all of these packages is like commuters using a train or bus – better than individual cars. Plus, as with most transportation fleets these days like taxis, buses, etc. they are more likely to use non-gasoline alternatives.

So perhaps the savings to the infrastructure and environment mean that I am decreasing my burden on the governments around me and thus perhaps I don’t need to pay as much of the taxes for those goods I am getting in a slightly better, more efficient way.

I don’t know the numbers. Your thoughts?

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.

I can just see the website now: drinkjug.com

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…