My roommates brought home several dozen fortune cookies today, and while the tacky fortunes are momentarily enjoyable, the cookies were stale and tasteless. The solution? Dip them in chocolate! Unfortunately, my plans to change the Chinese dessert experience has already been productized and marketed to what seems like a limited success. Fortune cookies are probably one of those products that people who buy them (restaurants) don’t use them (in the sense of consumption), making any cost increase problematic. When was the last time you went to a Chinese restaurant for its fortune cookies? When was the last time you bought fortune cookies? I could imagine an up-scale restaurant offering it, but then they probably have a proper dessert menu instead of the Eastern equivalent of mint candy. So then what would be the most reasonable outlet for such a product? Trader Joe's.

Labels: food, redesign

Are our kids at risk of not knowing their youth?

It used to be that when you took a picture, it burned an image onto a film negative that was printed onto photo paper, which then you took home to enjoy with your family and friends before storing it in a photo album or shoe box. Now you take a picture with your digital camera, which then stores the image in a series of 1s and 0s that you can enjoy on your computer and share to the world. While going digital has much more benefits than film (especially cost-per-picture), it has one big drawback: it’s fragile.

Anyone who’s experienced a catastrophic hard disk failure knows that when digital media fails, it’s total. Some times, you might be able to save fragments of the data by taking it to an expensive data recovery service, but that depends on your luck. How often does this happen? Often enough that no hard disk company is willing to warranty their products for more than five years (and normally two). Sure you can protect yourself by setting up a RAID, but how many people know how to do that? (or even know what RAID is)

The other common option is to back up the data on CDs or DVDs, but most home-burnt media has a rated life span of three years. Further more, like any media, there is a chance that they become obsolete and players/readers extremely hard to find.

Photo prints, on the other hand, don’t require any extra equipment to enjoy, and while they slowly degrade over time, they never suddenly vanish (negatives are even more permanent). Also because of their nostalgic value, they’re really hard to dispose of, making sure that your child hood pictures are kept somewhere in a dark closet/attic. The first children of the digital age, on the other hand, may not know what they looked like as a child, because their parents ended up losing the bytes long time ago.

Sooner or later though, after enough of the world has suffered through priceless data losses, people will realize that there is a need for reliable long-term digital data storage. Online data storage has been around for a while, but I think it will catch on with the next jump in internet technology so that people can upload and download gigabytes of photos in minutes, not hours. In fact, I think online storage is the future of data storage, but that’s for another time.

Labels: digital, photography

Because most consumer electronics energy sources are either the outlet or the battery, we tend to forget that electricity can be harvested elsewhere. While these clocks are more like science demonstrations than actual products, they still tell time like any other clock.

Water Clock, sans gravity

This does not use the same principles demonstrated in Chain Reaction, and will not level a city block even if you want it to. Survival experts and extreme travelers spending months away from places that sell AA batteries may find this useful, but then sun light is more omnipresent then water.

(ThinkGeek)

Labels: energy, time

Walking around downtown Mountain View last night, streets littered with cigarette buts, I wondered if there was an elegant way of cleaning the streets. The simple thing to do would be to tax cigarettes even more and use that money to start a city cleaning service, another government bureaucracy that may or may not accomplish what it’s tasked to do. Here’s my idea:

1. Tax $.40 (2 cents per cigarette) more on every pack of cigarettes.
2. Start a collection program, so that for every cigarette butt a person brings in, he/she will get the 2 cents.

While the 2 cents per butt may not be enough money from all the club goers to pocket their butts, it could be a nice source of income for homeless people. Since not all cigarette butts will come back to the collection center either, the money earned from the difference could be used to support the collection program and other anti-smoking initiatives. Of course the implementation would have to be executed cleverly, not setting up any large departments but piggy backing on some existing infrastructure (recycling centers maybe?).

The one possible drawback of this plan is that it might give people the justification to litter, because it’s supporting the homeless. Those people need to realize that they’re the reason such a program exists in the first place. Nevertheless, this would be a much better and effective alternative to Prop 86, which would have inevitably started some illegal cigarette trafficking from neighboring states (wouldn’t you, if you could make close to $4 per pack of cigarettes?).

Labels: cigarette, tax

Match lighter

£2.95 is probably worth never having to start a conversation with “So… what do you do for a living?” after lighting someone’s cigarette outside a club or bar.

Product Page (via Cribcandy via Coolest Gadgets via Gizmodo)

Labels: redesign

I’ve always thought it would be nice to have a “Thank you” signal on your car so that you could show appreciation to those that let you into lanes or get out of your way on highways. Sure there is the commonly accepted raising your hand but very rarely do people actually see this. On the contrary, there are numerous ways of expressing discontent from the one finger salute to honking violently.

I thought this was a good idea until I saw the Drivemocion (pictured above). Not only will this make you a card carrying member of geekdom, the potential road rage caused by sarcastic use is too dangerous. The last thing an angry dreary-eyed commuter needs to see when he/she gets cut off is an LED smiley face looking back at him/her.

So instead, I propose a new form of showing appreciation with what you already have in your car. If some one does something nice to you on the roadways, show your appreciation by cycling through your turn lights: quickly turning both signals in succession. No one should mistake that for your intent to turn, and it’s really easy to do. Unfortunately, I don’t think me writing in this small blog is going to get any traction, but hey, least I won’t go patent the idea like the jack ass who claims to have invented the U-turn signal. Too bad she’s going to lose it as soon as anyone runs a rudimentary google search and contests her.

Labels: car

13 years ago, AT&T ran a series of commercials demonstrating the future and declaring that they are the company to bring people there. While I’m not entirely sure if AT&T was the company that brought any of this, a lot of what they predicted have come to reality:

Online Books - While showing the picture of the physical book was probably for theatrical effects (a text file would be rather boring), the move from paper to digital have been relatively slow because no one wants to read 150 pages on a computer screen. It’ll be interesting to see if the new E-ink readers will be the tipping point for this phenomenon.

Car Navigation - This is practically dead on (except for the screen being more 3D than it is / needs to be). What does AT&T have to do with this though?

Wireless data transfer - Sure you can send a “fax” from the beach with wireless internet, but you’re most likely sending an e-mail instead. Tablet PCs has been a popular topic but only time will tell if it actually has any market traction.

E-ZPass - Very spot on, but by 1993, people were working on this already.

Buying tickets online - Sure you can buy tickets online, but no one will ever use an ATM to do so.

Video Phone - This keeps coming back and back since the early 60s but has failed to get any acceptance. The technology is there, the infrastructure is there, the products are there; I think we can safely say people don’t want it. On a side note, when was the last time you used a pay phone?

Voice Activated Doors - Biometrics is becoming a hot topic now for the car industry but I think it’s years away before people can accept the technology as secure.

Digital Medical History - To be honest, I don’t know anything about this (does it exist now?). However, I think there will be an online database instead of the patient bringing in the data themselves (problem with losing the card or people being able to hack their doctor approved health history).

Web Conferencing - Yep. Spot on. I’ve attended meetings with bare feet.

Video on demand - Also spot on. But since when did on demand movies start from the middle when you select it? (Yeah, yeah, theatrical effect)

Online Classes - This also is happening now, but where is this student taking the class?

I think they missed one big factor when they planned this future: Home PC. At 1993, they probably didn’t think computers will become so omnipresent (and connected) that people would be taking online classes, buying concert tickets, and reading online books from home. Another item that was peculiarly missing: cell phones. I wonder if they kept it out for political reasons (was AT&T not in the business then?) or they didn’t think it would be much more than just a mobile telephony tool.

So, if you were to make this commercial today, what would you put in it?

PS Stephen Colbert's take on AT&T.

Labels: future

In a random conversation with a stranger the other day, the notion of a Good News News came up. Being completely worn down by suicide bombs, war on terror, steroids, and other malice of society, she wanted something that projected only the good things in the world.

A simple google search will return a number of broadcasts, websites, and blogs that focus on good news, but like it or not, they all have religious undertones (most of them Christian) which goes against the first law of journalism: impartiality (of course no news source is ever completely impartial).

Furthermore, without any universal value system in place, the definition of good is entirely personal. While advent of low pollution alternative fuel sources may seem like a good thing, there will be thousands of people in the oil industry losing their jobs (not to mention all the Petroleum Engineers, which was a popular major in mid 1900s). But at the same time, if we limit the news entries to those where 99.99% of the people can agree as good, it may just filter down to those feel-good stories on the 8 o’clock news, which are cheerful, but almost entirely insignificant.

Nevertheless, it would be nice to see some news sources focusing on good news without making me feel like I have to be a Christian to be happy. After all, the world isn’t filled with bomb exploding, drug dealing, children killing, dog kicking, corrupt people that appears on the news daily.

PS The Good Bites section of the Good News Network is pretty informative and cheerful.
PPS Apologies for the rough Photoshop work.

Labels: happy, service

The obvious follow up to Reputation Defender would be… Reputation Builder!

Looking to apply for a new job? Let us build your online reputation by making a slick myspace profile or LinkedIn account. We’ll even comment on other people’s profiles, respected blogs, and industry-related forums with witty intelligent responses and make sure they show up on google searches for you name.

Hunting the web for romance? Let us make sure google image searches (this is rather disturbing...) of your name returns the most attractive and desirable pictures (not necessarily of you).

Have propaganda a website or some obscure accomplishment you want people to see? Let us make sure they appear on the first 10 search results for your name! (Most likely impossible for me)

Ridiculous? I know. But completely implausible? Not really.

Labels: crazy, service

From the library of weird services, Reputation Defender! The protector of your online identity!

For $10~$16 a month, they’ll google your name (or your kid’s) and compile a nifty little report showing where you appear online. They may even just run a script that searches all sorts of sites and outputs a .pdf report.

If you find something that “you don’t like,” for a one time fee of $30, they’ll send a form letter “a team of specialists” to get that information removed.

I wonder if they’re making any progress against The Consumerist. I bet it’s a tough battle.

Now I’m sure I misrepresented them in this post somehow, so I wonder if they’ll come after me to uphold their reputation.

Labels: service

These are the days when I feel like I can start a company doing anything and succeed. Some amazing assertions from Backyard Artillery:

It's the only fully automatic machine gun that's legal in all 50 states!

MORE than just an amazing machine, this is a true work of art.

Labels: toy

Today’s post MLK day crazy idea comes from my friend Matt who one day randomly declared that if he ever started a company, he will push back every holiday by one week. My initial guess at a rationale was something along the lines of shifting three day weekends so that people can avoid the traffic and travel jams. My friend, however, then continued to explain how much cheaper your Christmas shopping could be if you took advantage of the post-Christmas sale to buy your gifts. While that is true, unless your entire family works at the same company, you’ll be the only one missing out on the festivities, and being logically cheap doesn’t mesh well with the holiday spirits.

Nevertheless, putting the whole shifting holidays aside, if you could get your immediate family to agree on giving gifts for New Years instead of Christmas, that’s probably enough money saved for a nice meal on New Years Eve. And as for the whole shifting three day weekends, companies should just give out vacation days instead.

Labels: crazy

Hi Netflix, thank you for taking my advice (although not quite what I was thinking).

Netflix announced today that they'll be adding a online movie download to their services. That sounds completely normal right? Now here is the weird part (or how it works):

Current subscribers will be able to watch streaming movies for the same number of hours as they pay in dollars for subscription fees. So users with the $5.99 plan will be able to watch movies online for 6 hours, $17.99 plan for 18 hours. They only have 1000 movies online right now but plans to roll out more.

This feels like a pure fishing expedition, an experimental rollout to see what kind of demand is out there. I'm guessing if this is popular, they'll come out with plans with extended online downloads and online only plans. I still think the internet is not quite ready for streaming movies yet, especially with the HD adoption rate right now.

One thing I'm pretty sure of: If Netflix does move fully into the online movie business, they'll destroy CinemaNow with their brand identity.

Labels: movie

Having flown in eight different flights over Christmas break, this idea naturally came to me as I waited in one too many lines to get to my gate. This is such a simple yet elegant solution to one of the many TSA evils, I’m surprised it doesn’t exist yet (or if it does, it doesn’t show up on Google). A plastic belt buckle could save so much time and embarrassment at the airport security line and it would fit in perfectly with other tacky products in SkyMall (or SkyMaul).

One could even start a brand of fashionable non-metal belts for travelers, but functional clothing are almost always considered dorky. In fact, practical clothing has failed to crack the fashion industry time and time again, with the last real great invention being the pockets (which still only seem to have entered the male market). Alright, the zipper maybe.

Labels: belt, redesign, travel

Need a good excuse to skip town for the weekend? Maybe want to hide your profession? A doctor’s note to skip class? Well, if you live in Japan, there are perfect companies for you.

While companies lie all the time (which is conveniently called marketing), Alibi Companies will lie for you so that you can keep some deep secrets from those around you. Most of them are conveniently located in the red light districts of major cities so that ladies of the night can pick up fake pay stubs and name cards to disguise their true profession. Other services include answering phone calls and saying you’re out of the office, forwarding mail, and forging government documents (just as long as you don’t use it at government offices). I’m amazed the last one isn’t illegal in Japan (or if it is, isn‘t enforced). They will even attend weddings and funerals as your boss or co-worker as long as you give them some time notice.

In the west, there apparently was an Alibi Agency in England, but the website now leads to some cyber squatting site with links to private detectives ironically.

In the end I’m not sure what’s worse: paying people to lie for you, or a society that drives people to hide their secrets by hiring these companies.

Sample Alibi Company (Japanese).

Labels: service

Labels: bookmark, redesign

This one courtesy of a negotiation professor at Stanford.

1. Pick a car you want, choose the features you want, write it all down, make copies, and get some envelopes.
2. Go to a dealership and tell the dealer that you want this exact car (hand over the sheet) and tell him/her to put their best offer in the envelop.
3. Inform him/her that you're going to collect envelopes from several dealers in town and take the lowest offer you get.
4. If they start saying bullshit like "but we have the best customer care center in town!" just ask them if they want to put in an offer or not.
5. Go to other dealerships, repeat 1-4.

After you collect several envelopes, you'll probably notice that most of the numbers inside the envelope are very close to each other. Pick the best deal (or if the numbers are negligibly close, the dealer you feel most comfortable with) and purchase the car (or don't, if it's still too expensive).

What did you do here? You prevented the dealers from playing the game the way they want to, and instituted your own (and fair) rules. Dealers love to talk you into believing that they offer the best deal in town or have the best service in the state. You've probably heard things like "We have the best/biggest/most..." or "We sell the most...".

I've actually never tried this (or ever looked into buying a new car) but the professor told me he's had several people use it to their success. If you try it, tell me how it goes.

Just don't do the same with drug dealers.

Labels: car, how to

You ever wonder what would happen if you could record everything you heard and said in your life? Put it into one large text file so you could search through and remember how you rejected on your first date?

So how much do you say and hear in your life? Okay, so this is the shadiest number in the equation, but how many words do you think you hear and say in a day? Not a foggiest idea? Me too.

So, here is a bench mark. Shakespear's Hamlet is about 27,000 words, and it's about 3 hours long. Now that includes scene directions and character headers, so you can take it down a notch to, say 24,000 words. In other words, an hour of full blown conversation is about 8000 words, or 133 words a minute.

Now there is no way you spend 16 hours of your waking time engaging in, or listening to full blown conversation. Not even 8 hours. But let's slightly over estimate and say you hear 3000 words an hour on average and 3000x16 = 48,000 words a day.

48,000 words a day, 17,520,000 words in a year, 1,401,600,000 words in your 80 year life time.

A word is about 4 letters long on average, and you need a space to separate the words, so assume you need 5 characters per word. So in your life time, everything you say and hear can be stored in 7,008,000,000 characters.

A character is a byte, so you're looking at 7 Gb for everything you say and hear in your lifetime. And that's not taking into account any compression you apply on it, which could drop it easily down to less than a Gb.

So it quite doesn't fit into any of the USB memory sticks shown above, but there are ones out there larger than 8 Gb. Really, your life fits into a collection of plastic, silicon, and copper the size of a quarter.

So what does this mean? I don't know. But really makes you wonder sometimes.

Labels: random calculations

This idea comes from a random Skpecast conversation from last night...

New model for movie consumption: Just like Netflix, you can keep x number of movies in your possession at any given time, you have to return the movies in order to get more, but all of this is done online.

Internet technology isn't quite there to stream HD content to your TVs and computers, but you could easily have a set top box or a computer that downloads the content in the background or overnight. Once downloaded, you watch the movie, then "send it back" (delete it), at which point the device will download another movie from your queue. Very similar to Netflix, but minus the hassle of having to ship it.

I think this would work great with some existing service such as Netflix, TiVo, or Xbox live. The logistics might be a nightmare though, as MPAA, like RIAA, is extremely paranoid of piracy and DRM will be slapped on everywhere. However, as a customer, the subscription model might be easier to swallow with DRM than having to buy a digital movie (or music) with all sorts of restrictions on it.

Labels: movie

Labels: redesign, toaster

Welcome to Za, the idea blog. This blog is all about ideas, new and old, concept and product, good and bad. If you have anything interesting you want to put up, or something cool you found, send me an e-mail. I’ll probably be starving for material once my first batch is up anyway.
Cheers.