The other day, I had the joy of discovering Scott Adams’s Dilbert Blog via the meeblog. If you’re looking for some daily source of inspiration and procrastination, I highly suggest you RSS it (or bookmark it, but that’s soo Web 1.0).

While most of his posts are random banter inspired from small daily events, he did post an interesting idea that is well beyond the norm of conventional thought, like the ones on this blog. Apparently it costs $25,000 to house an inmate for a year in prison. That’s well above the rent of my apartment for three people for the year, and I live in one of the most expensive parts of the US. Scott Adam’s idea is to start a home based business that allows the average Joe to house inmates and cash in on the $25,000 spent by the government. He calls it the Best Roommate Ever.

Yes, it’s a crazy idea. No, it will never happen. But the idea of having the inefficient government outsource to efficient civilian companies is an idea that’s been around for a while and it is a good idea… or is it?

Labels: crazy, service

“The best ideas are always next to the crazy ones” but that doesn’t mean the crazy ideas are good or feasible.

This idea comes from someone (Julie? Tiffany?) I met at a seedy bar in Mountain View called the Cocktail Lounge:

Car and train companies should work together to tune their products so that traffic noise will instead be music. This way the sound of mass mobilization will not be the cacophonous white noise as we know it but something more soothing and entertaining.

Where I think this will break down: What's more annoying than traffic noise? Listening to the same song over and over again! I once played Rocky Raccoon on repeat for three days in order to drive people out of my dorm room. It worked. What song would you pick anyway? Is there a song in this world that we can all be happy about? Elevator music? Ride of the Valkyries?

I think I would rather have a quieter car and pick my own music, but this does bring up an interesting point about designing for artifacts. If your product creates a undesirable or unavoidable artifact, why not make it something positive?

Labels: artifact design, car, crazy

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

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