BUISNESS IDEA: offer a public transport infomertial beacon for bluetooth

Hi,
  as public transport (bus, train, underground, taxi, etc) is a rather booring affair there is a great opportunity to offer informertials and advertising embedded in public service announcements. For example a customer could tune / connect to a broadcast beacon on a bus. Using messages or a simple client the beacon on the bus may broadcast the current location, the next stop and its estimated arrival time. Also it may offer some up-to-date weather forecast, traffic news likely encountered, connecting services and their estimated departure time.

  Ontop of the information a provider could offer advertising space for local businesses -- possibly tied into the location information. For example the nearest pub, the nearest fast food restaurant and any special offers available. Perhaps the location of the farmers market and when it is held next. What films are in the local cinema and the even offer pre-booking through the service.

  As the familiarity of the system grows there could be room for offering advertising space on the go. Someone offering a second hand utility nearby may be interested to sell the item in some form of small ads that can be browsed. Placing an ad could be as simple as sending a SMS message. Or anyone offering tutoring for schooling or any other activity may offer services to passengers.

IDEA: Recycling and Garbage management (3)

Hi,
  another quick stab on an almost infinite and relevant modern subject. This post is a sequel, reaffirming the truths that one man's garbage is another man's treasure.  The art of recycling is to sort and to specialising. Previously, we dipped into separation, treatment and logistic.

  Not unlike any other sales channel, recycling requires a holistic view of the 'customer' starting from the generating point of the garbage (i.e. kitchen) to the endpoint or collector. When looking into recycling in the kitchen a few small tricks and gadgets could go a long way. Depending on the type of disposables there different procedures for handling. Typically there is a cleaning procedure, followed by a compacting step and then followed by the sorted storage.

 The cleaning procedure will be subject to a future visit to this subject. This post is considering the options for the sorted storage. Typically, there are at least 5 containers required for glass (separated by colour ?), paper, compostables, recyclables plastics and metal. Other containters may be required for batteries and other WEEE electronics ( recyclable ? ), organic non compostables ( meat products ? ) and others.

  Convenience is the recycling friend above all else. Hence, when designing a kitchen great care should be taken to design the "exit stragtegy" and avoid bins dotted in some random location. Some work towards this has been done already. Although one must consider that any chute or tunnel does collect dirt and should be open to clean from within the house. Also, with an non compacted recycling a large amount of space is allocated for very little value. Additionally, a collection strategy is a great deal more efficient when the volume to weight ration of the material is low.

  A good design is therefore a compactor with liquid trainage and then a foward the compacted material to the collection container. Compacting glass is a straight forward crushing mechanism which also allows discarding of caps and paper perhaps separate as it does not crack the same way. Giving the option to prepare two grade of glas material could increase the purity of the collected material and thus the value. If an electrical crusher is involved an optional colour detection may be used to separate the glas colour conveniently. Metal itself can be separated and compacted based on the magnetic properties. As different metal elements have specific melting points a separation may not be necessary at the collection site.  Paper and paper shredder are fairly commonly used. Given the typical shape of paper that can be recycled it should be possible to create pretty clean separation.

  Compostables and plastic require due care by the person recycling the material. Compostables such as garden waste, peelings and others require skillful balance with fillables to prepare a good organic waste. A quality grating of the compost by the receiver -- similar to the grating of any agricultural produce -- is pretty much mandatory to create reusable base material. For plastic it was previously mentioned that heating and melting can allow compaction of plastic. With careful selection of the disposable plastic a good grade of melted material can be achived. However, a mistake on the selection could ruin the whole batch.

IDEA: Gagdet proximity alert for the distracted wearer

Hi,
  forgetting/leaving behind your phone or other worthwhile items is very undesirable and can lead to all sorts of problems (such as someone breaking into your car for it). Hence the idea for the invisible teather. Many devices are bluetooth enabled or battery powered and could be otherwise tagged with an active sensor of some kind.

  A simple register and track device in your pocket or attached to the clothes or bags could keep polling the surroundings to identify if a specific gadget is responding. If it is, the device goes dormant again. If not, the device would alert the wearer that a specific gadget does not respond. The wearer can then confirm that the gadget is still in his/her possession or backtrack to check where the device was last.

  Another use would be to connect a gadget with a theft alert where the gadget starts making a noise once it detects the absence of the polling device. Hence will draw attention to itself. Finally, to find the mobile phone when it slipped into the couch cushions again a 'find-me' alert could be requested to track down (i.e. tuck the theather) the device.

Update 01/02/2010: Yes! Someone has already worked on this and apparently apparently another product has claims to be the first product based on bluetooth. Now, what would it take to extend this device to your bag, purse or wallet ?

IDEA: Gagdet(s) to combine mobile phone and computer

Hi,
  our most frequently used devices such as the mobile phone, computers, music player and car are strangely selfish devices. Even though there are protocols and properties they can achieve some synergy there is no pattern of this showing on the horizon. Even though phone and car or computer and car allow some sort of relationship where the car works as hands free kit there is no workings the other way round. For example trip notes and statistics for speed and mileage do not make it back to the phone or computer.

  At the work desk it could be quite useful if the computer would transmit a preview of everything currently in the clipboard to the mobile phone. That way one would not clutter the screen with extra information but it may come in useful to know what was last in the clipboard. The phone would also interact with the land line phone to use the preferred device for all calls.

  Another useful example would be if the music player could forward the audio to the mobile phone so that one can combine the budget music player and the standard phone. It appears that some manufacturer (such as Nokia) does indeed provide such a function when connecting computer and phone.  

  Really desirable would be a combination of computers. Sitting here at my desk and writing on one computer I have another computer connected via VPN for an intranet. I cannot multiplex my favorite keyboard to one or the other as appropriate. What would be simpler than to extend the bluetooth connection of one computer to proxy the keyboard output on demand.  Also, the computer is playing music from a streaming site. But without actually plugging in my stereo via the headphone output I cannot stream my output to the nearest audio visual system.  As one of the systems is an Apple and the other one a Microsoft based system I will push my luck in asking for the screens to be overlapping. Although each system allows multi monitor configuration.

  What is a required is a suitable capability broadcast functionality of all mobile and fixed devices that can collaborate in a grid of computer. Thereby a user can elect to have profiles in place to optimally use the best output and input devices for any kind of task ongoing.

IDEA: Recycling and Garbage management (2)

Hi,
  as outlined in my previous post on the subject, practical recycling is about generating value out of garbage. It all starts with sorting the recyclable items.  One of the first problems for sorting is the space it takes to keep the different stacks/buckets/tubs or bags for the individual items. The next problem is the collection of the already separated items.

 Here the management becomes logistical. In order to effectively recycle the items have to be collected or submittted in their respective most valuable bundeling - typically separated by base material. There are several options available to do so. The common option is the drop off point at the local collection site. However, there is usually no management and quality control and therefore the separation is not as good as it can be. Thus reducing the value of the recylables. For high value items, such as valuable metals (gold, platinum, silver..) the process of recycling becomes a sale and thus the separation is of excellent quality.

 The other option is a collection, such as the regular green bin collection or other recyclables. The timing and efficiency is such that there is no time to perform quality control. This is due to the indiscriminate nature of the recycling collections. Another aspect is the volume of individual groups of items per household. Together with the storage limitations of house holds it becomes unfeasible and unreliable for perfect separation. Hence a frequent collection is required.

  This provides a good opportunity for small business and local groups. For example the frequently milk delivery could be used to collect empty plastic bottles. As the delivery is already specialist to milk and deliverable products it may not be a stretch to think of a reverse collection of the empty bottles. Weight and volume should not be an issue. Quality of separation can be expected as high. There are similar options available, such as home deliveries. Some provider do collect empty delivery bags on return for recycling.

  Where is the business case here ? There is intrinsic value in sorted garbage (typicall £0~100 when measured in tons). Given that the garbage collection of these items are not cheap either there may be a business case if the local government can manage more granular collection mechanism.

IDEA: Encode payment information on bills computer readable

Hi,
   cheques for the bank account have machine readable numbers for a long time. That is largely for the automatic processing of the cheques and speedy (ahem) transaction.

    A simple standard code could also benefit any paper and  non paper based invoice, bill or other credit notification. I proposed that each paper or electronic bill has to include a area similar to the product bar code stating the date, unique number, summary description, creditor, due date as well as the amount. Electronic bill could include an embedded XML code that presents the same information.

  Using a suitable standard programs to decode this information are therefore possible to manage the "paper trail" for households and corporation much easier. Standard decodding libraries make it cost effective to include the extra functionality into all sorts of products.

IDEA: Recycling and Garbage management (1)

Hi,
  there is two things certain in life: death and taxes. Actually, I think garbage makes it a threesome. There is always garbage. Typically, garbage is everything that anyone wants to dispose off. Most commonly this is understood to be waste products, such as somewhat revolting material like sewage and kitchen waste. But actually, the classification is rather grey as one man's garbage is another man's treasure. Ebay being a great example of individuals disposing of items that are of less value to them than to the buyer - just lookup horse manure.

  With this thought going to a meaningful conclusion for recycling purposes, recycling starts with the sorting of waste products or disposable items into value classes. For household waste the most important step is to get a clean separation of the "goods". This is a vital step and various incentive schemes should be used to encourage this.  A major incentive would be offering a full cycle system for certain garbage materials.

  First looking at an example for low hanging fruits -- specifically yoghurt container but also water bottles that are largely labelled as to their composition as PET or similar material. Gently heating of bottles to around 80-90 degrees causes most plastic to revert to their original form. Some heat may be generated from excess or end of live material too contaminated for reuse.  Any foreign body will lead to burning or discolouration and marks the material easier to grade for reuse. Because of the relative small amount of material the heat energy required is less than some bakeries would use. For example a house hold may engage a service provider that will reduce its selected plastic to another base material according to the materials requirements.

  As with film development at a photo development plan -- albeit less frequent today -- a person would submit the waste material to the provider that returns the same material to the person in a uniform reformed state. Alternatively, a household or community could invest in a reformatting system themselves to reform the waste. If the material was cleaned and separated correctly the reform process will likely produce good grade new raw material. Such reformed raw material should be easier to classify and thereby have increased the value.

  This principle in conjunction with incentive schemes as well as a general shift in garbage mangement mentality leads to better use of the natural resources. The idea its to put the incentive for clean separation back onto the household and with that to bring forward an incentive for manufacturing to product easy to separate materials. And thus providing the basic method to connect the end of the life cycle of a product with the beginning of the same or another.