Electric racing

Millions (billions?) of dollars every year go into researching better and faster gas engines for race cars. Quick way to incentivize car companies to work on a problem that would really help global warming: ban gasoline in racing. Toyota, Honda, Ford and Mercedes would spend all their money researching better electric engines, which would become a basis for improvement on electric cars.

warm bed: great way to make electric cars fast, cool, and efficient

warm soda: apparently the noise of gas cars is important to racing fans, a plan like this would require an autocratic government capable of doing crazy things

Smarter trash can

I often see really sleek looking brushed steel trash cans. They look cool, and have ridiculous hydraulic systems that close the top softly and hermetically seal in all the badness. But, you can't tell how much trash is in them, so if you're forgetful, you could forget to empty them before you take out the trash for pick up. Solution: a scale at the bottom that weighs your trash. It would alert you when it was "full" with a little red LED on the front or something suitably sleek. This is really less cool than what you could do if it recorded how much trash you put in it over time. You could track exactly how much you're throwing out. Knowing is half the battle and for one, I have very little idea of how much trash I throw away.

nice: may help people throw away less stuff, would help forgetful people like me

meh: probably pretty expensive comparative to benefit

Open source engine

Cars - especially electric cars - have computers in them. Surely the computers have software that are used for managing the way the engine runs. I'm sure they've worked hard on them, but I'm also pretty sure that if you made them open source someone would improve upon them.

cool: more efficient cars are better for everyone, it would be fun to see computer engineers and mechanical engineers battle

kewl: open source software isn't always very stable, and I'm sure I don't want my car computer crashing

Stoplight App

So everyone I know uses their smartphone while driving. When stopped at a stoplight, they text, surf the internet, etc. Generally, they don't know when the light changes. There should be an app for that. The display would show you the color of the light you're sitting at in the corner of your tiny screen, and perhaps buzz when it changes.

barcelona: helpful, common, worth about a dollar

real madrid: i have no idea if traffic light data is public, and if so, who and how you control it

A blog of half baked ideas

I'd like to share some of my half baked ideas, and have some place where I can record them as they come (and go.)