The Real Cost of Cars

I was curious what cars actually cost to drive and while you can find this information around the web, it was never in one place. So I made a little google doc, available here, that tries to put things in context. What it looks like is that hybrids are actually a lot better than I thought. (Check out the Honda Civic Sedan v. Hybrid) What's most interesting to me is the economic benefit of increasing MPG's on the low end of the spectrum. It's probably most efficient to get everyone off of 15 MPG vehicles and into 30 MPG cars, rather than try to get the people in 30 MPG cars into 45 MPG hybrids. I knew that, but it was interesting to see the financial aspect of it play out. Realistically even electric cars are unlikely to be cheaper over the long term than a compact car, unless we can figure out a way to get the purchase price under $20,000 - assuming that we don't count the effects of global warming as a direct cost.

While lacking a lot of information (cost of repairs, insurance, tires, god knows what else) I think the government could mandate that this type of data be included on the window stickers of vehicles. If it did include average, that is to say - company wide, cost to maintain a vehicle, it might even increase the propensity to build better, less costly to fix cars.

Pandora's Art Box

There are a quantity of websites that help people discover music: The Hype Machine, Grooveshark, 61, etc. However, what sets music discovery apart from other art is that there are sites that identify what you like, or what defines a particular thing you are attracted to - and actively recommend new music - the obvious example being Pandora. There is nothing like that for visual art (paintings, drawings, etc. - I know about Net Flicks.)

I'm not so sure it would be hard to do - and considering that the internet has opened up the market place for small scale artists to sell their works, there is definitely an incentive to foster the connection between buyer and seller. I smell an opportunity.

Snow in VT: People get to explore visual art in the way they now explore music - with a helping hand, more small artists get found, could create a "buzz" around artists that would help them become financially successful before they die or lop off their ear

Snow in DC: Would take a lot of coding to get the visual content identification software working enough to recommend reasonably well, would have to deal with the face that music is more popular than visual art - generally speaking

Billion Dollar Idea?

All credit card purchases are in effect geo-tagged and dated. Furthermore, banks and credit card companies control a lot of information about their clients (age, credit report, purchasing tendencies, education level, current location, etc). It only makes sense that if given a reasonable incentive, and specific controls, credit card companies would be able to get their customers to make that information available. AmEx (for example) could promise that users would never be aggregated in a group of less than 50 clients and would remain anonymous. Or the credit card company could promise double points to anyone willing to make their purchase history available to be aggregated and sold to advertising firms. I would assume that specific information regarding the purchasing trends of groups of people would be quite valuable to advertisers. If this isn't happening already, I'm assuming that there is a structural or cultural aspect that is preventing it from happening. Nonetheless, it seems like it would be worth an extraordinary amount of money if done correctly.

Sweet: Possibly creating a massive industry that would be worth a pretty penny.

Diabetes: Privacy concerns would run rampant.

Bootlace hooks

I went hiking today, and had an idea. It would be wonderful to be able to keep your pants from riding up on your boot, and letting snow in. Some snow boots have little hooks that you can attach to your laces. However if you make a removable little clasp that you attach to your cuff, with a laces hook on it, you could almost do away with gators! They'd be cheap to make and anyone who liked hiking would want a pair.

extra pair of socks: less stuff getting into your boots, no need to carry gators (I do love gators though.), cheap, lightweight

rock in y'ur shoe: most serious hikers already have gators, so you'd have to convince them this is better.

True Volume

I have no idea how loud my headphones are. Are they too loud? Considering that you don't get a second chance at ears if you mess them up, I'd like to know. The app could have a way to select the headphones you use, and it would tell you the decibel range you were working with. That way, when you're on a plane (or somewhere else it's loud), you don't just crank your headphones up and wonder why your ears are ringing when you land (like I do).

Sennheiser HD 650: less deafness (I think that's literally the only benefit)

Nike Vapor: Just by conceiving of this idea - I aged considerably, teens would think limiting their right to destroy their eardrums "totally sucks."

NYTimes Visualization: Campaign Finance

After the recent Supreme Court decision I got to thinking - corporations have an undue influence on our political system exacerbating the overwhelming number of the problems currently facing our stagnant Congress. But that's my opinion. So, to get a better handle on everyone's aggregate opinion, I'd like to see the following visualization.

Indicate, preferably by state or nation, the severity campaign finance regulation on a common scale. On the same map show the average approval rating for the state or national government over the last 20 years. I know that this is a very base comparison, and prone to false causal relationships - but it seems like if I am right - if you have less corporate influence on governments - you would have better overall approval ratings. Voters should be able to get what they want faster and with more frequency in a system they more completely control.

Obama's approval rating in DC: would help display a more complete view of what people want, would be (as nytimes hasn't failed yet) fun to play with and look at, might give some historical and international perspective on the recent SCOTUS decision

Obama's approval rating in Wyoming: would be impossible to claim any sort of causality, data could be hard to come across and difficult to manipulate (weight by population? take into account events like 9-11? etc.)