Top Pop

The top 40 in the US is altogether too accessible to the rest of the world. But the rest of the world's top 40 is nearly impossible to find. You have to know where to look, and everything is often tossed in together in an ridiculous "World Music" mashup. So - there should be a website that tracks the world's most popular songs as defined by country or region. I literally have no idea what the top forty looks like in France or Germany, let alone Ghana, Jamaica, or Iran. I would bet everyone with a radio in any country would be able to tell you at least one top 40 artist from the US. We're missing out.

What is out there? A fantastic rap by 9ice: Street Credibility - 9ice


highlife: tuning into the rest of the world's culture, a HUGE amount of great music, a better time at concerts when abroad

the highlife: trying to organize so the songs can be listened to immediately, only gives you current music

Guided Guider

So I like to travel, visit, and generally explore. However, reinventing the wheel everywhere you go gets old, and guide books are okay internationally, but not that useful domestically. Moreover, I want to go to my friends favorite dive bars, coffee shops, breakfast places, park benches, and so on. Rarely do they have the time or energy to remember all the places they would recommend. So here is the rub (idea): Create a map application that allows you to bookmark (either from the phone or at home) the exact location of places you love. For example, I would send people in DC to breakfast at Jimmy T's. But, I can't remember exactly where it is, and don't really like going through the direction giving. So I put up a little marker on Jimmy T's that says, great breakfast at a diner diner, not one of the many swanky, not that much fun, kinda too expensive places littered throughout the white parts of DC. And I put up a marker at Circle Current in VT (my favorite swimming hole in the world), and one at my favorite coffee shop, and one on top of Mt. Abe (one of my favorite hikes), etc. My friends all over the country do the same to our shared map, which is private to our group, and we get to see the places that our friends love the most without bothering them for directions. There are endless improvements and modifications that follow (color coded by person, type of place, seasonal recommendations etc). I know google maps can be shared, but the interface is poor and it isn't fun to use. Anyway - that's the idea.

top of the muffin: sharing within your group with people you respect means better recommendations, cuts down on emails saying "what's a good thing to do in...", would make for incredible road trips

bottom of the muffin: The wall of text above, the difficulty of getting friends to participate in something as time consuming and incremental as this

My Name

It's my name in lights. FINALLY.

Whimsical Thermometer

I could get behind a fun looking thermometer that had a clothing based gauge. Seems like a lake house thing.

For winter - At 40 degrees it would have a jacket, at 30, degrees a pair of gloves, at 20, mittens and a hat, at 10, a down jacket and a scarf, at 0, fuzzy looking boots. For summer - at 70 degrees, a pair of shorts, at 80, a t-shirt, at 90, sandals and bathing suit, at 100, a towel.

finding twenty bucks: you'd always know what to wear, fun, very vacationy

telling a story in which you find twenty bucks: I don't love the idea of selling crap just cause someone would buy it

NYTimes Visualization: Cost of Illegality

I would love the New York Times to put together a visualization that showed how much it cost to prosecute and punish different crimes in the judicial and penitentiary system. It could be divided a bunch of different ways: per capita by criminal, cost per taxpayer, etc. For example, I'm willing to pay a lot to keep rape and murder illegal. But how much does it cost to execute someone? Is it worth it? Do police actually make money issuing speeding tickets?

I think this might make it easier to think about reform of the criminal justice system, which, in my opinion, would help a great number of people.

pros: information helps people be rational about things that they aren't normally rational about, and could help cause change

cons (get it... cons, yeah... okay): SO much work involved, and probably pretty contentious information

Shower Saver

Every morning I spend a couple minutes before and after getting into the shower trying to get the temperature right. There should be either a fixture you could put onto and existing shower knob that you could "set" to your preferred temperature, or something built into a new fixture that included that feature.

hot: perfect temperature every time

tepid: a lot of work for something so trivial

Dapper App

This idea was originally for color blind people, but would probably be good for anyone. You take a picture with your smartphone of the shirt/pants/whatever you want to wear. The phone identifies the color (or dominant color) and tells you what it is. Then it can either show you (on the screen) or identify (through more pictures) appropriate matching colors. You make this style conscientious, and have various settings (male/female, season, style by celebrity, formal/informal, city... etc.) that would help make you a better dresser.

neat: helps everyone look better, might be popular enough to get into a magazine and sell a billion copies to tweens

OCD: might have trouble with stripes, lighting, etc; might cause more awkward wearing of the same thing in middle schools

Wilderness ID

Whenever I go hiking I always ask or guess which mountains are which. There should be an app for that. I know that smart phones can tell which way they are pointing now, so I think most of the work would be in programming. The app should identify mountains and landscape features, so you know what it is you're looking at.

bald eagle: fun, worth about a dollar, if you use it to memorize where everything is you can impress your less knowledgeable friends with their dorky dependence on their phones

baldness: you can just bring a map, it would be annoying to find people all on the top of a mountain with their phones out - waving them around, ugh.

Money well scent

Smell is the easiest sense to tie to memories (mom's apple pie, grandpa's workbench, your girlfriend or boyfriend's cologne, etc.) and does a remarkable job bringing back emotion as well. I'm surprised that big luxury hotels don't use specific scents in all of their locations, which would allow them to scent affiliated products and instantly transport people back to their honeymoons or vacations.

Mmmm, smells like that time we went to Cancun, and stayed at the (insert hotel here.)

snoozing on the couch: new level of branding could make a ton of money, might make vacations literally more memorable

snoring in the bedroom: everything would smell all the time - it would be like middle-school, surely urban outfitters' smell would be annoying, and you'd smell like where you worked.

Sight visit

It would be interesting to go out with another photographer and take pictures in the following way to provide an compelling view of a city (or picturesque place).

Photographer 1: takes a picture, with Photographer 2 in it (who is also acting as though they are taking a picture.)

Photographer 2: doesn't move from where they are in the picture with them in it, waits until Photographer 1 moves a position that follows more or less a straight line from where the original picture was taken. Then #2 takes a picture with #1 (acting as though they are taking a picture). Repeat around town for an interesting tour.

Visually:

#1 -takes picture-> #2 --takes picture--> #1 -takes picture-> #2 --takes picture--> etc.

When I do this, I'll post it.