Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Who's That App

This is a new idea for a smartphone application and is based on some already existing technologies for searching the web with pictures rather than keywords. Who’s That App would enable you to take a picture of someone you know or want to know better with your smartphone and would search the web for any matches based on face recognition software. Imagine being at a bar and falling head over heels for someone. You could either approach him or her and try get a phone number or email address or you could ask around if anyone you know knows that person. Who’s That App would provide another option - take a picture of the person and get to know him or her a little better through a Facebook page or anywhere else that person’s picture appears. Who’s That App would enable you to be more informed about the person you wish to approach. Dating and matchmaking services aside, Who’s That App is definitely something I’d like to have on my phone, simply because I hate seeing people in the street that I recognize and should remember their names but never do… Who’s That App would appeal to a very wide target audience and shouldn’t be all that expensive to develop considering the fact that it’s based on already existing picture search engines and facial recognition software. It should just be a matter of knitting them together – which is the new idea here – and developing an easy-to-use yet awesome graphic user interface.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Drill Clean

This is one of those creative ideas you can only have when dealing with art. When I needed to hang up a picture above the TV at my wife’s request, it took me about six months because I was too busy thinking about how to move or cover my 42 inch LCD TV so that all the dust and bits of wall wouldn’t go into all its sensitive spots. The picture now has a new cozy home, above the sofa. However, during those six months, I came up with Drill Clean – a scrap collecting drill attachment that would fit onto any handheld drill and collect all the rubbish produced when drilling. Drill Clean is basically a transparent cylinder shaped piece of plastic, made of two telescopic segments with a spring between them, which attaches to the business end of a drill. When you drill a hole in any vertical surface, all the scrap would be collected in the cylinder rather than fall on your TV, floor, bed, and so on. Drill Clean would be adjustable, so as to fit any type of drill with any type of drill bit attached – and be flush with the end of the drill bit. This, together with the plastic's transparency, would enable you to precisely position the drill to the wall and ensure that the hole is made exactly where you wanted it to be made, mess free.

An additional feature of this idea could be an incremental locking mechanism on the telescopic cylinder to provide depth gauging. This would add another dimension of precision to your work. The inner part of the telescopic cone would have incremental markings etched into it at every millimeter and the locking mechanism would enable you to lock the telescopic function of the cylinder at a desired depth, for example, 25 mm. In other words, after locking Drill Clean at 25 mm, when a hole is drilled, the cylinder would stop retracting at precisely 25 mm, ensuring that your new hole is 25 mm deep.

The basic concept behind Drill Clean is to make Do-It-Yourself (DIY) home improvement work easier, faster, and cleaner. Consequently, this is how Drill Clean should be marketed. Speaking as a frequent DIY home improvement perpetrator, and as a bit of a lazy bastard who prefers beer over work, I am constantly looking for ways to make such work consume less effort, less time, and less mess. So do I prefer creative ideas over creative work? No – as long as the work is efficient. Drill Clean would make my life and many other DIYers' lives easier and probably at very little cost. Since Drill Clean is made up of very few and relatively cheap parts, and has little mechanics to it, it would be ridiculously cheap to manufacture and hence market. I would definitely pay anywhere from 20 to 40 bucks for this and be extremely pleased with my purchase. I think that a patent should be attempted first, even with its associated high costs, and then it's either on to mass manufacturing and marketing or to selling the patent to a leading handheld drill manufacturer (such as Makita, DeWalt, Black & Decker) who are always looking for new creative ideas for their products.
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