Chausse.org

Thanks to Google’s PageRank, backlinks are the new currency of the web. An entire underground economy has spawned around tricky ways to get popular sites to link to your far less popular site. Of course, there are people who would be willing to pay good money to get backlinks from popular sites if only those sites would be willing to host them.

The most popular blogs and other sites are loathe to accept money for backlinks because it comes across as cheap and sleazy. Why not set up a system that would allow people to buy backlinks on popular sites, with the profits going to a charity selected by the site owner? This way small site owners get the traffic they need for a fair price, and the site owner gets to make good use of their “popularity capital” to help change the world for the better.

Of course, sites could simply sell ads as usual and donate the money to charity, but I think a little branding and PR could add some real buzz around the concept. And, of course, there’s always money to be made as an intermediary for this sort of thing.

Filed under Steal My Idea™ No Comments »

OK, this idea is totally half-baked, but the associated domain name that popped into my head for it keeps cracking me up.

I was reading an article discussing problems that crop up when people use email for purposes for which it was not designed. One of these behaviors was “emailing a file to yourself” as a cheap form of document retention. So, I thought - why not have a special email address that would process incoming emails (from yourself only), store the attachments, and provide a nice, organized web UI for later retrieval of said attachments. All you’d have to do is sent the email to you@docplop.com instead of you@whereeverelse.com.

Someone’s probably already cooked up something like this, but I guarantee you they’re not calling it DocPlop.com - and that, right there, is the true secret to its success.

Filed under Steal My Idea™ 4 Comments »

Looks like Adesso has pretty much created a Digital Whiteboard Tablet, as I described in my “Steal My Idea #2” post.  They call it the Cyberpad.  It uses pen and paper instead of dry-erase markers, but other than that, it’s almost exactly as I described it.  No Wi-Fi, but does sell for under $200.  Spiffy.

Filed under Steal My Idea™ No Comments »

I’m sure I’m not the first to think of this, but a voice controlled iPod (or iPod add-on) would be quite nice - and could, in fact, save lives. This morning I was listening to my iPod in the car. I had it on “shuffle” mode, sitting in a holder mounted on my windshield.

Anyway, the iPod shuffles into a song - I don’t remember which. Let’s say it was something by the Flaming Lips. At that point, I decided “Hmm, I’d sure like to listen to a Flaming Lips album right now”.

Now, finding and playing an album on an iPod is quite easy when you’re sitting on a subway car or something, but when you’re traveling 80 MPH down Rte. 95, it’s another matter altogether. At that point, I decided: It sure would be cool if I could just say:

“iPod. Album. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. Play.”

And, voila, have the album play. Instead, I wrapped my car around a telephone pole and took out two boy scouts and three nuns in the process. Just kidding. But it could have happened. And the iVoicePodThing could have prevented it.

Someone make this. Please.

Filed under Steal My Idea™ 2 Comments »

I’ve been pondering the best way to brainstorm software design ideas while lounging on my couch and my mind keeps returning to the same thing: Few tools are as ideal for spontaneous brainstorming as the ubiquitous dry-erase whiteboard. It takes no time to set up, there is no interface to learn, you can easily designate different aspects of the project via different colors, and you can make modifications simply by wiping the problematic sections away with your finger.

The problem with whiteboards is that A.) They’re usually big and stuck to a wall, and B.) There’s no way to permanently record the data drawn upon them.

Of course, there ARE small whiteboards available (though I’ve yet to see one designed for handheld use) and there are, in fact, solutions to problem B out there, but I don’t think anyone has yet come up with the following:

Digital Whiteboard Tablet

The Digital Whiteboard Tablet is a lightweight notebook-sized device with a glass screen (backed with a white surface for readability) which is simply drawn upon using standard dry-erase markers (the storage of which may be integrated into the device). When the user wants to store the image permanently, he or she presses a single button which scans the image and stores it digitally via an integrated memory card. The user can then erase the image and begin the next. When complete, the user can transfer the images for future use by downloading them from the memory card to their PC.

Potential additional features: Send drawings by e-mail or WiFi, saving of images as digital ink.

This is one of those ideas that inevitably leads to comments like “Why don’t you just use XYZ?” Yes, there are many solutions that come close to this one, but none yet that allow you to semi-mindlessly brainstorm ideas using a physical medium, while lounging on your couch, and permanently commiting them to storage with one button click. A Tablet PC perhaps comes close but it must frequently be charged, requires a distracting software UI, and costs well over $1000. The Digital Whiteboard Tablet could easily be sold for under $200.

Filed under Steal My Idea™ No Comments »

I’m somewhat infamous (amongst friends) for coming up with clever ideas, then never getting around to implementing them. So I’ve decided that, from now on, whenever I get one of these ideas that I know I’ll never get around to doing, I’ll just give them away for whoever cares to run with them.

I actually had the idea for something very much like BitTorrent, almost 5 years ago (I called it CacheWave) but, unfortunately, I can’t prove it. I’m not about to start filing predatory patents, I just want bragging rights for thinking of things first. To rectify this problem, I’m starting a new feature called Steal My Idea™. At least this way, I can get some small credit for having proof that I came up with an idea before someone else implemented it - whether or not they got the idea from me.

Anyway, here’s idea #1 for you to steal:

Premium Tech Support Club

For a monthly fee, you can join a club which is affiliated with many major technology companies (Dell, Microsoft, Comcast, etc.) Membership in this club entitles you to guaranteed expert tech support via a dedicated members’-only toll-free phone number. This means NO touch-tone menu system and NO offshore call centers. You always get to talk to an actual knowledgable engineer NOT working from a script.

How do I make money?

You get a portion of the monthly fees. For the most part, you only need to maintain a database, so the overhead is minimal.

How do I get customers?

Since, a.) Your overhead is so low, and b.) Your business is worthless without a large number of participating corporations, you can afford to pay a large percentage of the monthly fees to whichever corporation referred the user to join. Therefore, it behooves the participating corporations to find customers for you.

Potential problems?

Of course, by participating in this program, companies are, in a sense, saying that their standard tech support sucks. This can easily be worked around via clever wording and marketing. Companies have been getting people to pay for things that should be free for years now. It’s not marketing rocket-science. One possible angle is to keep the existence of this club semi-secret, thereby adding a sense of prestige to club membership (enabling higher fees) at the expense of a larger user-base.

Filed under Steal My Idea™ No Comments »