You’re driving in your car, you like the song playing on the radio (FM/AM/CD/SAT/MP3 Jack/Etc) and you want it! Why isn’t it possible to simply push one single button to acquire it (for 1$) and download it to your devices? By Electronic devices I mean Car Radio, Laptop, Desktop, Smartphone, MP3 Player etc.

The technology exists today! Let’s take for example a reconnaissance system like http://www.shazam.com/ You install that system on each car radio (You establish a partnership deal with major radio manufacturers) and when you push the ‘Shazam’ button the software recognizes the tune and asks you ounce if you want to buy it. You push the button again and the system sends a digital copy of the song to all your devices (Right away if its connected or later on during the day)

Of course your car needs to be hooked up to a Wi-Fi connection or to a 3G network. I assume the system could at least record a ‘20 seconds’ portion of the song and process it later when you are at home. (To save you some roaming charges) At home,  it would automatically connect to your Wi-Fi. This feature could also be available directly on Shazam’s application on your smartphone. You press the acquire song and it sends copy to all your devices (including your car radio when it’s at home!)

Who has the time to sync all those devices anyway or find the time to buy the song afterwards? When you want the song, you want it on the spot!

You start buy buying a smartphone like the Apple IPhone, you install a [new]  application on it and register to the service. You would then be able to use your I-Phone to capture a live video feed of events unfolding in front of you and your feed would be uploaded to various sites on the web (The live vido feed service could be provided by www.kyte.com) On the main site of the application there would be an API so that other content providers like CNN, BBC, YOUTUBE, AOL, CNN, etc could buy your live feed automatically (if its really good!).

Your video/images/text would be assigned to your account, you would own the rights.  Anyone would be able to view what you have posted and ll the ‘Ad’ revenues on your page would go to you. In fact, if you produce good videos, articles, images more people will visit your page and ‘AD’ pricing on your page will go up automatically (A simple example of offer/demand)

This would be a simpler and faster way to publish live conent on the Internet and capitalizing on it. You simply download the APP, register and that’s it! The system does the rest for you and takes out the hassle of all the rest of the stuff you would normally have to do.

A crowd gathers somewhere… Automatically, every Smartphone or Wi-Fi device gets hooked up together on Spontaneous Local Network or SLN. If you’re a member of NING, Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, Friendster, Hi-5 etc. You just need to accept or download the SLN ‘App’ and viola you’re part of the Real crowd and the Virtual crowd!

The SLN Application is available on most mobile platforms as well (Phone Apps) so as soon as you get someplace where your ‘preset’ parameters ‘kick-in’ (Minimum number of people, Time window, Type of place, Type of People) the SLN feature activates. It detects your geolocation, it matches where you probably are with Google Maps, it can invite friends automatically, pictures can be posted, Live video feed could be uploaded via Kyte, local tweets as well. When the crowd leaves, the SLN is closed but all the info is available on your account for future retrieval or ‘post mortem’ review.

SLN could be used for emergencies, official meetings, socializing, etc. This would be a really cool feature, does-it exists yet? If not, let me know when it works!

Charles

Why is it so hard to invent things today?

To answer this question you have to bring yourself back 100 years and start thinking about what had not yet been invented and how many people had the time to ’stop and think’. You can see that over the last century a ton of inventions have been created and humans have covered almost every possible fields of innovation. (Transportation, Energy, Medicine, Tooling, etc) They managed to do this because the Industrial revolution has freed up more and more humans who had more time to think! There was less competition (and communications) in those days so everyone had a better ‘breakthrough’ chance.

More thinkers, more inventions, increase efficiency = more time to think!… Slowly but surely humans have optimized every major ‘fields of Innovation’ making it harder and harder for would be innovators to come up with a revolutionary idea. It now takes more time to find an exceptional idea because ‘all the apples on the ground’ have been picked up… There are now 50 people around the tree trying to spot a new apple and trying to dislodge it from up there! Some are equipped with bulldozers; some have a team of 50 people with them…

There will always be room for innovation but let’s face it, an ERA is ending and we are entering new one. We are at the end of the bell curve…

Inventing a totally new machine, one that makes a real difference is at least 20 time more difficult, expensive and time consuming then it was previously. You can’t invent the automobile, it’s been done! Airplanes? Done, the more time passes, the tougher it gets.

Therefore, I raise my glass to those lucky ones who got here before us and had the chance to pick-up those easy apples before us! We will never surrender… but it felt good to put a few things in perspective.

When are we going to see a full integration of all the Social networks out there? Each one of them has some cool features but all of them work separately it does not make any sense. The time has come for a standard platform that will interconnect everyone together in a single SOCIAL NETWORK INTERFACE (SNI).

Each network could then start to specialize in an area (Music, Chats, Tweets, Pictures, Video, Exclusive Members etc..) and revenues would be based on usage, traffic, purchases etc…

There are a lot of different clouds out there and each type of layout reveals a story of what’s coming up ahead in terms of weather. It would be cool to have a software that would analyse a cloud picture and send you a general reading of upcoming weather associated with those clouds.

I Imagine that the results could be more precise if your picture contains a geolocation tag, the date and time. This way the software could acess the local weather network and compile the cloud reading with current weather data and return a more precise forecast.

In fact this could become an Iphone, Blackberry or Palm Pre APP. Just take a picture of the sky and get a instant forecast. (Why not ad a temperature and barometric pressure sensors to the phones?

Last but not least, all the pictures taken are kept and the actual weather is also compiled and compared to the pictures, thus improving the future forecast based on cloud visualisation.

Just an idea I had this morning whilst reading wired Magazine (oct 2009) page 42.

It would be cool to have a Micro version of Facebook whenever you enter someplace crowded (Like a Bar) A small, local, Social Network could thus be created on the fly and you would be able to access it with your Facebook account (Facebook Connect) You could then see the profile of who’s in the house! (Who’s that girl by the bar…) and it would be easier to break the ice. Of course you only show what you want to show.

Now, take that concept and spiced it up with a ‘Room tweet’ feature. You could then tweet at someone from within the Micro Facebook Local Social Network (LSN) or just send a tweet at large to the crowd in the bar. It would make it easier again to break the ice, have fun with friends and keep your Friends on your original Facebook page (not with you) to stay updated on what’s happening!

Newsroom (Paper, Radio, TV) publish news based on what their media team think its best for their listeners. It would ver interesteing to get access to all the news report in the world with keywords + location attached to them and let the public decide what they want to hear or read.

With this tool/format people would be able to read what they feel is more important or interesting to them. Statitistics should be attached to those news. For example the criminality rate in Columbia attached to an article concerning criminality in Columbia.

We are served headlines that don’t necessarily have an impact in the world so this new tool could provide more background info to help us make a better choice of what to read or listen to.

I know about Diggs and other similar ranking website. This idea is quite different. Its not about public rating, its about your rating based on what ‘keyword’ or ’stats’ is important to you.

I could go on and explore all the possibilities but you can fill the rest,

My friend just showed me a new gadget and I want exactly the same thing right now at the best possible price! I need an application on my computer or cellphone where I can describe the item in question and get ‘live’ quotes and a map of nearby stores. The quote could also include prices  for a delivery to my home.

I can’t imagine why this is not widespread today. Sure you can shop on e-bay or Google but who wants to shop? I dont want to shop, I want this thing right here! My cellphone knows who I am so I dont need to introduce myself to sellers, I only need to take a picture of what I want to buy (picture of the model number or the bar code) and let the application do the rest.

Within seconds I should receive ‘quotes’ from sellers who are already connected to the app. These sellers would pay a small fee to send out quotes a bit like Google AdSense. Instead of paying 33 cents for a ‘click’ seller will much rater pay 33 cents to send out a quote to a real live customer! Most probably the system could also process the transaction at the same time.

I imagine all majors search engine like Google, Yahoo and Social Networks like Facebook, Myspace and NING could use such a system. They already have millions of users and hundreds of thousands of companies offering products or services. Include major phone carriers in the deal, cellphone companies and this will become an instant hit.

A lot of web firms like www.kyte.com are providing companies with a tool to upload live video feed on the web. (Example: You take your Iphone, you start shooting a scene and the live feed is uploaded on the net) All these companies are broadcasting live video feed around on the web and those data streams are available to millions of people.

My idea would be to visualise all those live feeds on Google Earth Map (Or MapQuest, Yahoo etc) you could then surf what’s happening around the world, see live action and surf from scene to scenes. On a live basis, users would rate what they are viewing so the best ‘feed’ would gets the best rating. Of course, the system could also detect your preferences and match them with users similar to you.

This new integrated technology would include all video feeds from all free streaming platforms, providing hundreds of thousands of choices at the same time. Maybe some producers (or citizen producers) could assemble all those feeds into a coherent program, for instance if 200 people are filming an event in downtown LA  than it would make sense to package this feed and sell it as a live program (or make it free but include targeted ads)

The cool part is that you could surf between those feeds and ’see’ the world with thousands of eyes. You could also access past feed to see a specific place that was already filmed by someone two weeks (or two minutes ago). The possibilities are endless.