Saturday, September 18, 2010

An Apple a day keeps the text books away

This is an idea ive had for a while and only now is it possible. iPad sales are through the roof, so are kindle and Im sure all the new pads coming from HP, Samsung etc. 
Also ePublishers are only now starting to make interactive textbooks with "social networking" where co-classmates and teachers can view comments, progress, suggestions from eachother about their current textbooks.
Now if Apple or (any of the others) were really clever they would make a deal with the universities that the same way a university can get "student pricing" on software, they can get it on iPads too. If youre a student and want an iPad give it to them for 25% off retail price (or whatever 5% + cost would be). In this way schools would promote them to their students and once a student graduates, they are bound to upgrade to a newer one and they can sell their older model
This would give a huge market share to whichever company went with this model.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Immerse the world on Bing, Google and Foursquare

One of the problems facing mappers is the abundance of locations to map.  My idea will aid in this using crowd sourcing.  If one takes a 360 degree video of a location from 2 or more spots, you should be able to build up a 3D visualization of the area. So in a store for example you go to 3 corners or up and down the isles and take a video on your iPhone or android or windows phone. Then you submit the video in to Bing who uses a Photosynth like technique to "build" the 3d map. You tag the map with its gps location. As more people do this we will be able to build up 3D virtualizations of huge amounts of areas. Where foursquare fits in with this is to add the social location aspect to it. You can encourage people to submit these videos by maybe creating new categories in foursquare like Chief Videographer for the person submitting the most videos etc...

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

No more crime and we dont even need Batman or the Avengers

Everyone now has a cell phone. When a crime goes down, be it a bank robbery or 7-11 hold up. The proprietor should be able to alert the police and they should be able to run a trace via ATT, TMobile etc to see who was in the area at the time. Based on that and eye witnesses they can nab the perpetrator. Even better if its a modern smart phone, maybe the smart phone can be made to "alert" the sore to its presence and then you can trace it the owner and arrest them.

Thursday, May 06, 2010

I heart Apple

This was an idea that I had a while ago but was reminded by a posting today in Engadget (Pity I didn't patent this first)
Essentially today people use a device called a holder meter to monitor their heart rhythms. This is a portable device that you wear and it records your heart rate. The device I personally used had 3 leads and then a box to record the readings and then you transmitted the readings audibly over the phone once a day.  It would be much less invasive and easier if we had this iPhone app that has external leads to monitor your heart and then allowed you to electronically submit the readings online
The issues that I faced (why I didn't pursue this) is that you would need FCC approval for the device as its a medical related machine.
Here's the link http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/06/apples-seamlessly-embedded-heart-rate-monitor-could-turn-the-ip/
As you can see from the apple post, theirs is not aimed as medical device, but I believe it has great potential in that field.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

iPad takes over the Public Library - Let Kindle stop that

Much to everyones dismay the iPad came out with very little of what we were all expecting.  What makes Apple great is not really their products but their tie-up to media. The ipod is not the greatest media player but the iTune store and 99c a song is genius.  What I hope to see from Apple soon is a tie in to books. Imagine they could put together a package with Publishers with a Netflix like plan. Lets say you pay $20 a month for 5 books that you can take out. For each book selected $4 will be assigned to it. The publisher gets 70% and apple keeps the 30% (Or some similar ratio). Now once its on your iPad you can keep it as long as you want and then swap it for a new book when you are ready. If a book is over a year old lets say then maybe you can "sell" this book to another iPad user for a one time $2 fee. Apple and the Publisher get a cut out of that as well. The 5 books a month apply to new books and you will also have say a 20 book a month limit for "second hand" books which were transferred to you by another user. Lastly you can then buy a book as is available today for the going price - what you have already paid.