One of our local talk radio morning shows had a TV weatherman on each morning to give the forecast. His name was Patrick Hammer. I sent an e-mail to the show saying I thought it would be funny if every time they introduced him they used MC Hammer’s song “Here comes the hammer” as bumper music.
About a week later they started doing just that.
I’ve been wanting to suggest to Windows MS, an improvement to copy & paste.
I wish they had multiple C&P. The idea being, you can copy three separate items. When I go to paste them, the options show up as: Paste1, Paste2, Paste3, etc…
Would make my job so much easier. And sometimes posting on the Dope easier, when you want to copy a link AND copy text from said link. So instead of going:
Copy address>flip to the dope>paste address>flip to other website>copy text>flip to the Dope> paste text
You could instead go: Copy address, copy text>flip to the Dope>Paste address, paste text.
Much easier.
Also wish I could unlock my phone with voice activation. (For when I’m driving)
Maybe it’s because Nebraska Brewing puts out a popular porter called Black Betty?
About 6 months before we entered the year 2000, I wrote to the Campbell Soup Company. I could’ve folded it into a paper airplane and shot it to them, they’re right across the river from me. Anyway, I thought I had a terrific ad campaign for them, but maybe they viewed it as too esoteric. One of their best known slogans is “Mmmm Mmmm good!” Since the coming year was 2000, and that could be rendered in Roman numerals as MM, I figured it would be a good tie-in. Never took me up on my suggestion, nor did I get a reply. I want coupons, dammit. :rolleyes:
For the heck of it I suggested a Christmas-themed edition of Sweatin’ to the Oldies (think Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree and Jingle Bell Rock etc). Someone who said they were Richard Simmons said they’d consider it.
They [uber] already tried something like that with BAMA. They leased a Prius to a sucker for, including insurance, about $1000.00 per month. The sucker quickly found out that their new car was not such a bargain. Attorneys started writing letters. Don’t know the outcome.
From BAMA’s website.
*What will it cost to lease a car?
Vehicles starts at $140 per week including all taxes and a maintenance program.
*
emph mine.
They don’t tell you about the costs of commercial insurance they will require. Hence, the $1000/mo payment.
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A friend of mine used a program like that when we worked together in the 90s, so I googled for it. I found that the Windows Office Clipboard can hold multiple items, see official MS help page: Copy and paste using the Office Clipboard - Microsoft Support
Here’s a 2010 link for a Windows program that is a clipboard storing multiple items http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/19420/store-multiple-items-to-clipboard-in-windows/
I’m sure there are more recent products available.
</hijack>
I once wrote the harpoon brewing company with my brilliant idea for a new twist on the shandy (a mix of ale and citrus). I suggested that they use powdered breakfast citrus drink mix and call it “Poon-Tang.” They never wrote back.
I also wrote Rocky Aoki, the founder of Benihana, suggesting he open a chain of authentic Worcester-style diners in Japan ( at the time, the Japanese were cuckoo for American cultural crap). He did write back to ask " what’s a diner?"
I thought a single serving powdered drink mix packaged in mixing utensil was an obvious winner - SpoonTang 
About 15 years ago I wrote to the Milwaukee tool company suggesting they sell a battery powered fan (that used the same battery as their other 18v cordless tools.) They replied that they had no plans to do so. About a year later Ryobi began selling 18v fans and I snapped one up. It was nice – 3 to 5 hours of breeze anywhere you wanted to work or relax – unfortunately Ryobi’s battery system sucked and the cells died in about a year.
So the fan hangs in the garage. I could buy a $60 Ryobi lithium battery or see which other tool makers offer fans now, but probably won’t. It sure would have been nice to have back when I was installing insulating batts in the attic.
I very recently wrote to a local cookie company to suggest to them to change the packaging on a new flavour of cookies. All of their packaging is very much the same, except this new flavour, and the design pushes the UPC code over under the overlapped flap that is down the middle of the back of the package in such a way that cashiers have to actually lift the flap up in order to scan the package. You can watch them get tripped up because they “know” that that cookie brand has the UPC code over here in this corner so they just position the package for ideal scanning as they grab it. Except this one flavour…
I did get a reply from their main mailbox that they would pass the suggestion on, but who knows…
Those chemical light sticks they sell for power outages and such, the ones where you bend them and they light up bright green. The first time I saw one glow, I figured whatever chemical creates the light, they could try some different formulations and get colors other than green. So I wrote to the manufacturer and suggested this, and even added that if they mixed colors together they could make a white light stick.
Then one day I’m in a store I hadn’t been to before, and there’s whole bins of these lightsticks in different colors… green, red, yellow, orange, blue, infrared, white…
(Most likely the company was already manufacturing all this variety, but it was still funny to suggest it and then later see it exist.)
I remember a black kid in our high school back around 1985, circulating a petition protesting the pink “flesh-colored” Band-Aids. When they later came out with the clear version, I wondered if he had been instrumental in that.
I was at Atocha station in Madrid shortly after they finished refurbishing it, talking with the next person in line about how difficult it had been to find the right ticket booth. There are several areas of ticket booths and apparently the person in charge of signs not only does not pee (one of the things that tell you a Spanish train station has been recently refurbished is that the only sign indicating where the toilets are is on the toilets’ own door), but also does not travel by train. Each of us had needed to ask several people to find the right place to go. One of the employees overheard us and asked if we’d please fill up a suggestion/complaint report, because they agreed with us that the new signs blew goats but “we’re minions, our opinion doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as that of the Supa Dupa Impohtahn Designah; you’re customers, one line from you has more weight than a year of speeches from us”.
Since we had time, we did fill up the suggestions. I suggested setting up some maps “in the style used by malls, as that one can be read even by people who claim a complete inability to read maps” (wit. my sister in law).
Atocha station got signs pointing to the different ticket booths and to the toilets and mall-style maps. Yay!
I’ve been making generous usage of the suggestions forms ever since; it actually works more often than not.
I had an interview with Blizzard for a translation job (Starcraft to Spanish). I asked how come WoW wasn’t available in Spanish when it was in German. “Oh, the Spanish market is a lot smaller”. “… I’m sorry, didn’t you say you were from Venezuela?” “
Yes? OH! OOOOH! :smack: oh, but we don’t have any custom in Latin America” “Check out how many of your payments by credit card are from Latin American banks”.
I didn’t get the job, but ads asking for translators for WoW to Spanish went up shortly thereafter.
My coworkers and I had a walk-in campaign for a while. In Scotland we’d been able to purchase fish nets in multiple colors and designs; in Spain they were all but unfindable. Whenever we saw a hosiery store we’d walk in and ask for fishnets “with designs, or maybe in navy?” It took some time, but now I can buy fishnets regularly.
I once sent an idea that the Mythbusters might test.
It’ll never happen now.
I just had a rather remarkable exchange with Mazda.
I emailed the head of Mazda USA’s product marketing division about when or if two discontinued models would be reintroduced anytime in the near future. He responded with a personal email with half an hour! It was clearly not a canned response. He couldn’t answer my question, though. 