Neat invetions or service you would like to see.

[monstro]

**

Dude: do you have a freezer? Do you have Krispy Kremes? Do you have ziploc bags? Then you are set. Place Krispy Kremes in ziploc bags. Seal 'em up and put them in the freezer.

To serve: put on a plate, sprinkle with water, and nuke 'em for 10-20 seconds. (Experiment to find the exact number of seconds, of course.)

This works PERFECTLY with the plain glazed donuts, which is all I ever get. (Jam, “creme”, icing, etc. just takes away from the purity of Donut Essence.) They never get frosty or deteriorate in any way - I think the sugar glaze seals them.

Nearest Krispy Kreme to me is an hour away, so I buy several dozen at once. Luckily, this is quite inconspicuous.**

Pay day can’t come soon enough!

Oh wait, I’m supposed to be SAVING money, not spending it!

[puddleglum]

Two things:
First a shower thermostat, you set the temperature you want your shower to be and it beeps when the shower is the temp you want. No more fiddling with dials to get the perfect temperature for your shower.
Second a launch.com service for the car. You tell it your favorite songs and artists and it plays those songs with frequency varying in accordance with your ratings. You could set it to never play certain songs or artists ever again and it could recommend songs based on your taste in music. There must be a way to do this.

[Legomancer]

*Originally posted by puddleglum *
Two things:
First a shower thermostat, you set the temperature you want your shower to be and it beeps when the shower is the temp you want. No more fiddling with dials to get the perfect temperature for your shower.

When I was in Austria, the place I was staying had separate controls for the temperature and rate of the shower, so you could set it where you wanted it and keep it there even when the shower was off. It’s frightening how impressed I was with this in comparison to all the other things I saw.

[TheNerd]

puddleglum
in regards to your second idea, I have considered something similar, which I know I could implement. I’ve got a computer in my car for playing music. This means that through winamp plugins, I can make it do just about whatever I want. A scoring program would probably be fairly simple, just a matter of associating a score with a filename, and probabilistically choosing the next song based on that score. The reason I didn’t inplement it is that my song library is necessarily self selected, and therefore, I like it all. But, if there was a dynamic song download such a scoring system would be useful.

What I HAVE done is write a playlist selector based on gps-derived input. Mostly, I use it for speed based selection, but there are other parameters available. I have lists for traffic, cruising, highway, and late-night driving.

[Sublight]

I want an exercise bike with a fan connected to the gears, so that as I pedal, the fan will turn and keep me cool. A treadmill with this feature would also be nice.

This seems simple enough that if I ever get my own exercise bike I’ll build it myself. Actually, in my own home I’d probably just stick an electric fan in front of the bike. What I really want is my fitness club to have something like this.