So… you invented the cordless banana?
I knew that they could use GPS to determine where they were, but did not know that they had made systems that could automatically show where you are on a map in 1984.
In many cases, when we think of something, someone else has already thought about it. The only way to be sure is to check the patents.
victory is mine!
It’s a great idea. Bravo!
It was Bill Clinton who directed that accuracy for civilians be reduced from 100 meters to 10 meters (or so), making it useful for navigation. It was on my wife’s birthday, May 1, 2000; that’s why I remember it.
I wish that I would have predicted that and had the patent…
To be clear, it was very useful for navigation even with an error of 100 meters, and 100 meters would have been very useful to KAL 007. Just not so much for realtime driving directions (or guiding a cruise missile to a specific building).
In 1980, I moved to a new town in which the cable service carried channels I had never seen before. One was WOR out of New York. When a movie ended at, say, 4:23, and the next movie was scheduled to start at 4:30, the station would play music videos or concert footage to fill the space. I thought it would be great if a station was all music - videos, concert news, interviews with musicians, etc. MTV began airing a year later.
I’d say Mario.
Being born in 1980, I had been exposed to the Jump Man/Mario sprite, but I didn’t realize how kickass my guy was until Super Mario Bros. For the NES. I was aware of Donkey Kong, and actually had the OG Mario Bros. on my Apple IIe, but it wasn’t until my older brother’s August birthday in '86, that I learned of his charm. Not unlike Bart’s fandom of Krusty, I defiantly saw my blue-collar dad in Mario growing up. After Super Mario Bros. I was the first I knew who pimped Mario, and one of the first who had even heard of him. 
When I was in sixth grade in 1995, I had an assignment to write a short story about what a typical day in my life would be like when I was 30. I wrote about me having a “pocket computer” that could access the internet and remote into my home computer.
In 2012, when I was 30, I owned a smartphone.
Well, the Apple Newton started shipping in 1993. Not nearly as powerful as a smartphone of course, but probably qualifies as a “pocket computer”.
Canadians are aware of the national debit card system known as Interac
During its infancy, terminals at stores were a landline-based setup that relied on a dial-up modem as part of the transaction process. A couple years into it becoming widespread, I had the idea that it could piggyback on cellular devices, making paying for delivery services or other mobile transactions easier, without the need of a credit card and slip to be processed with the clunky “kachunk-chuk” imprinter and slip machine.
When I was a kid, I grew out of a pair of skates, so we (Dad & I) got a wooden box, and made a sorta proto skateboard. Mind you that was how the first skateboards were invented- in SoCal- around early 1950s. Which is when & where we made ours. However, I am sure others had the idea first. Still- first on my block at least.
When I was in high school, I made a name tag with an LED flasher hidden behind it, and two small LEDs poking through the front of the name plate. In fact, I still have it. This was well before flashing pins became commonplace. I could have made a zillion dollars…
I have also thought of that. I think it’s a good idea.
Another one from about 20 years ago. Combine all of the different ways people communicate, e-mail, phone calls, conference calls, video calls, instant messages, forum chats (are they still around?), IM’s, etc. into one application. It’s basically what Microsoft Teams is. And now that we have it at work I don’t like it.
The impediment to this is not technological but financial. What incentive does Disney, for example, have to give their catalog of content to an aggregator, which would reduce subscribers to their own service? They would need a massive financial incentive to do so. Same for HBO, Hulu, etc. etc. If the aggregator is paying massive amounts to hundreds of other companies for access to their content, they will have to charge a massive fee to the consumer. And why would I as a consumer pay an exorbitant amount for access to 250 content sources when I can get the specific content I’m interested for a much lower price by subscribing to 4 or 5 sources?
Well, yes - that’s why it hasn’t happened yet. But with the exorbitant amount of money that Paramount just paid for WBD, the recent trend towards ad revenue for lower tiers, and the ability to subscribe to other providers through Prime Video and Apple +, I think it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing bundle subscriptions to multiple providers for the kind of money the cable companies were used to getting. I first ditched cable about 15 years ago and back then “cord cutting” was a new trend. Now it’s the norm and it’s no longer cost efficient - it’s just as expensive or more expensive than a cable subscription. Of course, the cable companies could have done this 15 or 20 years ago with some infrastructure investment, but they were too attached to their old business model - now it’s obsolete. IMO it’s inevitable that the current model will become obsolete as well.