I’m always amazed at the shear number of informed, educated, and experienced people here. So… I ask of the masses: What’s the best idea you’ve ever come up with, but know you’ll never get around to doing? I’m the type of person that get’s a new "Big Idea™"at least once a week. Some I mull over for a bit and discard after a day or two because they’re too impratical, others perpetually sit on my backburner–though only because I’m a mental packrat and neuron rental is cheep.
In the 1970’s, a friend of mine and I decided to buy a yacht and live on the Great Barrier reef. Sadly, that never happened for us.
I think it would be pretty neat to have a webpage that is like monster.com but is for regular people looking to hire others for oddjobs. Say somebody is installing some ceiling fans in several rooms. Post an add, name a price and others in your area can contact you and discuss how much they are willing to do it for. Or you can set the price.
You could use it for lawn mowing, babysitting, fix it up jobs, painting, or any number of fix it up, cash or under the table jobs. If I did it, it probably would be free and I would try to set up something with advertisements or letting smaller fix it up companies advertise on the page.
I think it could be a good idea, but will likely never get around to it. I have another, larger scale online business idea that I am going to school for, so I can learn web design, server administration and database design to build the website myself.
I think this sort of site would be a big success for guys that like to fix things for cash (got a buddy who does it for family, installs ceiling fans, garage doors, etc, and gets 30-40 bucks or something for it), computer tech guys that don’t have their own business, teenagers or college students looking to make some cash.
I’m thinking one of the cable companies need to come up with a Star Trek channel.
All things Star Trek. All of the Series, movies and even the cartoons.
Hell, I’m such a Nerd, I’d pay $10 a month for that.
And of course, I’m SO sure my Genius idea will work so well; that they’d even be able to make enough dough to finance a new series. 
You know how they have all these colored ribbon campaigns for various types of cancer or other diseases? I had an idea for a “brown ribbon” campaign for colon cancer. But I haven’t been able to figure out how to make any money off of it.
I wish I could find a way to make holgraphic technology available to everybody.
Whoever does this will end up making Bill Gates look poor.
Not my best idea, but this thread reminded me of one of my weird “dream revelations” - one of those dreams that seems so real, and every idea that comes to you during that time is just the most awesome thing ever in the whole universe and will make me a tonne of cash. Oh, yeah.
I woke up one morning with one word rattling around in my head. Get this one: Pyjankets!
Pyjamas that turn into a blanket.
:smack:
I’m getting my ideas from my conscious mind from now on. My subconscious hates me.
One word: Dimplants.
I love people that have dimples (on their cheeks, the ones on their face duh)- they are cute and sexy. Who doesn’t want dimples, eh?
Now I just have to find a plastic surgeon willing to do the implants, and I will do all the marketing and everything else. Brilliant!
I have a idea for a tattoo gun that is less bulky and easier to hold, more like a pen. I think it would be easier to use and to learn to tattoo with. It would be quieter and less likely to scare animals (when used for identification) and first time recipient’s. The basic tattoo gun hasn’t really changed much since is creation, so I think this is something that would be huge. I’m kinda waiting until I get a little further in my engineering classes before I start sketching out some of the details on the actual mechanics and electronics. I also need to get a good look at some top of the line current models to see what I’m competing with exactly. And that is only just a little excuse to get another tattoo.
That’s so weird! I saw one of those yellow “Support Our Troops” ribbons on a car and thought they should make a brown one that said “Support Our Poops”. Yeah, I’m about 5 years old.
I once decided to protect the opressed of the world, feed the hungry, end war, and cure sickle-cell anemia but I’ve never really gotten around to it.
I’ve always wanted to create and patent a pool float with an anchor. Not metal, mind you, but probably a rubber cord with a weighted ball on the end, perhaps filled with sand. When not in use the anchor could rest in a built in pocket, sort of like the floats with can holders in them. The point of the anchor is that if you drop anchor you won’t drift into the walls of the pool and wake up from your doze.
The thing is, though, even if you put warnings on the box, some idiot is going to use it in the ocean and drift out to sea… I can’t enable Darwinism that way, so I guess my cool idea will never come to pass.
My vet said that my dogs had to be under anaesthesia to get their ears tatooed.
Ever read the histories Only Yesterday and Since Yesterday? There are histories of the 1920’s and 30s. Wonderful stuff.
Nope, no way I will get working on my sweeping history of this decade. You all can have the idea.
I’m starting to believe that every idea has already been marketed:
Handyman search (one of dozens, actually).
Colon cancer awareness ribbon. (sorry, it’s dark blue)
Holographic TV with no 3D glasses There was also a thread about this recently, but I don’t know if it was the same manufacturer. They’re predicting mass-market pricing within the next 5-10 years.
Pyjankets, by any other name, would feel as cozy. My mom has a blanket with snaps so that it can be snapped around your ankles, wrists and neck. It’s da bomb when snuggling around a campfire in the autumn nights. I want one so badly, but I’m not coming up with the right search terms for it. Le sigh.
Dimplants. No, I’m not shitting you.
I think you really have something there with the tattoo-pen idea, though. I know bunches of people who’d jump on that.
(Hey! Why isn’t the cute little baby in the picture like she is in the search results? No fair, I want cute little babies in my links whenever possible!)
I had an idea a few years back for a pizza/video rental store. You’d call up and order a pizza, and also ask for the movie you wanted to watch that night, both of which would be delivered to your door after one phone call. You’d drop off the movie on your way to work some later morning.
In the earliest days of the internet, I realized the problem of knowing what movies were in stock could be overcome by having a website, which would be better than trying to keep up-to-date printed video catalogs in circulation amongst the customer base.
Now that everything is moving in the direction of video-on-demand over high speed digital connections, the idea’s an anachronism, but it would have been GREAT for a few years in the late 1990s before I declared bankruptcy.
Blockbuster was seriously considering doing this to my store when I was managing it. They wanted to lease out half the store to a pizza chain, put up a wall with a hole in it where you could order pizza, then browse my half of the store for 20 minutes, get some movies and pick up your pizza on the way out, or phone in your order, and the pizza delivery guy would deliver your movies with your pizza.
All in all, not a terrible idea, but I hated the thought of losing half my floorspace in an already small store.
One of my many unfulfilled inventions is a shipping container for transporting large numbers of delicate items. It’s got slide-in shelving, and the bottom of each shelf carries a large number of inflatable cushions. Load your delicates in, slide in the shelf and clip it onto hydraulic piping. Repeat until full, then open the valve to onboard compressed air tanks. The cushions inflate and descend onto the items on the shelf below. A pressure gauge/valve system keeps the cushions inflated until delivery.
Saves on packaging costs: you only have to pay for the compressed air refill. Better resource usage: no massive wasted bubble wrap/cardboard boxes to worry about, so saves on waste charges.
I’m sure it’s full of holes (pun unintended).
Hey, I had the video and pizza idea too! My store was to be called Vids’n’Pizzas (bits and pieces).
Another pizza idea was like a salad bar/Mongolian grill, where you get a pizza base and load up on sauces, ingredients, different kinds of cheese, then put your creation on a conveyor belt, which weighs your pizza for charging you later, then drives the pizza through an oven. It was to be called DIYPD (do-it-yourself pizza department).
Think I need to work on my trade names…