[QUOTE=scotandrsn]
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.
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There used to be a place called Pizza Video in Emeryville, CA. It was exactly as great as you say, and good pizza, too.
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
(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!)
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What cute little baby? There’s no cute little baby there!
This was mostly due to not quite being able to read accurately but as a kid I yearned to run a Newsagents, Confectioners and Tobogganists as opposed to the more traditional Newsagents, Confectioners and Tobacconists. I’ve sat down with a friend and worked out all the details of what goes where. It’s just trying to work out how to pitch it to the bank manager that’s stopping me (that and no snow).
I think it would be neat to have a cape/cloak that converts into a sort of sleeping bag for hiking during seasons when it can suddenly turn cold. The cape would have to be long – mid-calf, say, and make of some stretchy yet-watertight material. You’d wear it open while hiking in late fall/early spring times, thrown back over your shoulders when you’re warm, pulling it forward around you if you feel chilly.
Then it suddenly gets bitterly cold, or you’re lost and will have to spend the night outdoors. All you do is close the front of your cloak all the way from throat to hem. I’m picturing a continuous line of velcro for near-airtight sealing, but probably zippers would work okay.
Anyway, then you sit down and draw up your legs a bit so you can seal the front hem of your cloak to the back hem, completely closing it from side to side. Then you can stretch your legs back out, the elasticity of the material giving you the needed space to be comfortable. Next you pull up the flap of material that had been lying down as a sort of collar and seal it up to form a hood over your head, and possibly pull on drawstrings to tighten it closely on your face.
Last of all you pull one arm out from the sleeve into the body of the cloak, and seam off that wrist opening. Repeat for the other sleeve – probably have to use your teeth to help press that wrist opening closed.
And there you are: all sealed up nice and snug in your emergency sleeping bag.
There are always similarities between ideas. Amazon.com did something amazing, but in reality, there were retail stores all over. It is the revolutionary ideas that take normal seeming ideas and come at them from a different angle.
If you read my post again, you will see the difference. That site, and most of the others, are professional handymen with their own business. Thats great if you want to pay 80 dollars for them to install your garage door, but I got a friend that would do it for 25. Those sites you talk about are basically just specialized phone books or directories.
My idea is like monster.com, not a directory. The business owner doesn’t put up an ad (though they can pay to place an ad, but that isn’t what the site is about), it is about the average joe, the couple that need somebody to mow their lawn every week, or install an automatic garage door.
Find me one like that, and I will love you forever. Cause I only had the idea because I would love to find a centralized cite that lets me browse such jobs in my area. I like to paint, do minor repairs and do lawn service for cash. So do many of my friends. There isn’t one out there. I looked. (pretty well, but I won’t say without 100% certainty that there isn’t a failed attempt, or a little known place - which defeats the point really).
If only I were a mechanically skilled basement workshop inventor. I’m certain that a vibrator based on a reciprocating linear-inductor motor would provide, in the words of one vibrator affeciendo, “a throb like a truck engine”.
[QUOTE=jjimm]
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).
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I believe there was a Seinfeld episode where Kramer had exactly this idea - make your own pie. But the naysayers said “Nay, nobody wants to make their own pie”. Said Kramer “Rubbish! Of course they do”.
[QUOTE=jjimm]
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…
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we had a place like that near where i live. the pizza was awesome but it was always full of screaming hyperactive kids.
What about hover cars? When I was a boy I wanted to be the one to finally invent hover technology, then we could all be riding around in flying cars and suchlike by now.
Of course by that time I realized I never had much aptitude for the sciences.
Coffee delivery. *Good * coffee! Oh, how I dream about a truck pulling right up to my window or door and handing me my mocha…my gorgeous, heavenly mocha…and i fork over cash and slug down that caffeine.
Here’s another one: since Gillette has now upped the ante with a five-bladed razor, it’s time to just blow the inevitable six, seven and eight-bladed razors out of the water.
My pitch: a 1,000-bladed razor. Micro-blades on a 2" x 1" shiny pad, each blade only visible with an electron micrograph. Just draw it across the skin and bada bing, smooth as a whelp’s buttock.