Services or products you’ve thought of that you are sure would make a fortune but you’ve never pursued. And if you want, explain why you never followed through.
When the antenna ball craze was at its peak about 10 years ago, I thought of Little Antenna Guy, a man-shaped figure that attaches perpendicularly to an antenna with plastic hands so that when you are driving it would appear that he was hanging on for dear life, and had a facial expression to match. I also thought that if there could be some sort of spring so the faster you drove, the longer his arms would get, that would be cool. And if there was a noise-making thing inside that emitted a screaming sound that got higher pitched the faster you went, it would be even cooler.
After all the “Support our Troops” magnetic ribbons started appearing, I wanted to make a brown one, with a buckle on one end and holes on the other that said “Support our Pants.” Then one where the loop was the waist of a jock strap and said “Support our Nuts.” Then one with two loops that were the shoulder straps of a bra that said “Support our Boobs.”
Why I didn’t pursue them them: I’m lazy. And I have no idea where to begin. Anyone with gumption is welcome to my ideas gratis. All I ask is that if you do make them you send one to me.
A national chain of lottery stores. You could go in and buy lottery tickets from any state rather than just the state you’re in. People with connections to other states could play their “hometown” lotteries and “hot” lotteries would be able to sell to more customers. States might lost some local customers to other lotteries but they would benefit from all the additional customers from the rest of the country.
I never pursued it because it would take a huge investment to get off the ground. You’d pretty much have to start it nationwide and you’d probably need to get a lot of lobbying and legal work done to get it going.
feathers and scales come from the same embryonic tissue-- it’s just a question of which chemicals the baby critter receives in the egg. as such, it should be possible to breed/genetically engineer a bird covered in scales rather than feathers.
this animal would basically be a dinosaur. selling a tame version of it at pet stores would make millions.
Around 1985, we had the idea of a chain of workshops. You would join, and then you could rent time on woodworking or metalworking equipment, workbenches, welding equipment, electronics equipment, etc. Bring your own supplies or buy them there. There would be optional classes. We would have called it The Wood Shop, The Metal Shop, The Electronics Lab, etc.
We decided that it was undoable because the insurance would be too expensive.
PersonCellComputer. A pair of little apps, one for your cellphone platform of choice, one for your OS of choice on your computer. You specify a hotkey, like F11 or ⌘-⌥-D or Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D or whatever. After doing so, whatever text you highlight in any application/program is sent to your cellphone with the instrux “dial this string”.
Computer-side application is open source; the PC version responds to VB instrux (with option to disable or restrict to user-defined params); the Mac version is AppleScriptable.
Also comes with an enable-disable hotkey to pass keystrokes-as-keystrokes directly to cellphone instead; so you can bring up your contacts list, scheduler, or any of a zillion cellphone-OS-specific applications that normally accept input only via pushing cellphone data-entry keys (or doing synch) and instead input in real-time from your computer keyboard.
Also comes with VirtualScreen. Little window pops up on your computer, clone of your cellphone screen, pixel-for-pixel. Mouse arrow treated as equiv of finger/stylus button pushing. Hardware buttons on various devices emulated as virtual buttons outside of VirtualScreen window.
CellPhoneOS versions of sw strictly proprietary and issued as rawest of machine code, hard to hack. (or some such thing. don’t point and laugh, I get to hire consultants if I’m really doing this, yes?)
Customizable ringtones based on the incoming number, so you know whether it’s family, business or a telemarketer without having to get up.
This was back when cordless phones and speed dial were something neat. Nowadays, it wouldn’t be anything special. I never did anything with the idea because there didn’t really seem to be any way to get into it. Very few people were connected to the Internet then, and phones generally weren’t designed to be customizable.
You know how kitchen garbage cans have those pedals to step on that open the tops and when you take your foot off the top comes back down? Why can’t we have a toilet that does the same thing so that when guys need to take a whiz they just stroll in, step on the dealy, pee, and then the seat automatically goes back down.
I had this idea last weekend and everyone thought I was nuts.
