My suggestion for Amazon or Goodreads: “When Last We Left Our Heroes.”
This would be a feature that’s either crowdsourced or done by English majors desperate for work: books that are sequels would have a blurb on the website that includes all the big things you need to remember from the last book in order to appreciate this one. It’d be like:
and so on.
So many times I’m excited by a series, but when the new book comes out a few years after the last one, and I’ve read a hundred or so books in between, it’s incredibly hard to remember what’s going on. Wikipedia synopses only get me so far, given how badly they’re usually written. I want something that’s breezy, readable, and focused on what I need to know in order to jump into the action.
If ever a battery is invented that lasts a year instead of a few hours, this idea will look ridiculous. Remember back when we had to charge our phones every day?
Until you get someone who neglects to charge their device for 11.5 months.
I want to build a coffee shop that targets those looking for conversation. A keyboard at each table puts
the topic of conversation on a main board that displays the status of a groups. It might say open group, Cincinnati Reds or wildlife or cooking, whatever you choose as a topic. It could just say general and be changed as a conversation develops.
Also encourage some games such as scrabble or any popular table game.
Yep, I use my phone pretty hard. I check Imgur, FaceBook, the weather radar, news, mail, texts, etc all day long.
I plug my phone in any time I’m driving or at a site (like a bar) that offers charging spots. If my phone is <60% charged when I go to bed I plug it in.
Also have lots of books on various subjects on the walls. Nothing gets people talking like seeing another person reading a book and graciously saving them from the hazards of the printed word.
We have one all-you-can-eat Japanese place here that does that, and I found it significantly more annoying than their rivals who just have regular menus, and you write your order down on a piece of paper.
Mainly it’s because you only get one tablet per table, so only one person can really read it at one time, so you’re constantly passing it back and forth every time someone wants to know if they have X on the menu. And then you have to swipe from page to page, so if the other person changed pages, you’d have to go back to find what you were looking at earlier. It was also harder to keep track of what had been ordered.
With the other place, everyone gets a menu, and one person writes it all down, so I can be looking at tempura while you’re perusing sashimi, and if we somehow duplicate an order, the person doing the writing will notice right away.
I’d like somebody at Windows to figure out how Android does one-click Print Screen. Or even 2-click, or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6-click would be a nice improvement. Reducing it to seven-click would at least show a good faith effort.
I feel like the development of good external batteries has really changed the importance of charging stations. It used to be that at the airport, you had to fight for a charger, but in the last couple years, I haven’t seen that. I do a lot of school trips, where there are 500 people hanging out in a school cafeteria all day. It used to be that by noon, literally every outlet had a phone growing out of it, and lots of groups were swapping people through, keeping everyone barely alive. It’s not like that now, and I see tons of batteries. I have two myself, and generally take one and leave one charging every day.
I think that pay-at-the-pump should add carhop services during peak hours. I know that gas stations took a hit when people quit going in to pay for gas, because they lost the opportunity for impulse sales. Half the pumps have screens to show adds these days. Make it a touch menu, let me order a soda and a candy bar and put it on the same charge; someone can run it out. When it’s not peak hours, so it doesn’t justify the staff, have it be that instead I can run in and pick up the stuff I already paid for.
I like that too, and this is coming from someone who will go out of my way to not patronize gas stations that have video ads (round here the only big chain that doesn’t is 7-11). If you could order from a video screen that would be another story.
Any place that has multiple types of hot sauces renaming one of them so that it just isn’t called “hot sauce”. This leads to confusion as Taco Belll’s medium hot sauce is just called “Hot” thus if I request hot sauce at the window they always ask me what flavor and I wind up saying Hot again. They never ask me the second time if I ask for Fire or Mild the first time.
I wish restaurants gave me volume control for the speakers right over my head. I don’t even understand why most restaurants have music playing during busy times. It’s already so loud in the building that you can’t hear the music other than the base line. Please let me shut off the one over my head, so I can talk with my dining companions.
Grocery stores with “find my stuff” kiosks. Hardware stores too. Let me punch in “aerosol duck fat” (yes, it exist), and have the kiosk point me to aisle 7, stack 3, shelf 4. “Oh, and by the way, we’ve got 3 left.” Warehouses all over the place have at least this level of inventory control, so the software exists. And no, I don’t want an app for that. Put a touch screen at the end of every 4th aisle. I don’t want to load more apps, or juggle my phone while I’m shopping.
There is a company advertising this on TV right now. It’s the commercial where the lady slides under the car alongside the mechanic, keeps pointing out places for the polisher to redo, etc. I have no idea what company it is.