Tag: Entrepreneurs

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Wallet Gone

My wallet is gone and it’s not a bad thing.  Let me explain.

We had our family Hanukkah last Sunday and Lillian took my wallet and gave me a new iPhone case that has a slot in the back that is just large enough to carry a drivers license and a credit card.

This is excellent because it means one less thing to carry around.

Thanks Lillian!

Great Gift.

Segue to the eight levels of giving.

Next getting rid of keys.  I did a little research and the lock companies already have the technology to use Bluetooth from your phone to open your house door.  It is not yet popular for some reason.  I’d guess reliability.  Perhaps I’ll go out on the bleeding edge on this one.

The opportunity here is to think of all the things we carry around with us and think of ways to cram them into a smart phone. Here are a some of the things I carry around in my wallet and brief case:

  • Keys
  • Money
  • Pens and pencils
  • Maps
  • Library card
  • Membership cards
  • Credit card receipts
  • Cameras
  • Mints
  • Business cards
  • Breath Mints
  • Kindle
  • Sun Glasses

The electronic wallet exists and fortunes are going to be made populating it.  Keys are next.

 

 

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Better Windshield Wipers

I was driving in Salem, Oregon a few weeks ago and it was raining.  No surprise there.  The rented van had good windshield wipers but with the ever changing weather it was very difficult to keep the little intermittent knob that adjusts the speed set right.

Later on the same day I was washing my hands in a restaurant bathroom that had a automatic faucet and I had a minor epiphany: put one of the faucet type sensors in the car so that with a flick of your hand you could make the windshield wipers operate.

This idea is so good and so simple that it almost certainly will be incorporated into high-end cars within a few years.  Can I as the inventor make any money on it?  Probably not.  It would require some investment and lots of work to patent it and sell the patent to a car accessory company.   It may already be patented and we just don’t know about it.

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Plumness Jam

The worlds best Jam:

Made by Aty R in limited editions using San Gabriel Valley fruit,

Plumness Jam is only available to people who know people.

I get a jar occasionally and try to avoid gorging myself so that it will last longer. 

I prefer plumness jam on buttered whole wheat toast.

Aty R. is the best!

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Snorkel Hunter

A website that I have touted before is Bridge Hunter.  It is a user developed guide to the historic and interesting bridges in the United States.  Kind of a Wikipedia for bridges, it is very popular with engineers and others that like to see great engineering.

Recently I was asked by someone for advise on where to snorkel in Hawaii and by someone else for advise on where to snorkel in Belize.  I did a search for a Bridge Hunter equivalent for snorkeling and didn’t find one.  Since snorkeling is vastly more popular than looking at bridges it seems like it would easy and profitable to develop a user participation Snorkel Hunter web site.  It would also be a great service to the sport.

A few caveats.  Advertising would have to be low key and it would be important to keep travel consolidators like Expedia and Travelocity off the site.   Also make sure that the site is smart phone accessible and it has good maps.

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Facebook Value

Facebook went public with a valuation of about $100 billion and quickly lost about a third of that value to about $70 billion.  That is still a lot of money and it values each user at about $100.  The question now for Facebook is how do they get a revenue stream that justifies that $100/customer valuation or more?

Coaxing value from friends

Here is my Facebook value idea.  First buy or build a search engine like Google.  Then make one major improvement.  Build into the search algorithm a feature that uses the searches of the users friends and friends of friends to give much better targeted results.

Facebook is uniquely positioned to provide this service because of it’s size.  If the average person has 200 “friends” that means that at the second level there are 40,000 people who are more similar to the user than the common Google searcher.

while providing entertainment

And Facebook has an opening right now to fill this niche.  Both because of their critical mass which no one else has and because it appears to users that Google searches are being dominated by commercial enterprises.

The revenue will come from advertising on the search pages and developing a unique home page that has a customizable combination of search, friends, news, pet photos, clever sayings and other features.

Here is an example:  Last night we heard a speaker talk about “Mofuz” but didn’t know how to spell it.  A search through Google was at first useless.  Using the “friend tuned” Facebook Search Engine could have fixed the spelling error and found that Mofaz is the Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.

A few month ago I had a billion dollar idea for Starbucks.  Now I have a ten billion dollar idea for Facebook.  The Ideapreneur is on a roll.

Buy Facebook.  If they implement this idea it is a bargain.

 

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The Matchbook Museum

The Matchbook Museum is not a place.  It is a website where the curator/owner James Lileks shows matchbooks from his extensive collection along with some witty and illuminating commentary.

The idea of a Matchbook Museum is interesting to me for a few reasons:

  • Online Museums are a new and very good idea that may earn some diligent curators an independent living.
  • Nurit and I have been collecting match books and boxes for a few decades.  We saw Carole B’s collection and started one of our own.  Carole gave me a Piggly Wiggly matchbook fron the 1960’s.
  • Matches are vanishing faster than cigarette smokers.  In the past I have pondered what will replace them as a giveaway

So we have bit of American history that illustrates a potential money making opportunity for someone enterprising who collects something.  It would have to be something that interests tens of thousands of people.  Like nail polish or lipstick.  Or maybe Disneyobelia.  Or postcards?  What about the International Bridge Museum?

The revenue stream is ads for resellers or tourism related companies on the museum site.