Ideas are fun, interesting, and can create valuable changes to the world. To end the year at Concept Frontier, here are 30 free ones to use however you like.
Bonus idea!
The Fame-O-Meter
A web crawler that analyses and scores an individual’s social media influence. It does this by identifying their social media accounts, total exposure across different social media platforms, their total follower counts, and any matching public profiles across the internet, and the exposure of those.
It display’s any individual’s fame level on a bell-curve chart drawn from all individuals for whom it has performed this analysis.
Thanks for learning!
Michael
- Legislation requiring manufacturers to provide post-consumption collection and processing of all plastic packaging of their products post-consumption.
- An exercise machine involving resistance from a container slowly filling with water. Rather than adding plates to the bar, this increases muscle tension demand slowly.
The purpose is to develop slow-twitch myofibril tissue, and the metric for gains are time under tension per rep, water weight reached per rep, and number of reps. - A dipping sauce combining Chipotle sauce and Japanese mayonnaise.
- A website that publishes photos of people putting messages in glass bottles and lobbing them into the sea (with the website's URL written in the message or embossed on the bottle) for people who find the message to post on the same website and tell people where their message ended up.
The bottle contains a positional tracking tab that charts ocean currents.
The data is generated via this social game available to everyone to play. - A test protocol in which participants are given the opportunity to buy one raffle ticket.
Control groups:
Group 1 is all participants who do not want to buy any tickets.
Group 2 wants to buy a ticket but is told the tickets are sold out, and is therefore forced to keep their money.
Group 3 buys a ticket but their money is handed back to them immediately after they purchase their ticket. They also get to keep the ticket.
Group 4 is given their money back immediately after the raffle is called.
Reactions of the group are measured by a mandatory questionnaire as to how pleased they are on a scale of 1-10 to have their money.
The test is about how valuable the money they get back is at different stages: whether $10 is worth more earlier or later or at a particular point in the raffle process, to demonstrate the value of money relative to transaction events. - A chemical that suppresses the swallow reflex! Allowing indulgence in delicious foods and chemicals (like Trans fats) without resulting blood-uptake after compulsive swallowing: Just chew, taste, and spit, like a monster.
- A household recycling processor that transforms waste plastics into standardised material used by any standardised 3D printer.
- Project marketplace.
People are creative but lazy. There are billions of projects that people have started that never get finished. They take these things with them to the grave.
Project Marketplace lets you sell partially developed ideas -- be it a book, and invention, an app, a tool, or a piece of art -- to any interested parties. They pay you what the IP is worth to them, and you sell either the full stake or a partial stake: the buyer acquires rights to theentire existing work as is, whatever form that's in. The buyer can develop it to completion or on-sell it as they please, without credit to the originator (or on-seller).
This will provide a platform to sell your inventions, books, and illustrations that you’ve lost interest in.
And to give fans a pathway to purchase rights to intellectual properties they love. - An app called Apollo that listens to what you say and (every x minutes, you configure it, or continuously) it Googles topics you’ve expressed an interest in, a question you have asked, (based on an machine-learned ability to detect topics by keywords, also referencing your search and browsing history if you allow it) and at any stage you can say a voice command (like "What do you think, Apollo?" and your phone will read you something off Wikipedia (or a list of websites you like that you have preset) to contribute to any conversation.
- An easily-adjustable box that allows you to configure its three dimensions: it allows you to check the 3 dimensional space an object will use before you buy it, to see if it actually works as you imagine it would.
Packs down flat to store out of the way. - Income inequality app. Share a percentage of your income with a person in poverty to actually take direct corrective action against income inequality.
Choose between one or more local recipients and global recipients. - A platform that matches you with local people to meet and discuss a topic of your choice, for free or for a fee.
- Experiment: create a measure for imagination.
Give participants a problem, and a set of constraints and ask them to write down as many distinct solutions as they are able to make.
Score based on the number of solutions, circumvention of constraints, and outside contact points (e.g. if a tool, method, or other solution component isn't specified in the constraints, and the participant mentions it in a solution, this is counted toward their imagination score). Solution simplicity and complexity and pattern should also be included in the scoring mechanism.
Note: imagination has no upper limit: each metric is simply a distinct count -- only in this way can responses be comparative: e.g. participant A produced 30 solutions and 3 extra-constraint components. Participant B produced 13 solutions, with 50 extra-constraint components. - A free, open source, standardised rehabilitation programme for convicted criminals in prison that they can voluntarily opt into during their prison term. Participants complete course work and cognitive behavioural conditioning to transform problematic thought processes through use of cognitive training techniques for the formation of healthy and safe information-processing habits.
- An app that uses the accelerometer on your phone to determine how you're moving and outputs videogame sound effects based on certain actions. Maybe running makes an echoing step sound, walking makes a soft crunching, jumping has a springing sound. You can choose your own sounds from a menu, and toggle the whole thing on or off easily.
The point is to make movement more fun. - A web app that scans any article online and produces the 3 most valuable pieces of information based on sentence structure and verb analysis rules.
- Naptent: A car park service that rents out portable vehicle tents for drivers to cover their cars for privacy and sleep. Comes with an optional wakeup service and full car park security.
This service commodity is intended for reducing road deaths and collisions, supporting the vision of the New Zealand Transport Authority - App concept: That's Enough.
An app that detects and forms a list of all the user's apps. The user configures by selecting those apps in their phone that they use to waste time (i.e. for low-cognitive-effort breaks, like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or Chrome).
The app thereafter runs automatically, throwing a "That's enough!" message when you've been screwing around in one of those apps for too long.
You tap to close the message (it won't kick you out of other apps) but it gives you an automated time management check point that's especially useful if you're supposed to be studying or working. - App concept: Hour Yell. An app that shouts out the time every hour in my voice. "Two o'clock!"
Users can record and upload their own voice files in the app for anyone to use. - Legislation requiring all food products to contain (or to cite a web page containing) details of where every raw ingredient originated, location of every supplier and processor, transport distances, fuel types, and location of transport providers.
No production costs or companies need to be named, preserving all appropriate trade secrets, while empowering consumers to make informed consumption choices.
The point is for consumers to have some knowledge about what they're putting into their bodies. - App concept: Otherside messaging service.
Users who have lost a friend or family member can sign up and upload a bunch of idioms and sayings that their loved one used to say to them, including a list of nicknames they would use, and profile photos of the deceased.
The service sends the recipient a message to their verified phone number, (to avoid abuse) one message per day, matching one item from the list of sayings (or a generic one like "I'm proud of what you're doing with your life"), one item from the nicknames list (including the recipient's own first name), and with a photo from the list.
The effect is receiving a lifelike depiction of the loved one you miss to feel like they are still here and reachable.
The service allows message back, so you can talk to your loved one and have a sense of dialogue even though they are gone. - Shut App Your Face. You open it, and tap the screen. Your phone says "Shut up" from a randomly selected sound file, each in a different voice.
Input: user taps screen.
The sequential commands are:
1. The screen highlights/fades to visually indicate the user has tapped it
2. It "randomly" generates a number between 1 and N (N = the highest fileID number in the DB table
3. It sends an HTTP 'GET' request to the DB to retrieve the sound file corresponding to the fileID
4. It plays the file through the device’s speaker
5. It closes the app (this feature can be disabled in settings) - Guitar seam leggings.
A pair of leggings with five raised seams the diameter of guitar strings down the inside of the leg. Strum her leg like a guitar when she rests it on your lap.
Matching guitar fret socks. - App concept: Phoney
The app that gets you out of anything.
To use it you simply tap once to generate a fake call serving pre-recorded dialogue from a demanding relative or "your doctor" telling you that you need to be somewhere and do something right now, it's urgent and important it can't wait. It's loud enough for the content to be heard by those nearby, and is demanding and shouting and scripted so you can respond any way you like and the caller's belligerence will come through and make semantic sense no matter what you do. - A bookmark sticker you just stick in the front cover. It's a circular card with a window and a rotatable wheel of card underneath. You turn it until it matches the page number you're on.
Benefits:
Twice as accurate as a normal bookmark which only marks a 2 page spread, not a single page.
Adheres to the book: never misplace your bookmark.
Mark important page numbers in the bookmark without dog-earing or writing on the book. - A high-end cleaning service to forensically sterilise all surfaces in an environment. Optionally provides pre- and post-clean forensic reports for comparison, to enable you to see exactly how thorough the cleaners actually were...
- Science Snacks. A brand of snack food which has colourful and informative explanations with diagrams on all compounds in the food and how they interact with the body during chewing, absorption, and cellular action.
- A velcro wrist strap between pram and pram-pusher, like on a surfboard, so the pram can't roll away if you lose grip on it for a moment.
- A non-toxic foam football with instructions printed on it to take a selfie holding it, post on social media with a particular hashtag, and throw it onward into your North, West, East, or South neighbour's yard.
Contains a geotagging internal chip for tracking purposes. - Rapping paper: gift wrapping paper with lyrics from licensed rap songs on it.
Bonus idea!
The Fame-O-Meter
A web crawler that analyses and scores an individual’s social media influence. It does this by identifying their social media accounts, total exposure across different social media platforms, their total follower counts, and any matching public profiles across the internet, and the exposure of those.
It display’s any individual’s fame level on a bell-curve chart drawn from all individuals for whom it has performed this analysis.
Thanks for learning!
Michael
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