Saturday, February 26, 2011

Intelligent cruise control for cars

There are millions of inventions out there for cars, so just sticking this out there. Cruise control has been around for years, but I don't this it's that efficient. A more intelligent system would be to give a +/- speed margin of flexibility and the car uses gravity to accelerate to the max when going downhill, and eases slightly on the throttle to minimize laboring when going uphill. GPS information might maximize efficiency further.

Endothermic jelly/jello

Well, not quite. Just some general ideas about endo/exo-thermic products.

Endo:
- jello takes a while to set, generally overnight. If the jello had additional endothermic ingredients, it would set faster. Cool!

Exo:
Use that stuff that heats your gloves up when skiing - great things! - for other uses also:
- an exothermic tea bag (great for camping trips)
- self baking beans: open can and the material reacts with the air to head up
- etc.

(obv. making the assumption here that the material isn't toxic!)

Airport wifi access

It always bugs me how airport wifi access is so limited/costly/rarely available. A few ideas:
(1) All free wifi, but "surround" the internet window with adverts and also with the occasional ad popup. Can advertise local business etc. in addition to general adverts.
(2) These days, downloading a movie onto e.g. iPad before boarding a plane is desirable. Apple could allow free internet access at airports so that people can download their movies, then give a share of the profits to the airport. Possible restrictions of e.g. itunes store etc. could apply.

Wheelchairs

Walking around Boston with my g/f, I noticed a bunch of public areas that did not contain auto-open doors. Not very wheelchair friendly. It would be helpful to have a wheelchair where you could lock align both wheels, allowing single-arm wheeling, so you could use the other arm to open a door.