Baby Safety Stuff

Our eight month old baby is crawling now, and pulling himself up on things, and seems determined to bash himself on every sharp edge he can find. My partner spends every day carrying him to safety as he moans, ‘Someone should invent something to keep babies away from the dangerous stuff.’ So this post is for him.

I think there needs to be a portable kind of baby proof fencing, something a bit like a fire guard that you can move around the house and use to easily block of areas you want to keep a baby away from. When he was in the ktchen I’d put it in front of the cat food bowls, or the oven if that was hot. When we have the patio doors open I could put it there to stop him gettng in the garden when I wasn’t looking. When he’s crawling around the living room I’d put it in front of that coffee table that he always seems to bash into.

I wish something like this existed, he’s just fallen over, better go pick him up again…

Cottage Concierge

We’re thinking of going on holiday and staying in a cottage in the country. It’s nice that there are so many cottages around with inglenook fireplaces, exposed oak beams and even four poster beds, but I didn’t see any with wireless internet. I know it’s not exactly in the spirit of ‘getting away from it all’ to take a laptop and do some work, or check emails, or Google like a champ… But it would be nice to have the option, and if you did want to get away from it all you could just leave your laptop at home.

So my invention-a-day idea was going to be a service offering pay-as-you-go internet in holiday cottages. Until I thought that mobile internet on phones or USB modems was getting so widely available that that was a silly idea. So I adapted my plan… So, what if there was a service to offer ‘extras’ to self catering holidaymakers? It could provide a grocery pack on arrival, or chilled champagne, or flowers and chocolates for a romantic break. It could arrange newspaper delivery, supply barbecue stuff, maybe even arrange maid service, or one of those pay-per-day modem sticks for your laptop.

Perhaps it would work as a franchise business? It would be simple part time work for people in holiday areas. Cottage owners might advertise the business for free because it ‘adds value’ to the holidays they offer, and you would advertise their holiday cottage on a website in exchange. Of course you could book this stuff online at the website. If you have internet. Best do it before you go on holiday to a cottage with an inglenook fireplace and exposed oak beams but no wireless…

A C.C.C (a bit like a P.P.P)

My daughter loves going to the ‘P.P.P’ which stands for Plate Painting Place. This is also her favourite tongue twister. It’s a cafe where you paint ceramics - plates and cups and bowls and teapots. She usually paints a plate. They fire your art in a kiln when you’re done and you collect it a few days later. It’s fun to do and you get to drink your tea in a fun homemade mug afterwards.

My idea is for a children’s cooking cafe. A place to go and make cakes, or sweets to give as gifts, or just to go and have fun creating your own lunch. You may think, ‘If I want to do that I could do it at home.’ But my cooking cafe would take away all the boring dull bits, like finding a recipe, shopping for things, and weighing out the ingredients, and of course clearing up! Cafe customers would just do the fun mixing and decorating bits. Kids could go along and ice their own cakes or make an ice cream sundae. It would be fun for grown ups too, it could be a more active kind of lunch date with a friend. You could glug a glass of wine as you chopped and stirred, with an expert advisor on hand to help you if you got stuck. And afterwards you could giggle about the shoddy cooked results as you ate.

I think the only problem might be worries about letting the public have a go with sharp knives and hot ovens. Maybe the only way to do it would be if the cooking cafe assistants did the slightly-dangerous bits, although that would be a shame.

A fake robot goldfish

Our pet fish, Shiny, died yesterday. I feel quite sad about it. It’s not like he had any real personality to miss, but he did look so pretty swimming around his designer fish tank filled with its pretty fish tank plants. I got quite a shock when I went to feed him last night and saw his dead fishy eyes staring at me from the bottom of the tank. Now we have to do something about that little fishy corpse. It’s not a job anyone is relishing on this lazy Sunday morning.

So, I started thinking, wouldn’t it be good if you could have a pretty robot fish swimming around your designer fish tank? There’d ever be any nasty fish death to deal with, there’d be no need to feed the thing each day, and no pressure to change the water. You can get fake house plants, why not fake goldfish too?

My alternative invention-a-day invention is a dead fish removal service. I’d pay a fish tank full of money for someone to do this fishy dirty work for me…

An eBay of Betting…

Yesterday I talked about a kind of eBay for services, as you may know I’m quite keen on gambling, so I started wondering how the eBay model could be adapted to make a gambling website?

I think it would be good to have a betting exchange  just for friends. Members could set up password protected markets on absolutely anything. If someone in the office is having a baby, why not bet on the sex of the baby, or the weight, or when it will arrive? Friends playing a pool tournament could bet on who would win the match. Or you could add interest to your poker home game by making odds on who’d win the tournament. You could even bet on a favourite TV show, or whether the boss had a long lunch yet again… I blogged about finding a virtual ‘raindrop rolling down the window’ to bet on, well with this gambling site you could really bet with your mates on a bunch of racing raindrops.

The ‘owner’ of a market (the person who set it up) would have to close the market when a result was decided, and that would trigger the pay out to go ahead. To sidestep complicated legal stuff this site could be set up with ‘play money’ only (in which case it would have to charge a fee for membership rather than commision.)  This might work because real money could still change hands in the real world between the friends who are playing the markets. You could run this site without any legal problems if it was done this way. However, it  would be a LOT better to operate with members making real money deposits and having the markets settled automatically when they’re closed.

 I think it would be nice to have a ‘just for fun’ betting option, to get people interested, and for people who just want to play for ‘bragging rights’. I often have ‘play bets’ with my boyfriend on all sorts of silly things, if we were members of a site like this we’d be able to keep track of who was winning!

The site could start out by offering these private betting markets but eventually aim to offer public betting on markets created by its users. Maybe members could  prove they can be trusted by paying out on a set number of private markets before being allowed to create open-to-all public markets?

I am cautious about the idea of a completely open ’betting marketplace’, a completely self-regulating public gambling site would run the risk of results being fixed, and imagine the disputes about unfair payouts in carelessly worded markets! eBay lives by the rule of ‘caveat emptor’ if I knew latin I could tell you the phrase for ‘let the bettor beware!’ I think this idea might only work in small scale markets between friends, even then there’d have to be dire warnings saying ‘only bet when you understand a market and trust the person running the thing.’ Having said that, thousands of pounds change hands on eBay between complete strangers and their simple feedback system does appear to keep people honest.

Hmm, I realise even password protected ‘private bets’ could become public if someone revealed the password on an online forum. Perhaps one way to keep it ‘between friends’ was if it existed as some kind of Facebook application. Bah, I don’t really like Facebook..!

Anyway, I’m done with this invention-a-day idea, I need to check the odds for this evening’s racing…

Email Mentors

I love eBay. I just now went and bought some travel sick bags for car sick kids. Those were going to be one of my inventions-of-the-day, until I found out they were already invented. But mine would have been better and have jolly pictures on them.

Anyway… My invention today is for a site that’s similar to eBay, only instead of people trading goods, they trade help and advice -  it’s an email mentoring service. There’d be a ton of categories, just like eBay, but instead of ‘baby clothes’ and ‘computer accesories’ there might be ‘weaning advice’ and ‘PC problems.’

Users could offer their services to make money, or buy them if they needed help, and everything would be priced on a ‘per email’ basis. There’d be some low stakes bit-of-fun stuff like, ‘dating advice’ - where you could email someone your online dating profile and get feedback from ‘lovequeen385′ or  else there’d be more professional support services at a much higher price, like translation  work, CV writing, proof reading, racing tips, health or legal advice. In the same way as eBay buyers and sellers give and receive feedback to ensure the deal is good, email mentors would be given feedback on their work. You could ensure you picked a mentor who’s well-qualified with a good response time by reading their profile and ratings.

The service could also be used for distance learning schools, perhaps you could enrol yourself on a creative writing course and take modules by email? Existing Distance Learning schools could get new customers by advertising their services on the site. Perhaps there could even be free mentoring services, volunteers helping people get over problems like eating disorders or addiction?

Another idea could be offering live chat support (using msn messenger) instead of just emails. And the site would of course make loads of money (like eBay)  by charging a listing fee, or else taking a cut of each advice email sold.

I suppose I came up with this idea because I work in Customer Support. I help people with their poker problems by email, and I just think it would be great if you could email an expert for help with absolutely anything!

The closest thing to this idea is something like Yahoo Answers, but that’s free advice from members of the public with an opinion but no real expertise. I think you get what you pay for, and I’d be glad to pay for email support if I had a problem. I might even become an email mentor to make myself a few pennies. I might sell advice on..? Learning vegetarian cookery… at 10p a recipe! Writing a blog? Cat care…! I wonder if people could even become professional eMentors, a bit like people earning a living as eBay traders?

Anyway, I like this invention and wish I had the money to develop it. If there was an email mentoring service I might ask it’s ‘business ideas expert’ if it might be successful…

Bleeping Dots

This invention is about little stick-on dots that you put on things you sometimes lose, like purses, keys, TV remotes, combs, kids… And there should be a device with buttons that you press when you’ve lost the thing-with-a-dot on it, and then the little dot bleeps so that you can find it again.

‘Use by’ date bar code reader

There’s a big fuss about not wasting food at the moment, and I don’t just mean the battles at our tea table when we try to get our eight year old to eat her vegetables…  Apparently a third of the food we buy ends up in the bin. You may well have seen the fruity newspaper adverts for the Government’s ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign. The website encourages people to rummage in the back of the fridge, cut the mould off that lump of cheese you find, and use it in a recipe for a nutritious cheese and old bread recipe. All this is no doubt written by a retired nanny who was brought up on war time rationing. Although I do think this website is a Good Thing.

Anyway, on to my invention… I’d like to see a device on my fridge and kitchen cupboards that could scan barcodes as the food gets put away or taken out, plus it should read the ‘Use by date’ of the food. Then in the morning it could note if food needed eating and say, ‘Eat those yoghurts!’ And it could also be used to keep tabs on any shopping that needs buying, it would know if you’d run out of eggs or were likely to be in need of cheese. Perhaps it could even print out a shopping list? Or log into Tescos to do your online shopping? 

While we’re on some kind of green/saving the planet/say ‘no’ to waste/’let’s recycle!’ theme, have you heard of Freecycle? It’s an email list where people offer things they don’t need any more to people who might be able to use them. It’s very simple, you just write to the list with an ‘Offered’ subject heading, or read other people’s ‘Wanted’s. It’s usually something like ‘Offered: Plant pots (slightly chipped)’ and ‘Wanted: Large Greenhouse (or conservatory)’ although I have sometimes seen goodies like cars and boats given away. I’ve used Freecycle to get free baby stuff, and we used ito get rid of an old (but perfectly useable) TV.  Maybe the ‘Love Food Hate waste’ people could do something similar? They could organise a way for people to get rid of food they’re not going to get through, perhaps streets could have a ’we don’t need this’ box for unwanted food. I must admit I often chuck out yoghurts when they reach their ‘use by’ date and I can’t face eating three… I’d like a way to share them instead of throwing them away. This plan needs a rethink… Maybe it would be best if it was a  ‘we don’t need this’ community fridge!

Another thrifty/recycling type idea is a way to share baby stuff. It’s amazing how much gubbins a baby needs, but they only use it for a few short months, most of it is in perfectly good shape when you no longer need it and get on to the next lot of gubbins. Perhaps it would be good if there was a club where parents could share clothes/toys/equipment for each stage of their baby’s devopment? I know there are toy libraries already, perhaps a similar service could loan out baby bath chairs and changing tables?

Lots of ideas today. Now excuse me while I eat those three chocolate mousses with todays date on them…

Idiot Driver Reporting Machine (gun)

There’s a website where you can name and shame bad drivers. If you see an idiot at the wheel you can note their registration number and add it to the ‘Better Driving Please’ database. The police won’t actually act on these reports, and that nutter at the wheel probably won’t realise he’s been added… Um, what was the point of that website again?

My invention-of-the-day for today is a computer-ish device to be carried in every car, and used to report bad drivers. Of course you couldn’t type in the bad driver’s registration number if you were driving, so the device would need to be pointed at the offending driver in order to record their number. I think it could be shaped like a gun.

If a bad driver has had enough reports from other road users then he should get a fine, if he has many reports then the police should investigate and take further action. I based this peer report system on the inapproriate chat policy of the online poker site where I work. This system works very well, there are no ‘chat police’ monitoring the tables as such, but if other player’s report a user for bad chat the player will be warned, and if there are numerous reports they’ll be banned from chatting at the tables.

I think the Idiot Driver Reporting Machine would work as a deterrant, as well as an easy way to catch  dangerous drivers on the roads.

Of course the Idiot Driver Reporting Machines would cost a lot of money to install in every car, but as I’m sure they’d make roads safer I’d say it would be worth the cost. I doubt they’d cost any more than your average baby car seat which are compulsory for anyone driving a child.  Of course car owners already pay plenty for road tax, MOT’s and child car seats, at least with this invention they’d get the satisfaction of pointing at any driver who pissed them off and proclaiming the fateful word, ‘Revoked!’

The behind-the-sofa sofa pockets

Just a quick invention today as I look for a comb to I can get ready for Kempton’s Family Day of racing. I can never find my comb. It’s often on the shelf under the coffee table, but not today.

So I was thinking, I’m always short of places to put little things in the living room, combs, or my purse when it’s not in my bag, and the DVD remote too… So wouldn’t it be good if there was a hidden-out-of-the-way pocket on the back of the sofa to keep your bits and bobs in? It could just be a pocket of fabric with a hook to catch it on the sofa-back. Of course this arrangement won’t work for everyone, our sofa has it’s back to the wall so the pocket wouldn’t show, but you could hook this pocket anywhere, like the back of a cupboard door or an armchair.

This is just a little domestic idea, and may be I’ve come over all domestic because I spent the morning sewing elastic onto my baby’s sun hat? But hey, all that nicey-nicey family stuff is going to go out of the window when I get to that race track, throw my kids onto the bouncy castle, and go gambling crazy! Well, at those race track bookies it’s a minimum £2 bet!

Of course a global-internet style use of the comb in the sofa pocket idea would be if Microsoft developed a version of Windows where you could give a button-icon to any task you’re doing on your computer, say an email you’d saved as draft, an internet recipe page, or a spreadsheet of 2 year old’s speed ratings… then you could place these buttons in a ‘pocket’ on your desktop, nice and easy to find again.

If only I could click on my desktop to find a comb to do my hair…