A Google Map treasure hunt

Long, long ago, back when ‘Google’ and ‘Yahoo’ were just silly words to most people, I made an internet treasure hunt called ‘Wuzzle the WWW puzzle.’ I wrote to businesses with websites and asked them to hide a secret link on their page, and in exchange for the extra hits this could bring them I asked them to donate prizes. I still have a few reproduction world maps that were posted to me from a map shop in Hawaii! My plan stalled when I tried to buy the domain name Wuzzle.com from a gay couple in California, and I lost interest in the idea…

I love Google Maps with its satellite pictures of the streets I know. When my partner goes away for work he sometimes sends me a link to the satellite map of his hotel, and I can see what he could see out of his window and feel like I know where he is.

Google are improving their satellite maps in some cities to show street level  real time views, of course this has caused controversy and complaints abot invasion of privacy, but Google insist they’re showing only public streets and claims there’s no need for fuss.

Perhaps a Google Map internet treasure hunt could lead to shops, organisations or people with web sites and you could visit these to get another clue?

I like the idea of You Tube recorded clues too… Or perhaps even clues hidden on internet forums..? It would be good to scatter them through all the forms of the internet. It makes me think of those stories about people using online communities to create make-believe personalities. I remember hearing about someone who became well-loved on a cat lovers forum, they faked an illness to get sympathy and then went as far as to fake their own death to get reaction. I think there’s a kind of mystery in the ‘no one knows who you really are’ aspect of online lives this could be used in an online treasure hunt. Maybe you could be a kind of spy to find out who someone really is.

It’s not exactly to do with a treasure hunt, but I’ve thought of trying an email version of the ’six degrees of seperation’ experiment. This famous experiment involved sending a package from Omaha to Boston always by sending it to someone who might know the intended recipient of the package. It usually took six people to reach it’s target. I wonder how many times an email would have to be forwarded to get from the UK to Australia? Evidence suggests the world is ’smaller’ than it used to be, which should make it less than six, and especially if the target is on Facebook.

I suppose this online treasure hunt idea may be inspired by Geocaching, which uses the internet to list the Latitude and Longitude of hidden ‘treasures’ so that gps users can play a hide or seek adventure game. I haven’t tried this new sport, but I’d like to.

Perhaps an easy way to make an online treasure hunt would be using Google Earth’s abiliy to mark locations on it’s satellite imagery of the earth. Google Earth is a downloadable application that’s more or less an upgrade of it’s Google Map satellite images, but one of it’s key features is that user’s can create ‘content’ placing markers and text on it’s world globe, this might be anything from ‘Football Stadiums of the World’ to ‘My trip around Asia’.

I’ll have to have a think about adding, ‘My Treasure Hunt’.

Fridge Magnets for Cats and Fuzzy Felt T-shirts

Our cat, Dolly, sometimes carries a teaspoon around the house, and the other day she wore a badge. In fact her badge wearing antics were the inspiration for this whole invention-a-day plan. Her badge didn’t say, ‘Invent!’ or anything like that, but it got me thinking about badges for cats, and inventing in general.

I need to explain… There’s a bad cat who visits our house to pee on our floor whenever he can. So we fitted a magnetic cat flap which only Dolly can open with her special magnetized collar. A side effect of this magnetized collar is that Dolly sometimes carries spoons (or anything else metal come to think of it) around the house. whenever she gets close to anything metal it sticks to her colllar, and this is why she was wearing my daughter’s badge the other day.

So I would like to invent a cat (or dog) collar with magnetic panels where you could stick fridge magnet style badges to decorate it. You could stick on shiny jewels or flowery pictures (for girl pets) or funny slogans, or your cat’s name, or anything really… Kids would love it! I’m not really sure what the pets would think, I don’t suppose they’d mind.

A related invention idea that I came up with ages ago involves velcro T-shirts. I thought it would be nice to have football t-shirts with a green velcro panel n the shape of a pitch, and you could stick on velcro player pictures/names, to show your team’s first eleven in the formation you think they ought to play.

I’ve since seen velcro t-shirts where you stick letters to write your own slogans.  I bought one  but could rarely think what to write on it. Maybe these stick-on t-shirts would be better for children using pictures? You could have a fish tank with stickable fish, or a rabbit hutch with a rabbit and a carrot… If I had time I could make a fuzzy felt t-shirt for my daughter, I think that would be a similar idea.

Other ideas for velcro t-shirts and stickers..? You could play games on your T-shirt - snakes and ladders, suduko, chess. Or how about an Advent Calendar t-shirt for December? By Christmas it would have 24 pictures stuck!

I was thinking about magnetic cat collars with badges on them, but you could also have a magnetic badge. You could vary the badge’s design with magnetic pieces to make a mosaic pattern, or a funny face, or write words using magnetic letters.

Perhaps instead of velcro you could have clothes with magnets sewn in? Maybe these could come with magnetic sticky spots to stick on things you’d want to stick to your clothes. Kids could stick their lego creations to themselves, or pictures they’d drawn, or else you could stick a teaspoon to yourself so you always had one handy. I can’t take the credit for that idea, my cat, Dolly, thought of that one.

Punting on the Punters

I like betting on horses, and the Eurovision song contest, and I used to bet on Big Brother too – until I got sick of having to watch it. Don’t worry that I’m wasting my baby milk and nappy money, I have an online betting account that lets me place teensy 10p bets. Although I sometimes bet 25p if I’m feeling adventurous! It’s obviously not about making (or losing) money for me, it’s a challenge, a game, and I’m enjoying learning about odds, and form, and speed ratings and all that.

I much prefer betting on evening racing when the kids are out of the way. We’ll pack them off to bed and then get out our ‘His n’ Hers’ laptops and study the race cards on the Racing Post.com. It’s a shame that most races finish around 9pm so we never have long to play! There is televised racing every evening from the US, but we’ve searched and Googled but can’t find much in the way of free form guides to those American horses. Betting on horses without any information is no fun at all. I’m not much of a racing expert but I do like to think about my bets, and pretend I know which horse has a chance.

So, my second invention-a-day (for May) invention is an online 24 hour a day betting opportunity, so you can use skill and judgement to bet whenever you want to. I love the intricacies of horse racing, and admire the innovation of sites like Betfair, but I’d love it if there was a blend of the two to make a  purpose built online sports betting opportunity. My inspiration is the idea that you can bet on anything, even raindrops rolling down a window pane. So what’s the online equivalent of those raindrops?

When I’m not a full time mum I work at PokerStars online poker site. I know that to help generate their random numbers they work on the mouse movements of the tens of thousands of players who are online at any one time. So that got me thinking… What other random factors could you use? What if you could bet on the next word typed into Google? Nah, not enough skill or stats to analyse. I want a virtual raindrop with a history and complexity to give me something to think about. What about betting on the new online ’sports’ – shooter/clan games like Counter-Strike? Hmm, but perhaps it’s too easy for players to fix the results.

I had lots more ideas… I thought of worm racing where users breed and race virtual worms. I thought of poetry battles where poets have a minute or two to create something and then a public vote on the best. I thought of a gambling themed ‘Second Life’ style world, a Gambletopia…

But my favourite idea is the simplest. I’d like to bet on the bettors.

I don’t know much about US horse racing, or soccer betting, or Wimbledon tennis, but I’m sure there are many tipsters who do. So what if there was a website where I could log on and see the predictions of half a dozen tipsters and bet on who would do best? Imagine they’ve made their predictions for the days racing at a US track like Turf Paradise, or a Saturday afternoons soccer. I could look at those tipsters previous results. I could see their ‘form’ and history… I would look at the odds on each and choose which I think will make the most profit.

Ideally there’d be ‘in running’ betting with the odds changing as the events went on. The site would update the tipsters progress as the races are run. I could follow the picks on the TV, and maybe the site could even have online chat from the betting subjects, a commentry with the tipsters bantering about each others selections and  odds. They could talk up their chances in the next race and it would be interesting to see how that chat effected the betting market. Knowing the way a tipster ‘talked’ a race could give you as much of an edge as knowing how a horse ran in training.

It’s all pie in the sky of course. I’ll have to back a million to 1 horse to ever have the cash to develop this idea, but I lie pie in the sky dreaming. And maybe online pie throwing could even be another gambling invention?

The Packed-Lunch Packet Perforator

I suppose I may have spoiled my daughter, well, she was an only child for her first seven years, until her baby brother came along last year. I often find myself helping her to do things instead of teaching her the skills to do it for herself. Like opening things. Perhaps if she was left to fend for herself in the wild, she might develop skills to bite through the KitKat wrapper to get to the chocolate, or try stamping on a packet of crisps to get to the bag’s tasty contents. Instead she’ll just hand the packet to me and whine, ‘Mum, will you open this?’ And so I’ll open it for her.

School packed lunches are a problem. She’ll eat the sandwich, and the apple, and for some reason she can always get into a cheesey string… but I’ll check her lunch box after school and find the wrapped stuff still wrapped. She’ll try and fail to get into the packets.  It’s not entirely her fault. There are all kinds of healthy fruit-based bars designed for packed lunches these days, but they’re nearly always wrapped in tough foil that even grown-ups find tricky to open.  So… my first invention-of-the-day is a device for kids to help open packeted stuff in their lunch boxes.

Of course it would have to be safe, no sharp edges… I’d imagine the main market for this gizmo would be kids new to school who are still used to their Mum’s helping them get into their mini-bags of apricots and such like.

I went to a Tuppaware party once and didn’t buy any of the plastic on offer, but I came away with a free gift – an orange opener. It was just a short stick of plastic with a thick sharp lip for scoring your orange skin. I think something similar might just perforate packed-lunch packets. Or alternatively it could be a tiny springed hole-punch like device, with the plastic in animal shapes.

Of course this is just a place for ideas, I’m not going to actually make a proto-type packed-lunch packet perforator.  But if anyone out there wants to make this, or knows where one is available please let me know.

I still taunt my daughter each day with those unopenable chocolate biscuits, I keep hoping one day she’ll find a way in.  Or at the very least learn to ask, ‘Will you open this, please.’

This blog…

I spent December writing a comedy sketch each day. I’ve come up with loads of silly ideas for kids games. Now I’m going to challenge myself to invent something new every day for May. I’m not going to physically invent anything in a shed in my back garden, with screws and hammers and double-sided sticky tape. I don’t actually have a shed, or double-sided sticky tape… and most importantly I don’t have enough time. I’m a mum to a 8 year old and a 7 month old baby who doesn’t sleep well at nights.

I’m doing this because maternity leave makes my head feel like it’s turned to ‘Oooh-look-he-smiled!-Should-I-puree-parsnip-or-give-him-rusk-again?-You-know-I-think-he-might-actually-need-the-bigger-size-of-nappies.-Ah-nearly-time-to-pick-up-your-big-sister…Oh-crap-I-fell-asleep-on-the-sofa-and-it’s-only-9.30′ kind of mush.

Aside from whining about sleep deprivation and kids stuff I like betting on horses, reading books about behavioural science and Dungeons and Dragons, laughing at ‘The Apprentice’, cooking pasta, writing childrens books, taking old clocks to pieces, and now I’ve decided I’m going to enjoy mentally inventing, um… new inventions. I’m not sure if any of these hobbies will inspire any of my invent-a-day ideas. I’m not even sure if the inventions will practical, or silly, or likely to make someone a fortune if they head for their shed and actually build the things, with their hammers, screws and double-sided sticky tape. I’m just passing the time y’know? Trying to fill my head with more than the being-a-mum stuff. I like being a mum but I’m scared that singing ‘Wind the bobbin up’ six times a day has wound my head into a fuzzy lambykins on Old McDonald’s farm, cloud cuckoo in the sky with the twinkle twinkle stars, kind of humpty dumpty mess. Or something. Where was I? Hmm, do you think he might need a nappy change..?

Well I hope I’ll stick to my invention-a-day (for May) challenge, but it’s possible I’ll just pop down the shops for nappies. Size 5 Pampers Active Fit. And maybe I could puree sweet potato again for his lunch?

We’ll see…