Today’s invention is a flag made of two layers of the same material from which weather balloons are constructed.

This is very flexible and yet can contain helium for long periods.

Several small helium-filled spaces would be created when the two sheets were joined, located along the upper edge of the flag.

These would help support the (small) weight of the flag and allow it to ‘fly’ even when the windspeed was very low.

Visiting Australia recently made me think a lot about the dangers of bushfires.

Today’s invention is an attempt to help.

When a fire approaches one of a number of outstations, the temperature difference between the firefront and underground can be used to power eg a Stirling engine.

This could then be used to automatically pump water onto the roof of a building under threat, damping down any windblown sparks and smouldering embers.

I can’t understand how all those Holywood companies expect people to consume movies on handheld devices.

The screensize in general makes watching a film on one wholly different from the big screen experience in a cinema.

Today’s invention is a way to make better mobile movies.

A film is shown to a test audience using eye trackers. This allows determination of where people are looking on the screen.

Small areas centred on these points of interest would then be automatically extracted to form a sequence – a more watchable mobile version of the original product.

Today’s invention is a bicycle frame which incorporates two solid rear wheel discs and a chain cover.

The rear wheel axle is held between the solid disks, so that all the chain and gear change mechanism is encapsulated between them.

This reduces greatly the amount of drag associated with spinning wheels and thrashing drive train on a high speed racing bike.

Synaesthetes come in several different shades (as well as textures, sounds…)

Those of us who associate colours with letters and numbers often have trouble when eg learning mathematical symbols and reading text (My associations include
1=black, 2 =yellow, 3=red/brown, 4=black, 5=mustard…)

Today’s invention therefore is a piece of code which will let a user list their individual associations for an entire set of alphanumerics or other set of symbols and then display each of those symbols on every screen in a pale, complementary colour (eg red for green).

This would lessen the strength of the links to colour and could be finely calibrated to suit the individual concerned.

Given the frequency of traffic jams, today’s invention is a way to render them less excruciatingly boring.

Cars would be equipped with a screen embedded within their boot lids.

When a car became motionless, its screen would automatically start to show a brief movie to the vehicle stopped immediately behind.

The length of the movie chosen by the system would be appropriate to a prediction made of the jam duration by communicating with traffic cameras.

This channel would inevitably include adverts and local driving information as well.

If you have a multi-seat peoplemover vehicle, there is often quibbling within a family about who gets to sit where.

Today’s invention is to have the seats in such a vehicle movable -like the pieces in one of those sliding puzzle squares.

Seats can slide so that there is always one empty space and thus any arrangement is possible. The sliding might also occur whilst in transit.

In addition, this allows individuals to preserve their complicated seat settings, rather than having constantly to reset these -as well as permuting family members to achieve minimised social friction.

It drives me crazy that online movie clips stop and start irregularly, depending on what else is happening over the network and within my local operating system.

Today’s invention is a new way to script movies designed specifically to be watched over a limited bandwidth web connection, without the usual stuttering.

New scripts would consist of a series of discrete, punchy scenes. Each of these would be shown only after it was downloaded in full.

In this way, you could watch a long movie as a series of unfragmented events, separated by a minute or so if necessary.

This would change the nature of filmwatching somewhat, but would greatly reduce the frustration.

Today’s invention provides a way for carrier based jets to avoid the need for folding wings (which add complexity and weight to already complicated systems).

Instead, jets’ undercarriages would be arranged so that they could all adopt the same angle of tilt and thus crowd closely together on the deck.

These machines could even be equipped with parking sensors that cars commonly have, in order to minimise contact between closely parked planes.

Who can be bothered to refill the screenwash in the car? I can’t ever remember to do so until I press the pump switch and no water emerges on my windscreen.

Today’s invention is a water scoop, fitted beneath a vehicle, which gathers water from puddles a vehicle drives through.

The scoop would be located behind one of the tyres, so that some splash from every puddle would be caught in it and fed to a tank.

This water is then filtered before use so that drivers in rainy countries never need to replace their screenwash.