Year: 2008

Freedom of speech. It’s a great idea; until you are forced to spend one minute listening to some nazi or nerd or sycophant or fundamentalist or egomaniac sounding off. Freedom of speech is fine, as long as people don’t drown each other out and can walk away from the soapbox.

Which leads me to online communications. At the moment, I can search the web with various ‘safety’ filters in place. Often however, when I read some comments string or some newsgroup, people are just so intolerant and rude. There is a tendency to resort immediately to some unnecessarily hyped language. Two posts later, it becomes obviously inappropriate.

Today’s invention is a software based filter which web readers can use to substitute-in less emotive words when they are perusing user-generated content…”idiot” would become “person with limited understanding” etc. (We might resort to the automatic substitution of derogatory terms by friendlier emoticons instead and there would also have to be some slightly intelligent handling, in English, of the use of ‘a’ and ‘an’).

This would lessen the emotional tone of a lot of comms and make it easier to see the strength of people’s arguments, independent of their intensity. I’d be interested in a scheme which blocked postings from individuals whose comments had been very frequently edited in this way. I claim the inalienable freedom to ignore their rantings.

In olden, ie pre-Edison, times we had streets lit by flickering gas lamps (if we were lucky). Now that electricity is a more usual power source, why do we still have static, uniform levels of light output?

It always seems crazy to me that city streets, already lit by shop windows and signs, are doubly lit by such civic lights.

Today’s invention aims to save a lot of money by enabling such lamps to sense the local ambient light level and adapt the intensity of their output to achieve a constant level of illumination. This would allow many lamps to run at reduced power and provide a more consistent, and therefore safe, visual environment.

I was attending an EU conference receently which benefitted from some pretty fancy comms and multimedia technology. As each speaker addressed the meeting from the floor, their moving image appeared on two giant screens at the front (with sometimes hilarious consequences, because eg the speaker was sitting directly behind someone who was much taller….leading to frequent mismatches between the voice and apparent face of the individual concerned).

Today’s invention is twofold…

a) simply equip each seat in an auditorium with its own webcam, rather than a central, tv-quality system (which needs a fancy system to point it in the right direction).

b) provide the chairman with a touchscreen showing all of the audience. This avoids having to spend a lot of time saying ‘ yes, lady in the red dress…’ etc which is embarrassing and slow.

Whoever is in the chair could select people whose ‘request to talk’ button was lit, by touching their face on the screen at the front and thus automatically switching their mic and webcam on.

Cut-and-paste is now part of the fabric of everyday digital activity for huge numbers of people. When you have transferred something from one file to another, it blends in seamlessly, taking on the same status as the original content.

Today’s invention aims to give some credit to the author of each such snippet ( way beyond the usual level of tracking changes).

Every document created would have a unique identifier (a code representing the author, software, date etc). Whenever a section of text, or other data, was copied and pasted into a new file, that content would retain the identifier of the source document so that the provenance of the transferred parts would always be available to anyone interested. This would automatically credit the originator.

This would greatly limit the scope for plagiarism, as well as calming the fevered brows of those who may be overly concerned with defending their copyright.

It now seems that someone is following up this idea -see this.

People get tattoos done for all sorts of reasons, I suppose. At the very least, it’s a form of adornment or display.

Today’s invention allows people, who want to make their display public, to advertise the fact that they have a tattoo, even when they are rugged up for the Winter.

Every time a tattoo is performed on someone’s skin, a digital photograph would be taken and passed to an automated embroidery machine. This would create a representation of the tattoo in question on eg a shirt or coat -ideally directly over the location of the tattoo itself (and in the correct colours).

People might choose to have only a simplified version embroidered, in order not to steal the thunder of the underlying pattern, when revealed. (Actually, I wonder why automated tattooing itself is not widely available?)

Actually, whilst on the subject of child safety, why don’t more potentially lethal things find themselves isolated from youngsters by the use of ‘childproof’ bottle tops?

If these are deemed generally safe enough to protect kids from dangerous drugs, then surely one could be moulded into eg an electrical socket in such a way that an on/off switch could be concealed behind a screw-off lid (the kind you have to push in hard and then unscrew).

How about knives and shavers with childproof lids or stairgate release knobs or even a tv remote in a childproof enclosure?

I’m sure the patent holder, if there is one, would be only too happy to licence this technology for a vastly increased array of applications.

It seems that a safety issue still exists in connection with three-pin plug sockets. It used to be thought that equipping such sockets with shutters and putting in place blank plugs would be enough to stop children from electrocuting themselves.

The latest edition of E&T magazine draws attention, however, to the possibility of a child removing eg a blank and replacing the longest prong, rotated through 180degrees, into its hole. This would potentially allow lethal access to current from the other two apertures.

Today’s invention is one way to deal with this. A plastic shelf, shown in orange, is secured to the wall socket via the screws holding the front plate. This protrudes from the plate so that it’s impossible to get the long prong of a plug or blank anywhere near its hole in anything other than the correct orientation.

This is perhaps another example of why we need to educate people to think outside the narrow confines of being an ‘electrical’ or a ‘mechanical’ Engineer.

I’m not a great tea drinker but there are plenty of people I know who are seriously into brewing their optimal ‘cuppa’.

Today’s invention is a pretty simple way to ensure that they get a beverage which is neither insipid nor stewed.

A waterproofed LED is held by a clip at a fixed distance from a small mirror which reflects light back to a sensor beside the light source. All of this is clipped to the inside of one’s cup. Having added a teabag and some hot water, to cover the sensor, the user waits for the tea to reduce the optical transmissability of the water -to a degree known to correspond to the preferred taste of the drink. This setting can be changed for different users, of course. A similar setup could be used for any infusion-based drink (eg coffee).

Then add milk (if necessary).