Category: Feasible inventions

People who contact call centres sometimes get angry and verbally abuse the staff who pick up the phone.

Today’s invention offers a way to limit that behaviour.

Once a caller starts using a raised voice or bad language, the call taker can flip a switch to disconnect them and issue an automated message to say,
“You have been abusive and you have been reinserted in the queue 10 positions backwards.”

The call taker might be able to select the number of positions to accord with the intensity of the caller’s rudeness.

A system like this could also ensure that the caller was not dealt with by anyone who had retarded their call.

Today’s invention is a box which looks like an outside air conditioner (complete with the appearance of a fan and plumbing).

This is actually empty and with a keypad-secure lid.

Anything sizeable ordered from eg Amazon will be labelled with instructions to leave it inside the air conditioner, together with the code for the lock.

If nobody is at home, thieves who steal things from porches will be thwarted.

Drifting cars is now a common form of entertainment.

Today’s invention is a drift car tyre which is made with different coloured dyes embedded within its layers.

As the performance continues, the crowd gets to see changes in the colour of smoke produced. It might be possible to achieve a similar effect by attaching a disc to each wheel so that, as it spins, the outer edge rubs on the road and generates eg pyrotechnic effects or just frictional sparks.

There could even be a colour of tyre dye chosen to indicate that a lower safety limit had been reached.

Today’s invention is a tanktrack link which has a roller embedded in it.

This roller (red) contains a lock which can be activated wirelessly, so that as the track is lifted off the ground, the roller falls into a different position vertically (and is again locked). Normally the rollers would all be locked in the up, or fully withdrawn, position (right).

This allows rollers in the ground contact position (left) to act as rollerskate wheels, so that shallow declines can be moved down under gravity, with fixed tracks. They also allow differential motion of one track relative to another, lessening damage to both the tracks and the ground.

Rollers can also be braked, so that, in the fully down position, extra traction is provided.

Running along country tracks and trails in Winter means that your legs get coated in mud -especially at the back. This can be pretty hard to clean off.

Today’s invention is therefore a set of stretchy mudflaps for one’s running shoes.

These fit as shown and keep the mud spray to a minimum. They would be easy to wash clean with a hose.

Strong passwords are often hard to remember. That seems to be because the very patterns which allow us to form memories are also the things which hackers can get to grips with most easily.

If you use any simple algorithm to generate a password, for example, then that is a source of insecurity.

Using a slightly more complicated algorithm, which generates a unique password to each site, seems like a better idea.

URLs are, by definition, unique to websites, so today’s invention relies on that.

Say I want to login to https://iotd.patrickandrews.com/wp-admin. One way would be to always use a password consisting of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, characters ie otdc…Logging into http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education would use password bccw, etc.

This removes any need to memorise anything other than a single string of digits. One’s browser could easily remember the algorithm and when it loses the information, as mine often does, it would be easy to reproduce manually, as required.

I’d take it one step further, because I have such a poor memory. Instead of 2,3,4,10 etc, I might choose a sequence to generate my string of digits, such as ‘primes minus 2’ ie 3-2=1st, 5-2=3rd, 7-2=5th, 11-2=9th, etc or even some variant on the logistic map over integers (which is already used to generate pseudorandom bit sequences).

Today’s invention is a system by which a car driver can control the degree to which any of the other doors may be opened.

This allows the driver to ensure that no-one (eg children or people with impaired vision) flings a door into the face of a cyclist or into the side of a nearby vehicle.

The driver would have a graphical control unit, perhaps on the steering wheel, which would allow him/her to check in the mirrors and set the maximum opening angle accordingly.

This could be set to say 20 degrees initially, so that a) no child could get out unsupervised and b) the driver could then gradually ease each door open just enough, in turn, to allow passengers to exit safely.

I once worked for a consultancy company that offered to do some work for an F1 team, free, in return for placing our logo on the car. We were told that even the smallest space on the vehicle would cost more, for one race, than our entire company was worth.

This leads me to today’s invention: a new way to evaluate the cost of motor race sponsorship.

As can be seen in the image, not every logo is equally visible from every angle. Some views are never exploited by photographers at tracks for capturing images of race cars.

How about performing an automated analysis, post-race, of all the press and tv imagery which was generated? This would be relatively easy to do, since all the filming and photography has to be licensed. It would be a matter of applying brand recognition software (eg SceneReader ) to the entire bank of images generated from one race.

This could be used to have individual sponsors pay a fee based on how much publicity they actually got.

Toasters tend to be made in large numbers and quite cheaply. Often, their crumb trays don’t work very well and collect lumps of charcoal in the bottom which can be a fire hazard -or at least a source of burning smells and smoke.

Today’s invention is an external crumb tray (green) which fits inside a toaster stand (red).

The tray has an open top and a sloping floor so that crumbs exit the toaster and collect in the tray.

This not only keeps any crumbs away from the heating elements, but, being transparent, it makes it obvious when the tray is full.

It can then be detached and placed on a bird table. Each toaster would come with three trays, one with the birds, another for the dishwasher and one in the toaster.

Dogs have acutely tuned hearing as well as razor sharp appetites.

Normally, when dogs hear their bowls being rattled during dinner preparation, a Pavlovian chorus of barking and yapping ensues.

Today’s invention aims to limit that by training each dog to respond only to the appearance of his/her particular bowl.

This is achieved by making dog bowls with a tuning fork cut into the side wall.

Each bowl would have a name printed on the side, as well as a fork tone unique to that dog.

A dog owner can flick the tuning fork and alert only one dog that their dinner is en route.

This can be used as a training aid in the same way as personalised whistles are applied.