Category: Feasible inventions

In the old, pre-digital era, when you took a photograph you could at least look through a viewfinder and brace the camera against your cheekbone.

Latterly, everyone has become accustomed to composing their photographic shots whilst viewing a beautiful big digital screen -and of course you can really only do this with the camera on a tripod -or held at arm’s length.

Today’s invention is to equip each digital camera with a conventional neckstrap and to augment that with a small collapsible bipod. This would be attached to the camera as normal but instead two short legs would emerge to allow the device to ‘stand’ on one’s chest (or stomach, depending on physique).

This combination of strap and bipod would allow the camera to be held relatively still (without having to cart around a full tripod), whilst still enabling the user to see the screen.  If you are particularly shaky or a string fetishist, try this solution I just came across, as an alternative.

The world is full of truly dreadful logos (of which this is an example). Plumbers’ initials bent into the shape of pipework or improbable acronyms entwined into ‘artistic’ 3-D, multicoloured interpretations of coats of arms etc.

Just as in web design, given their chance to express themselves in a logo, most people make a hash and create something that is memorable only for its awfulness and which when photocopied, or otherwise processed, turns into a cross between a visual illusion and a smudge.

Today’s invention is one way to help assess a candidate logo before the unsuspecting public get to see it stencilled onto the side of a van or pasted across a business letterhead.

I envisage a software tool that can automatically grab the candidate logo, scale it down in order to pixellate it at about the 16*16 pixel level and then allow the designer to view the result. Even someone with no artistic pretensions can tell at a glance whether what they have produced is robust and distinctive enough to stand for their business: or whether it’s back to the drawing board.

You sometimes see people in city centres cleaning the windows of office blocks using a glorified fishing pole, The absurd length of the pole always makes the process look like a lawsuit in the making, as the pole flexes and threatens either to crown some passer by or smash a window and shower those below with high-speed shards.

A related problem exists for householders in that gutters get blocked (with leaves, slate dust, nests and other aerial crud). Usually, the worst blockages occur in places where it’s hard to get ladder access and you start looking at the terrifying costs of a roofing contractor and his scaffolding.

So today’s invention is a pair of extensible poles of the window cleaning type, long enough to reach roof gutterings of only domestic properties. These would be run in parallel with one pipe connected to a high pressure water hose; the outlet nozzle pointing downward into the gutter. The upper end of the second pipe would have a scoop into which the first would wash debris, before allowing it to become an immovable blockage.

This would avoid washing dirt into the normal downpipe and blocking it, whilst also monitoring the amount of crud dislodged.

Update: someone else’s solution to the problem is now available here.

Even though I try to keep email short, I often compose important messages gradually, building in a line or two at a time over a few days and trying to chop out stuff that’s less important. Usually the first thing I do is insert the recipient’s address -so that I can find it easily in the Drafts box – but that means I’m always in danger of accidentally clicking the ‘Send’ button prematurely. (When I decide to start a new message, without closing the current draft, it’s easy to accidentally click the wrong button: just a small interface issue which could easily be corrected).

My spelling is generally ok, but more than once the Thunderbird spellchecker has saved me from actually sending off a draft email by mistake. More than once, however, I’ve sent an embarrassing, half formed (but perfectly spelled) version.

Extending that logic a little, today’s invention is a mail program plugin which checks my messages for certain signs that they are complete -such as the terms “regards”, “yours sincerely” etc which I only ever add at the last minute to correspond with the final tone of what I’m trying to say. It would also detect if the word “attached” had been used and alert me if no attachment existed.

The Post Office staff get the mail through to every address at a reasonable price, mostly on time -but as a business it’s a total shambles.

When I go to my local Post Office (and I’ve remembered not to go on Wednesday, which unbelievably is half-day closing) I’m surrounded by a plethora of stuff for sale. It’s almost all junk.

So, I thought whilst standing in the inevitable queue, why don’t they make much more effective use of all that high street retail space they are currently trying so hard to shed by closing regional post offices? Answer: like many public sector organisations, that were expected to magically enter the private sector in the ’80s, they haven’t got the required decisionmaking structure or personnel to do the job.

So today’s invention is one thing I’d do if they were to allow me: the post-to-anywhere integrated gift.

I’d equip each post office with a display case containing say twenty postable gift items (which would be the kinds of high quality British-branded things people would want to give to friends and family, at home and overseas).

Each of these would come with a padded envelope, a notelet and a pen. This would enable people to complete the whole gift-giving thing in a last minute or impulsive way: write note -> bag up -> seal -> address ->drop in postbox.

The postage would be prepaid -the gimmic being that it would cover delivery to anywhere on the planet. Naturally, these gifts would be priced at a premium to ensure a healthy profit, but at least they’d be of high quality and there are deals to be made with prestige manufacturers of such bijoux.

I’d also make these available online and in airports as last-minute departure items, to be handed to cabin staff, if necessary.

Grown-ups are strongly affected by the cuteness of children’s shoes. Stand outside any shoe shop with tiny trainers or slippers in the window and you’ll hear people of both sexes cooing about how they wish that they could buy stuff that was as cute for themselves. Baby toy manufacturers have always known that they need to exploit this, since their buyers are exclusively adults.

Partly, it’s the aspect ratio (kids’ shoes are essentially blobs) and partly it’s the feature density (I think a similar thing is going on when you notice you have just bought that £300 mountain fleece jacket -it is covered in a dense network of contrast-coloured ‘features’ -zips, tags, flaps, buttons, catches, patches, labels, seams etc.)

The attraction of cute products is also, of course, an effect of small size: think how the Japanese interest in miniaturisation has affected a huge range of markets.

Today’s invention is therefore a cutification programme to be applied to lots of future products aimed at adults. Adult versions would be blobby, miniaturised, colourful and feature-rich. It might even be possible to apply a distortion program to help visualise the transformation of an adult product design into a new cutified version.

What else can explain the Nissan Micra?

I’ve been a little shaken to discover that the over-the-counter painkillers which my family uses have suddenly been doubled in strength -with minimal changes to the packaging and the pills themselves.

Maybe it’s because people find it easier to swallow a double-dose pill, or maybe headaches are just getting worse? I’m not sure how much more expensive they are, so I can’t comment on any possible profit motive.

In any case, this set me thinking about the possible dangers of parents feeding their family twice as much drug as they intended, purely because their medicine has been surreptitiously souped up. This would probably not be fatal, but potentially damaging for an already sick child.

Today’s invention is a way to provide people with a high-dose option (if that’s really necessary) whilst making the amount being taken explicit.

Supply double-strength tablets in a double decker blister package, one layer of which would be empty. Normally, pressing the back of the pack forces a tablet through the foil. In this upgrade, each tablet would then need to be forced through the second, empty layer of blister pack (and foil), so that the idea of double strength would be embodied physically and could therefore not be ignored.

The packs would need to be a bit bigger and more expensive, but given the cost of pharmaceuticals, this seems unimportant.

I’d also manufacture the pills themselves in an unattractive shade of snot-green, rather than Smartie-coloured, in order to minimise any possible confusion with confectionery -darker green could be used to code for the stronger type of tablet (given how reluctant children are to eat peas, this has got to be an effective safety measure).

Being anywhere near a road is one of the most lifethreatening things one can do.

Today’s invention is to map and make available the police data on exactly where accidents have happened on our roads (using eg Google Maps or Earth) and then to offer a tool which will generate the shortest route A->B minimising your total exposure to crash probability.

Online route planners already have options to avoid congestion, and bizarrely, motorways, so extending this to accident data should be comparatively straightforward.

Over time, no doubt this information would lessen traffic, and therefore accidents, on currently dangerous routes, although it might also lead to an increase in rat-running.

Ideally, it might allow a deeper understanding of the factors which make certain roads more perilous than others.

If you are one of those strange people with a fetish about ‘proper’ teamaking (freshly drawn water, tea first, only then the milk etc), here’s a refined form of sacrilege.

Today’s invention is teabags containing powdered milk. Life’s too short for a) making sure you always have fresh milk on hand b) messing about with finding it in the fridge. Just boil the kettle (a 3kW machine works particularly well for we impatient types) and then drop a few of of these hybrid bags in some cups.

I could even imagine selling these in boxes marked ‘with saccharine’ or ‘without’…thus further minimising the boredom of having to undertake a little ceremony when you just want a warm drink.

Actually, coffee is far superior but I’d rather have tea and be able to sleep.

It’s estimated that the plastic rings around a six pack of beer can take 200+ years to disappear (somewhat longer than the six pack itself). Despite all the effort that has gone into the development of biodegradeable plastics, it turns out that dumping packaging etc made of even this clever stuff in landfill sites is guaranteed to be horribly ineffective.

Landfill is a poor substitute for a proper composter -mostly because the waste that gets dumped in is covered by tonnes of soil that excludes both oxygen and water -both essential to the decomposition process.

Today’s invention is an upgrade to the standard refuse collection vehicle or dustcart. As the waste is compacted, within the vehicle body, it should periodically be injected with a bacteria-filled paste. This material would also contain some oxygen-releasing agent (which will supply oxygen over the course of a year or so).

The refuse would also automatically be sprayed by a mist of water from a small tank so that the whole decomposition process gets a head start.