Today’s invention is intended to limit the damage I can do to a new set of alloy wheels, when accidentally rasping them along a kerbstone in the course of an ill-fated parking manoeuvre.
Pressing an extra button on the mirror control panel would extend the nearside wing mirror stalk on a vehicle, and deflect it downwards, so as to provide the driver with a clear view of the diminishing gap between wheel and kerb.
Today’s invention is a one-piece, injection moulded drip-tray/coaster. It’s designed so that the circular opening in the top is wider than a cup’s diameter. A simple internal spring is moved aside when a cup or glass is placed in it and subsequently grips the cylindrical body of the cup.
This means that the coaster stays attached to the cup, even when someone is drinking from it. Drips on the sides or bottom of the cup are retained inside the U-shaped inner profile of the coaster.
After drinking, the coaster can be removed and dishwashed with the cup.
Having read some articles about law enforcement officials in various countries grabbing cameras from people who may have recorded bad behaviour by the officers concerned, today’s invention is a simple device to help avoid the truth being surpressed.
It consists of an optic fibre cable which runs up the sleeve of the photographer connecting the camera to a flash memory device worn under his/her armpit.
If approached to hand over the camera, it can be quickly detached without drawing attention to the stock of images which were automatically copied there as they were taken.
I’ve had more than enough cash extracted from me by Edinburgh City Council traffic wardens. The suggestion is no longer even being made that this funds some useful service or benefits the underprivileged: it just boosts the salaries of the usual crew of bureaucrats.
Today’s invention is a novel application for a handheld camera/printer device. This is intended to undermine punitive unreasonableness in areas where to park my overtaxed car I have to leave a visible paper ticket inside it.
To avoid paying, take a photograph of someone else’s ticket stuck to the inside of their window parked at some distance from your own vehicle (this might benefit from some reflection-reduction image processing). Now print out and place the bogus ticket on one’s dashboard.
No passing warden will be bothered to compare the details of yours with someone else’s.
En route to Stanford University recently, I had to undergo fingerprinting at San Francisco airport, using one of those greasy little touchscreens the customs people use. I’ve been thinking about such screens a lot of late, especially in their role as data fusion tools, uniting information from the modalities of touch and vision.
Touch a part of this cameraphone screen, for example, and it can be made to focus in on that location.
Today’s invention is a touchscreen which unites these functions; providing conditional access to a subset of available applications. Press a particular location on the screen and it determines your identity before allowing you to use the functionality of the ‘button’ you are contacting -or not.
Just type the phrase “tonneau cover” into your favourite search engine and enter a new universe of ingenuity and seriously bad logos. Having recently carved myself a frost blanket for the windscreen on my car from a sheet of aluminised bubblewrap, it occurred to me that a combination of these two artefacts might be valuable.
Today’s invention is therefore a rollerblind which sits in that gap between screen bottom and bonnet lid. When frost is anticipated, the blind is drawn up over the windscreen and clipped in place, covering it.
In the morning, unclipping the screen allows it to spring back into its housing, shedding any ice as it does so, and allowing you to drive off with significantly less de-icing to do.
Team games, such as football, and cricket often have a man-of-the-match award. Today’s invention is a way to update and democratise that process.
People who have bought a ticket for some match using their mobile could, during a game, be allowed to text the shirt numbers of their favourite players on the day, in order of preference, to a telephone number set aside for the purpose.
The preferences could be displayed, in realtime on a screen within the ground, indicating how each player was performing, in the view of the paying public. This might cause managers to make substitutions in response to public opinion and exhort players, low on the scale, to greater efforts.
Such data could even be gathered from match to match and help influence the salary and transfer fees associated with any given player.
Laptop use is definitely becoming associated with neck pain, at least with pain in my neck. Typing on my lap means there is no way for the screen to be viewed comfortably, since it requires me to look downwards at an angle.
Today’s invention is an adaptation to existing laptop design consisting of two hinged supports, as shown. These would carry the cabling from the base to the screen and employ the same resistive pivots as a screen normally has.
The new part is really that it allows the screen height and angle to be adjusted independently and over a much greater range than is possible with existing approaches…leading to less craning and joint strain.
When I drive a car, being longer in the back than most people, the steering wheel tends to obscure some or all of the instruments (The dashboard itself remains a fairly primitive tool; a throwback to the gauntlets-and-goggles days of early motor pioneers when everything was made of wood and brass).
Despite the fact that I actually want my vehicle to have a fighter jet’s head-up display, today’s invention is a simple modification to the established steering wheel.
This would be a torus of perspex with flattened front and back faces creating a non-distorting optical path via which all that hidden driving information can be better seen (irrespective of the angle to which the wheel has been turned).
This could be made just as strong circumferentially as current designs and because of the possibility of moulding in controllable stress raisers, probably less dangerous in the event of a head-on accident.
There’s not much I can suggest to improve the Amazon.com business model. Today’s invention is, nonetheless, a small potential enhancement. Buyers of books or DVDs would be offered the chance to upload a hand-drawn picture or a handwritten message, imaged using eg a camera or cameraphone.
This would be printed onto some spare space on the existing paperwork included in the delivery packages (possibly with a self-adhesive strip around the outside). This would be inserted in the postal box at the dispatch warehouse so that a recipient could then stick the personalised dedication into the book or DVD case.
(For people who can’t draw or spell or have limited expressive ability, there could even be a selection of standard templates provided online in sufficient numbers of combinations to offer a measure of genuine personalisation).
