In the networked world, we have come to assume that we can connect all sorts of equipment together -there are few situations with more of that emergent WOW! factor than when two apparently unrelated elements can be plugged together and they somehow start to interact -especially if it happens without a week’s worth of persuasion by reprogramming or filing of surrounding metalwork.

A surprisingly large number of devices which require mechanical design skills are however now hashed together as an afterthought by the electronics team that developed the system. Today’s invention addresses my particular bete noire: the USB connector. I’m talking here about the Series A connector (it’s a shambles that there are so many variants, all part of the same ‘standard’).

Despite what it says here about ease of connectivity, I’ve lost count of the time I’ve spent groping blindly around the back of some immovable boxful of electronics attempting to attach a USB connector without graunching its internals. You’d think that something which has so few axes of symmetry would be easy to connect, but when doing this out of sight, it becomes a 3-D docking problem that a shuttle pilot would find challenging.

Even if I have a hub attached, so that I can drag cables around to the front, I’m still faced with the problem of orientating ends (whose brilliant idea was it to put an identical set of holes on each of the two largest faces of this connector?)

My suggested improvement on the situation is as shown in the diagram. The new component in blue would allow a user to at least overcome that ‘wrong 50% of the time’ problem. I’d be inclined to connect the right hand side permanently (in order to minimise damage to the exposed contacts on this side).

One of the least elegant ideas ever is windscreen wipers for headlamps in vehicles. The idea just doesn’t scale down from windscreens very effectively (and it’s questionable how well even these work).

Today’s invention is simply a frustum-shaped shield which covers whatever lamp and lens combination is incorporated in a given car.

The transparent shield can be driven backwards and forwards or unidirectionally about an axis (the orientation of which would be a choice for the designer). As this rotation occurs, the glass surface is cleaned by a brush running down the face (which might be supplied with a small flow of water).

The rear of the frustum could be made of body-coloured metal, so that when driving during the day, or when parked, the lens unit would be protected inside.

I’m amazed at the extent to which toilet seats are a cause of domestic disharmony. Apparently, half the world believes the default state should be ‘up’ and vice versa (actually of course lots of the world doesn’t have access to a flushable ceramic wc, but I’m sure you know what I mean). I’m not talking here about the toilet seat lid, if there is one, just the seat.

Today’s invention is yet another application of the putative floor mats which can sense the orientation of a foot placed upon them. Two of these would be located strategically in front of every toilet.

If a person (male or female) stands facing away from the convenience, it’s assumed that the lid must be down and vice versa.

The movement of the lid itself could be driven, at a signal from the pads, by one of these new fangled toilet lid lifter devices.

I’m sick to death of having to remember passwords. It’s particularly bad that I’m supposed to use letters and numbers and different cases. In addition, once I get a particular password embedded in my cerebellar motor memory (after about a million practices), I then find that if anything interrrupts me in mid-entry, I have to restart from the beginning.

I have been reading about the rather over-complex attempts by a certain big computer company in this area and was also inspired by some of the comments here. Today’s invention is a simple alternative.

When you need a new password, ‘draw’ a very simple shape in keys on the keyboard. 57dcvbnkj for example is a comparatively easy-to-remember smiley face. zse456tfd is an italic ‘P’ etc

Using disjoint shapes eg serfcxhuikmn (remembered as ‘Sunglasses’) is a way to vastly increase the numbers of possible combinations of shapes and make it harder to tabulate them manually for computer search.

It is true that this is all still vulnerable to ‘shoulder surfing’…hence this invention ( clever as this is, the patent may be permanently ‘pending’, though, given the vast amount of related prior art ).

When two pipes of different diameter are joined, internally there will be a step change in the bore.

Fluid passing down the pipe (either into the expansion or out of it) will take the opportunity to become fiercely turbulent and recirculate intensely in the ‘shelf’ region). This has the effect that to transport either gas or liquid will require a much bigger pump than if the pipe was of a single internal diameter. It might mean that for pumping crude oil, your pump triples in price or in a domestic heating system, the existing pump simply fails to deliver enough flowrate.

Ideally, all pipework in a given system would have one bore, or at least have only smooth changes in diameter. Often, that’s not how things work out…engineering conical sections of arbitrary size, in-situ, which are also pressure-rated is a tough job.

Today’s invention is a way to smooth out internal step changes in pipework. When two different size pipes are joined (using reliable, simple bolt-through flanges), spin the jointed section about the longitudinal axis (by using eg a drilling rig for large-scale hardware). Whilst spinning, pour in epoxy material of the type normally used to smooth the internal surfaces. This will be thrown to the corners of the shelf region and take up a natural streamlined shape (think of stirring a cup of tea in a tall cup, or of the surface profile of water going down a plughole),

When the cement has set, the streamlined pipe section can be inserted, as normal, into the main plumbing.

The amount of time spent by people in waiting for a lift to arrive at their floor is worth about $50 billion every day.

Well, no actually I just made that up, but it’s certainly a lot of wasted time.

Today’s invention is to supply the area in front of each lift door with foot-shaped pressure mats. The mats would have a left foot and a right foot region. The left foot could dial up, by tapping, the ‘tens’ and the right foot the ‘units’ of their target floor. Each mat would carry an illuminating arrow indicating when an individual should move into the lift.

The mats themselves would be laid out so as to avoid clogging the stairwell with random people. They would also need to be spaced out differently according to different cultural/regional norms about personal space. Actually, of course, lots of cultures don’t do the queueing thing at all: in which case, I’d just let them fight for the damn lift as usual.

Each mat, once actvated by being occupied, transmits information to the lift system so that it knows how many people are waiting to go where. It might even record whether an individual was so massive as to have to wait for a less-full lift.

A clever (although not necessarily globally optimal) algorithm would work out for each lift where it’s ‘best’ to go next (given also the positions of all the other lifts) …best could be defined in terms of fairest, or distance minimising or whatever -depends a bit on the culture within the building.

When a lift arrives, it lights up the arrow on each of the mats of the people it wants to collect. Obviously there would need to be mats catering for wheelchairs.

The wedding industry is worth billions a year.

Even if they opt for a minimalist approach, rather than the full Bride-Magazine-$100,000-helicopters-and-marquee event, few couples get married without at least exchanging rings.

Today’s invention is simply a pair of rings equipped electronically so that they glow when brought close together.

These would of course be coded for each indiviual, so they wouldn’t light up in the presence of any other ring.

There is also the option to have a variant fitted subcutaneously -as a kind of physical pre-nup. Finally, call me a hopeless romantic, but how about a version which plays a couple’s favourite tune?

The whole patent process is adminstratively a mess -I understand, for example, that in some fields it’s taking longer and longer to be granted a patent because all of the good Officers have now been poached by big companies to help them draft more watertight applications.

Worse than that though is that the system acts as a brake on invention, rather than a stimulant.  Even governments are now starting to recognise that patenting protects corporations against citizens (See eg this story).

Today’s invention is a contingent payment scheme in which patent attorneys can draft and submit claims in return for a share of the IP. Patent agents are quite used to litigating cases on a no-win-no fee basis in certain jurisdictions but I’m proposing that they sign up for a share of the real action. They get to take some risk, on projects they select, in return for potentially huge rewards. No more handouts of Monopoly money for just shuffling papers.

This would certainly separate sheep from goats in terms of the patent agents who understand technology: -they would be the ones to whom inventors would naturally gravitate. There would also be fewer micro-incremental or ‘spoiling’ applications and many more patents at least partly in the hands of genuinely innovative, Fred-in-a-shed inventors.