I don’t have any kind of mud-room in my house, unless you count the dining room. This is a particular problem when there are several pairs of festering, filthy boots mounting up outside the front door -and I’ve been forbidden to experiment with the dishwasher ever again.

“Waiting for the mud to dry so they can be brushed clean” sounds like the kind of thing that manufacturers advise on product literature -marketing types wearing designer loafers that only ever come in contact with polished wood and deep pile carpet.

Today’s invention is simply a carwash for boots. I envisage a box, into which boots get placed, soles facing up. Brushes would scour the boots clean with the aid of some water jets. With brushes made of say 20cm strands, there would be no need to worry about moving them around the boots’ geometry: the brushes would reach everywhere in the box.

Naturally, the water could be recycled, as in a carwash and there might be a fan blowing warm air, if the boots needed urgent reuse.

It should be possible to sense the flowrate of dirt off the boots (by eg optical inspection of the recycling filters). Once the dirt removal rate had fallen below a certain threshold, the boots would be pronounced sufficiently clean and the wash process terminated. (Shining a light through a filter and recording the rate of change of opacity, seems to me to be a generally good way to alert the users of eg washing machines and vacuum cleaners to undertake an urgent clean out -I suspect it’s already done).

The final wash could even contain some waterproofing waxy agent. A number of these bootwash devices could be stacked together for family use, sharing the water and air flows.

This would be a particular boon to people suffering from smelly trainers.

Being introduced to more than three people at a time makes it almost impossible for me to keep track of names and faces. Rather than continue with all of that shuffling-cardboard-across-the-table and mumbling ‘hello’, maybe it’s time for an up to date alternative to the business card.

Today’s invention is a ‘watch’ worn on the right wrist, which can wirelessly transmit, when brought close to another such device eg during a handshake, a small file of information about its wearer.

This would contain, in a standardised format, items such as

-name
-any evidence of past meetings
-mutual friends
-topics to avoid
-a thumbnail photo, for scrutiny later
-most likely icebreaker subject, etc.

The watch would contain enough storage for even a politician’s ‘working’ day (ie several hundred pressings of the flesh). Each file, once received, could be transmitted to a portable device (think Blackberry) which would then run a check quickly for additional up-to-date background information on the individual.

A wireless earpiece would be used to transmit snippets of (prioritised) text-to-speech output. This would need to be on-demand -perhaps when the user performs some unobtrusive gesture, like touching his/her ear.

This system would help avoid faux-pas and, with practice, smooth the meeting process. On shaking hands again, at the end of the meeting, names would once more get transmitted to earpieces for a more personalised leave-taking.

(Freemasons’ handshaking habits would be unaffected of course. What would it take to affect them?).

We are surrounded by more (magnet-containing) motorised devices than ever before. From cameras to pedal bins to door mirrors to catflaps (I haven’t mentioned these for a while, so I thought I’d grab the opportunity).

We are also increasingly reliant on magnetic storage devices, but these two technologies tend not to work well when in close proximity to each other.

Today’s invention is an alarm which is activated when a significant magnetic field moves near to your credit card or your laptop’s hard drive. It takes the form of a low-cost, stick-on patch containing a copper wire coil.

If someone happens to dump an alternator on the desk beside your patch-bearing wallet, the magnets it contains would induce a small current within the coil: enough to trigger another circuit of the type used in those annoying musical christmas cards so that an alert note sounds (or a quick burst of Silent Night, if you are doubly unfortunate).

This would be made sufficiently sensitive to the arrival of a strong magnetic field that the alarm sounds before damage can occur to the (usually less sensitive) system which is to be protected.

A variant on this patch might also be developed which reacted to high levels of magnetic flux variation; such as that which is sometimes suspected of damaging cell development in young children living near electricity transmission pylons.

Today’s invention was going to be a new way to ensure that the crud which clogs every multiblade razor was no longer a problem. I’ve had to accept that the build-up of this debris is currently a too-hard problem and also that it’s actually a big part of the razor business model: people won’t throw their blades away so quickly if they can clean them out (despite ‘developments’ like the flexible cleaning bar and the scraper).

Instead therefore, today’s invention is a much less ambitious tool, which enhances the established business model of disposable, expensive aftermarket refills.

Each razor unit would now be sold with a void in the handle into which a small vial of shaving gel could be inserted (this might then be diluted by adding eg hot water). This works in the same way that a toothpaste pump does. Activated by pressing the blade unit to the face, gel is gently squirted onto the face in front of the blade.

The gel might also contain some bicarbonate to give a refreshing “phizz-shave experience” (TM) -or not. Perhaps this fizziness could also help reduce the concretion of debris and allow running water to actually wash away some of the muck.  A weakly endothermic fizzing reaction would not only cool the skin, reducing any tendency to razor rash, but also cause the facial hair to stand on end and make for an even closer shave (or at least a more colourful marketing message).

It may be possible to arrange that only a very thin film of soap is applied to the skin, via this controlled delivery method, thus creating less debris and prolonging the life of the shaver itself -so that customer dissatisfaction is reduced to a manageable level.

This also means you never have to carry a giant aerosol with you when travelling and allows the manufacturers to charge even more for their shaving accessories.

Vehicles with the wrong tyre pressures endanger everybody. Maintaining the optimal set of working pressures to ensure reliable braking is both quite complex and a real pain. It’s hard for the average driver to sense when they need to go and crouch in the rain with that filthy airline (that costs money) -and of course no-one wants to.

Today’s invention addresses only one part of this composite problem: the issue of unbalanced tyre pressures.

Two cameras (with low-voltage illumination), or perhaps one camera + one mirror, would be located in advance of each fuel pump at service stations. They would automatically grab an image of each wheel as a vehicle passes. These images would be linked to the correct vehicle by taking into account the timing of their transits past the camera…without any need to worry about precise spatial alignment of anything).

It’s comparatively easy to find the (high-contrast, rotationally-symmetric) shape of a wheel within a tyre using image processing. This would allow the height of each wheel above the forecourt to be precisely compared. It would also be possible to quickly superimpose all four tyre outlines for any signs of comparative distortion (due to load maldistribution, for example).

Significant differences in contact pressure with the road could thus be detected and a message displayed at the pump in time for the driver to do something about it before driving off.