fabby Archives - Page 35 of 38 - Invention Of The Day

Posts tagged "fabby" (Page 35)

#535: ValueAds

Online advertising is interesting only to experts in online advertising. Fewer and fewer people are actually clicking on the banner ads which often deface otherwise reasonably attractive web real estate.

Today’s invention is a way to increase the attention paid to such ads.

When someone clicks on an ad, the coordinates within the banner are sent by the browser to the ad server. This determines whether the click has occurred at a number of ‘lucky locations.’ When the browser opens the new page, it announces that a prize has been won (or not). This might take the form of redeemable coupons, vouchers, micropayments or discounts for products on the site of interest.

Obviously, the lucky coordinates would need to be automatically changed, from moment to moment, to stop either manual or automated searching for some fixed hotspot.

All of this leads to more enthusiastic, participative clicking-through and might be employed to help overcome the fierce resistance to ads in games which is now being shown.

#530: WalkWheel

It had to happen sometime: IOTD reinvents the wheel (again).

A wheel (in this case of a bicycle) is replaced by two sectors. Each of these can rotate independently about their common axle. The bicycle is moving right to left. When the sector marked ‘a’ has come close to the end of its tyre’s contact with the road, the other sector marked ‘b’ is flipped around the axle counterclockwise to take its place, just in time to provide smooth forward motion (with much lower rotational inertia than normal).

Such a setup requires a spring mechanism to drive the sector and a robust trigger to activate the process. The axial spring would be wound by the forward motion of the machine and the triggering could be quite crudely coordinated using a mechanical latch.

This arrangement also allows a greatly reduced weight and space requirement for a fold-up machine. It’s also rather a cool way to ride about, always looking as if one is about to fall off.

Rather than flip counterclockwise from a to b, the sectors might swap places by raising the rear one off the ground and ‘stepping’ clockwise from position a to b (at the cost of added complexity). This would save some frame height (and the cost of material) as well as reducing the energy drain from the system.

#511: Trouserseat

This being the era of the exoskeleton, today’s invention is an ultra-simple, unpowered version that acts purely as a seat.

For older people, who can get around but enjoy a short sit down on occasions, carrying a camp seat can be a pain and a shooting stick isn’t much use on smooth surfaces.

Enter the lightweight exopants shown. These consist of a double-hinged shell for each leg (probably held up by being clipped to a waist belt). When the wearer wants a rest, the act of adopting a sitting position causes the edges of the hinged sections to contact each other and form a stable, weight-bearing temporary structure.

#510: Soundstrokes

I’ve been fascinated by shape just about forever. One reason, I suspect, for this is that I have mild synaesthesia (I don’t ‘suffer’ from it, mostly it’s a great benefit -when not trying to learn mathematical symbology).

Anyway, related to this is that fact that I had great difficulty, at 5 years old, in distinguishing between eg p,q and d,g etc.

Today’s invention is a font for apprentice writers and dyslexics.

Each letter could be typed and appear on the screen in the usual way but instead of being created instantaneously, it would be rendered in the same sequence in which the strokes would be made by a pencil. Sound effects would be used to reinforce this sequence and thus ‘2’ would sound like ‘zwishnnnsaaaa’ as opposed to ‘aaaannnnnsaaaa’, which is of course ‘Z.’ Similarly, the first part of a shape to be drawn might be red and the subsequent parts take on the colours of the rest of the spectrum*.

This would help the learner to appreciate the difference between making a 6 and a 9. The speed with which alphanumerics are created on the screen could be varied to accommodate the progress in an individual’s learning (and perhaps even vary per letter, given that some are much harder than others).

*For synaesthetes, who may already hear letterforms or see them in colours, these features might have to be individually suppressible.

#494: TankTorque

Tractors are equipped with high-torque engines which they need to pull enormous loads (whether riddles, ploughs, slurry tanks, tree stumps -you name it).

This situation can often cause them to execute a low-altitude ‘wheelie’.

In order to avoid staring at the sky, a farmer may attach a collection of big metal weights to the front bumper. This can’t be good for fuel consumption and humping all that metal about is heavy work for even the horniest handed son of toil.

Today’s invention is to mount the fuel tank on a pair of rails running fore and aft on top of the engine (as in the old Ferguson design). When the tractor was pulling hard, the tank would automatically shift forward to act as a counterbalance and keep the front wheels on the ground. The lower the fuel level on board, the farther forward would the tank move.

#489: CatTimer

Worried about how to monitor the health of your domestic feline?

Today’s invention consists of a set of electronic scales, wired to a small computer. The scales are set on a chair or stool. On them is placed a cat feeder device (the kind that automatically delivers a cat’s meal at a set time).

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The system is capable of detecting when the cat has arrived on the scales -and whether it leapt on gracefully or dragged its way up there.

It can also tell how long it took the cat to eat its food, after the lid opened (ie was the animal hungry or disinterested?) Over time, the cat can have its weight monitored (which might be used automatically to change the amount of food provided or activate an alarm indicating a health problem to the owner).

#474: Convectasaur

Open fires are very attractive but they tend to be poor at distributing heat within a room, let alone around a house.

Today’s invention is a device which allows a single fireplace to provide more uniform home heating.

A mobile robot (ideally with stair climbing ability) carries a metal plate on its back. It is programmed to hold the plate in contact with the flames until its temperature reaches a target value). The plate is withdrawn inside a wire mesh box and the robot then moves to a region of the home where the ambient air temperature is detected to be low.

Air passes through the mesh cover, across the vertical plate and becomes warmed. When the plate temperature has decreased by a certain amount, the robot returns to the fire.

You could have several of these devices per house, coordinated to appear at the fireplace in turn. Use Pleos and it might even resemble the disputed cooling fins of certain dinosaurs.

#460: Brandnet

Last night, my spam filter detected and removed 779 items. Although I never check the details of what’s screened out these days (I might be bulk deleting some real messages) it seems to be pretty effective in eradicating anything to do with investment scams or phishing ploys. Amazingly, the spam that does get through almost always contains some kind of (pharmaceutical) brand name.

Today’s invention is simply to apply a crude, automated translation program, such as Bablefish. This will come out with results like “xanax nu koopt de bevordering.” Any such system will fail to translate brand names and so messages attempting to sell you things will leave words unchanged after translation. The presence of untranslated words is thus an indicator of unwanted marketing.

Using different translators, across a sequential spectrum of different languages, will enable a higher level of reliability.

#454: Lidspeak

People who wear full-face motorcycle helmets usually have some difficulty making themselves understood by the unhelmetted subspecies of people. This can lead to unfortunate hand gesturing etc.

Today’s invention is a microphone to be worn inside a helmet which then feeds to a loudspeaker on the outside. This allows better communication with fellow road users and pedestrians (eg ‘Get out of the way please’).

In the event of an accident, the system could be arranged so that when in a lying down orientation for more than say 30 seconds, it issues certain messages automatically eg ‘Do not remove helmet’ ‘Call 999’ ‘My name is Tom, call 0181 223 334’ etc pre-recorded in the voice of the wearer.

#451: Wineslice

I’m increasingly irritated by trying to fit some large, spherical wine glasses into a small, rectangular cupboard.

Today’s invention is a new glass design which resembles those new vases I’ve seen: curvaceous strips sandwiched between two plexiglass plates.

As shown, this would allow the glasses to nest together neatly, Escher style. Storing these on their sides would save space and lessen the tendency for glassware to find itself nudged off the shelf and into oblivion via contact with the kitchen floor.

Careful design would also allow the ‘stem’ section to act as a glass too, as shown in the right hand picture (maybe taking on the role of sherry or port receptacle).

Tag: fabby