pointing out the obvious

With all the lame game-ish shows on tv these days, like american idol, amazing race, eat something gross fear factor, dancing with the stars, survivor 43, and the like, why hasn’t hollywood come up with a more interactive idea? Why not host a show that pays the viewers? To use a lame example - remake “Murder She Wrote” but axe Jessica Fletcher. Make the audience solve it. $1million for the person who solves the fake mystery. $150k per week in prizes for finding necessary clues, which are broadcast prior to the following weeks episode, along with the name of the person who found it and the money they won.

If we pump up the interactivity… Have the audience participate in the show. Maybe they actually have to go somewhere to find the clue (though, I’m sure people would dig up a rainforest trying to find a lame clue). Maybe the winner of last weeks ‘clue’ gets to appear on the next show. Maybe the camera crew shoots the next episode AT THEIR HOUSE. It could be Matlock meets a home makeover.

It’s just as lame as the rest of the concepts, but is something new.

Amazon has recommendations, LibraryThing has the LibrarySuggester and other sites have other variations of this, but they are never quite right. Why is that? Do we not find the recommendations credible?

Amazon makes recommendations based on the book you are viewing, so if you like Harry Potter, you might also like what others who bought Harry Potter purchased. However, just because I purchased something doesn’t necessarily mean I liked it. LibraryThing makes recommendations based on a single book, which has the same limitation as Amazon. For members, LibraryThing also makes recommendations on all the books in your profile, matching them up against others with similar libraries - I assume your book ratings are taken into consideration. Surely this is as good as it gets?

Or do we need to go one step further and ‘decode’ a book the way that Pandora decodes music? Unfortunately, we all know how hit or miss Pandora recommendations can be. Along with Last.fm, Pandora’s recommendations are probably the best I’ve seen, but they still aren’t perfect. Maybe it’s easier to decode a book than it is to decode music?

I feel as though we can do better.

With technology companies creating all kinds of useless gadgets, I think it’s about time they create a smart phone. When I say smart, I mean smart enough to not require diapers anymore. Here’s the idea..

Most cellular and mobile phones have bluetooth. Most offices are migrating towards IP phones. IP phones should be bluetooth enabled so that my cellular phone will detect it’s presence, and automatically forward all my calls to it. When I walk away from my desk, my cell figures out that I’m no longer sitting next to my landline and will turn call forwarding off.

You can extend this idea to allow everyone’s cell to forward to the nearest phone. If someone is sitting at my desk, maybe all of their cell calls are directed to that phone? Wouldn’t it be great if your cell calls were directed to the nearest phone in the airport lounge while you wait for your flight?

I guess the idea here is to have a single number for everyone. Whether you are at work, at home or on the move, people only have to call a single number to reach you. This also avoids insane cellular bills by forwarding calls to landlines, as well as increasing the quality of the call (I get terrible cell coverage at the Maple Leaf lounge in Pearson’s Terminal 1).

You might think cellular carriers would hate this idea - it reduces the number of minutes consumed, but if you think about it, it would INCREASE the number of calls throughout their networks. Your mobile number is now your main number - which is almost the case now, but in this case there are no other numbers. This is a cellular carriers dream.

Of course you can extend this idea and apply it to a range of other concepts, but I think the cellular application is the most relevant.

It looks like someone patented a similar idea, but it’s convoluted and impossible to understand.

Toronto has traffic problems and I hear if it isn’t solved soon, we’ll be in a Boston situation in the next 10 years. One of the proposed solutions is to charge a fee to each car that drives into the city - thus reducing the traffic. However, there is never any specific discussion of transit in that idea. If you increase the cost of driving into the city, and part of that money goes to the TTC, it would make sense to make transit more affordable - $2.75 a trip is on the edge of crazy.

Think about the $2.75 cost for a second. If there are 2 people traveling somewhere, that’s $11 in transit fees. Parking generally costs less than that for a few hours, and in some cases less than that for an entire day! The cost of transit is too close to the cost of parking to have people choose transit over driving.

Back to the point… if a fee is charged to drive your car into the core, it would make sense to have some TTC fee relief as a result of increased ridership. No?

Increasing parking fees would have a similar result, but that assumes government workers are treated like the rest of us. I know gov’t workers get cheap parking in Manhattan, I’m sure they get cheap (if not free) parking in Toronto which means they all drive to work (who wouldn’t?). Government workers should be leading the pack - if they get free parking, why not switch it up, charge for parking and subsidize a metro pass?  Shouldn’t they lead by example?

I’m conducting a little SEO experiment. I’ve posted links to the ATG 2006.3 Platform Documentation from the ATG site, and a local copy of the ATG 2006.3 Platform Documentation and am interested in seeing if search engines pick them up. I want to see if Google (for example) finds the docs, and then ranks them highly in search results.

It has always driven me nuts that ATG doesn’t post their documentation in a place that search engines can index. It also drives me nuts that the ATG search applet doesn’t like the back button - you have to re-search.

So, lets see what happens given the sorta-unprotected-atg-documentation-link-i-found-on-the-atg-site-this-morning and the copy of the docs I downloaded. I’m sure ATG will plug the unprotected docs at some point, and possibly complain that I’ve posted them online, but it really will make life better for ATG developers everywhere. Really.

The Nabble ATG Dynamo Forum actually generates posts and is indexed - which is a refreshing change, welcome to Web 1.0… let the good times roll.

Update - I changed the local link back to ATG.  The traffic was killing me!

Cell contracts suck.  Virgin Mobile knows this and offers no-strings-attached plans.  For those of us using other carriers, you can get out of that nonsense contract through Cellswapper (if you’re in the US).  Great idea, I just have to move to the US to use it - yikes.

There are similar sites out there for all sorts of contract jumping, including ReLeaseMe, which helps you get out of the lease you were pressured into by the sales guy.  However, there is a gap in Cellswapper idea - someone needs to build a tool that will tell you exactly how much you will pay given a rate plan.  This tool would be invaluable - you input your local minutes, long distance minutes, and options you want, and it spits out your monthly cost for various rate plans with various providers.

Everyone would use something like this every so often, wouldn’t they?  I would..  I should build one..  I’ll let you know if I do.

Air Canada just announced that it has heard the voice of the consumer and allows you save money on tickets by foregoing your ability to cancel a ticket for $7… umm, but my tickets are about $500, which means I’m saving 1%.

I can also choose to not accumulate aeroplan miles for an additional $3 savings, or commit to not checking
baggage for $5.

Money is money, but this seems so ridiculous to me. We are talking about 1-2% of a fare. It’s money, but very insignificant when you consider taxes on a flight are upwards of $150, and they charge $5 for a sandwhich. So, for giving up my opportunity to cancel, I get a sandwhich. Awesome.
Isn’t there some other way of offering savings to the consumer for flights? Isn’t there sponsorship or advertising revenue they can get out of having someone stuck in a seat for a predetermined period of time? There must be something… it’s almost like the ultimate user group.

Maybe taste tests - offer snacks that are new to the market?

How about product trials - if I could try a pair of those bose noise cancelling headphones, maybe I’d buy a pair?

What about product placement - have the bathrooms sponsored by bodyshop or kiehls?

Reading materials - enroute is great, but allow other magazines to buy their way onto the flight?

There must be other options..

While in Vancouver, I had the chance to witness one of the many interesting side effects of a bottle deposit system for all types of bottles (not just beer bottles as exists in Ontario).

While in line at a local grocery store, I saw a someone bring in about 25 bottles for a deposit refund. He got about $1.50 in refunds after delivering his cache of plastic and glass bottles. These bottles were pretty worn out, but he got his refund and was on his way.

What I find interesting about this is that Vancouver is a pretty damn clean city. I don’t see tumbleweeds of cans and bottles roaming the streets. So this bottle deposit system has this interesting side effect - someone will pickup a bottle on the street to get the refund.

This happens in Toronto, but the people leafing through my trash at 6am are only looking for beer bottles. Why not extend that program to include plastic and other bottles? This might reduce the volume of recycling set out weekly by residents of Toronto, but something tells me most people don’t recycle because they are lazy and don’t understand the impact of their actions. So this might not work unless people are aware of what happens to that bottle.

Maybe they can implement a bottle deposit system, and continue to run the recycling program. The bottles with deposit that make it into the recycling system can be sorted out at the plant - thus the recycling truck can actually be making money instead of losing it. This leaves the recycling left out overnight available for scavenging, but that’s okay - if you are too lazy to return the bottles yourself, someone else can reap the benefits of it.

I understand this is much easiser said than done, but Vancouver seems to have it in place. Why can’t Toronto? The LCBO bottle depost system is long overdue, but at least it’s on the horizon.