Self-driving cars are still some ways in the future, but there are some things they will want that human drivers can also make use of.

I think it would be nice if the urban data networks were to broadcast the upcoming schedule for traffic light changes in systems with synchronized traffic lights. Information like “The light at location X will go green westbound at 3:42:15.3, amber at 3:42.45.6 and red at 3:42.47.8” and so on. Data for all directions and for turn arrow lights etc. This could be broadcast on data networks, or actually even in modulations of the light from the LEDs in the traffic lights themselves (though you could not see that around turns and over hills.)

Now a simple device that could go in the car could be a heads-up-display (perhaps even just an audio tone) that tells you whether you are in the “zone” for a green light. As you move through the flow, if you started getting so fast that you would get to the intersection too early for it to be green, it could show you in the too-fast zone with a blinking light or a tone that rises in pitch the faster you are. A green light (no tone) would appear when you were in the zone.

It would arrange for you to arrive at the light after it had been green for a second or two, to avoid the risk of hitting cars running the red light in the other direction. Sometimes when I drive down a street with timed lights I will find myself trusting the timing a bit too much, so I am blowing through the moment the light is green, which actually is a bit risky because of red light runners. (Perhaps the city puts in a longer all-red gap on such lights to deal with this?)

More controversial is the other direction, a tone telling you that you will need to speed up to catch this green before it goes amber. This might encourage people to drive recklessly fast and might be a harder product to legally sell. Though perhaps it could tell you that if you sped up to the limit you would make the light but stop telling you after no legal speed can make it. Of course, people would learn to figure it out.

We figure that out already of course. Many walk/don’t walk signs now have red light countdown timers, and how many of us have not sped up upon seeing the counter getting low? Perhaps this isn’t that dangerous. Just squeaking through a light rarely helps, of course, because the way the timing works you usually are even more likely to miss the next one, and you have to go even faster to make it — to the point that even a daredevil won’t try.

This simple device could be just the start of it. Knowledge of this data for the city (combined with a good GPS map system of course) could advise you of good alternate routes where you will get better traffic light timing. It could advise you to turn if you’re first at a red light (which it will know thanks to GPS) if your destination is off to the right anwyay. Of course it could do better combined with real traffic data and information on construction, gridlock etc.

This is not a cruise control, you would still control the gas. However, if you pressed too hard on the gas your alert would start making the tone, and you would soon learn it is quite unproductive to keep pressing. (You could make this a cruise control but you need to be able to speed up some times to avoid things and change lanes.) People tend more often to speed up and then have to break for a short while waiting for the green, which doesn’t get you there any faster, and is a jerky ride.

The system I describe could be a nice add-on for car GPS systems.

Most search engines now have a search box in the toolbar, which is great, and like most people mine defaults to Google. I can change the engine with a drop down menu to other places, like Amazon, Wikipedia, IMDB, eBay, Yahoo and the like. But that switch is a change in the default, rather than a temporary change — and I don’t want that, I want it to snap back to Google.

However, I’ve decided I want something even more. I’ll make a plea to somebody who knows how to do firefox add-ons to make a plug-in so I can chose my search engine with some text in the query I type. In other words, if I go to the box (which defaults to Google) I could type “w: foobar” to search Wikipedia, and “e: foobar” to search eBay and so on. Google in fact uses a syntax with keyword and colon to trigger special searches, though it tends not to use one letter. If this bothers people, something else like a slash could be used. While it would not be needed, “g: foobar” would search on Google, so “g: w: foobar” would let you search for “w: foobar” on Google. The actual syntax of the prefix string is something the user could set, or it could be offered by the XML that search engine entries are specified with.

Why is this the right answer? It’s no accident that Google uses this. They know. Whatever your thoughts on the merits of command line interfaces and GUIs, things often get worse when you try to mix them. Once you have me typing on the keyboard, I should be able to set everything from the keyboard. I should not be forced to move back and forth from keyboard to pointing device if I care to learn the keyboard interface. You can have the GUI for people who don’t remember, but don’t make it be the only route.

What’s odd is that you can do this from the Location bar and not the search bar. In Firefox, go to any search engine, and right click on the search box. Select “Add a Keyword for this Search” and this lets you create a magic bookmark which you can stuff anywhere, whose real purpose is not to be a bookmark, but a keyword you can use to turn your URL box into a search box that is keyword driven.

You don’t really even need the search box, which makes me wonder why they did it this way.