Brad Ideas - Inventions - Comments

I have to admit that the

karen — Mon, 12 May 2008 02:55:08 -0700

I have to admit that the idea sounds great and it can also be easily functional. Many people would want this to happen, I just hope you considered all the possible issues when you formulated the idea. Apparently all these aspects are clear and who knows we will probably enjoy such a feature sooner than we think. I've just applied for a credit card at www.ApplyOnline.CitiCards.com, they seem to be well customer oriented, I wouldn't be surprised to see a version of this feature in this company.

I'd just like to note that

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:34:42 -0700

I'd just like to note that Geothermal is really just a special case of nuclear power, most of the heat that comes out of the earth is caused by radioactive elements decaying deep within the earth and giving out heat. Even solar energy (and it's resultant winds from heating of the air) is just given to us by our best and safest nuclear reactor - the Sun. It's really just a matter of how far and how well shielded we are from our nuclear energy. Thankfully the sun is a long way away, and we have a protective atmosphere and magnetic field deflecting a lot of the nastier forms of radiation the sun flings our way. Geothermal is good as well, since the reaction is deep in the earth, we are relatively safe from it (and well shielded by the earth under our feet).

Tidal energy is kinetic energy of the moons orbit being drawn off as far as I understand it, but this "gravititational" energy is the only other true source I can think of.

That could happen

brad — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:02:04 -0700

And probably will, but there are still products that need UI to be usable and customizable, and I would rather have the option for a big screen, web-connected UI than trying to cobble something on a device with 3 buttons.

Hydrogen

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:08:24 -0700

Creating hydrogen from water is only about 60% efficient, and then converting it back to energy is again about 60% efficient, resulting in you only getting out around 1/4 to 1/3 of the energy you put into your hydrogen 'battery'. Chemical batteries have efficiencies around 90%, and ultracapacitors have efficiencies of very nearly 100%. In truth, hydrogen is a very POOR energy storage medium. The only reason that it has been touted as a fuel is that a car using it could be refilled at a station much like conventional gas or (more closely) natural gas/propane.

Usability nightmare

mendel — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:46:21 -0700

A good device is one where the designers have come up with an easy way to use a minimum number of available controls through eliminating bloat and finding an intuitive way to use the control.
Giving the designer teh option to forgo the expensive process of developing a good interface and instead making do with a couple of quickly slapped together web pages will make your average device more of a pain to administer than it is today.

servit

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:26:21 -0700

I would like to buy a servit. Do you have one for sale? Thanks.

Computer peripherals

brad — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:59:19 -0800

I have some concern over using such a system to control existing computer peripherals rather than configuring consumer electronics devices that are not normally hooked up to the computer. It is useful, of course, but presents several challenges.

First of all, established peripherals (printers, UPSs and others you name) tend to have drivers already installed on the computer. There are issues in attempting to communicate with a device which already has a driver talking to it. That driver could of course already provide a means for web sites to talk to the device, which is both good (you are running native code on the machine) but also sometimes more limiting -- you can only do what the driver writers planned for you to do. It also is not portable over all OSs the way raw USB access is.

You would have to suspend normal driver operations. This may not be easy, though in theory should be possible with many devices. In addition, there are security issues with providing access to established peripherals.

On the other hand we don't want most device drivers to be reporting home on us without our knowledge or consent. A key factor of the plugin I describe is that it would be an overt act. Go to a web page with the plugin, and see a dialog pop up saying "Do you want to give control of USB device XXX to the YYY web site?" Letting the power company monitor a UPS is more spyware-like.

some boring examples

drewp — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:46:22 -0800

I like this. For a few more examples, here's what I'd get if the USB devices around me could be reached from remote web servers:

flickr.com could grab the photos from my camera. Another website could take timelapse photos with my camera and compile them into a movie.

HP.com could check on my printer and run an automatic cleaning when I don't use the printer for several days. I also don't mind them gathering usage info on how often I jam the paper, etc.

Remote monitor my UPS. The power company might care to have my outage data. Or I might use a watchdog site that not only checks my web and mail servers, but also my power load.

I have some USB/1-wire temp sensors on my computer. A large building or server room might want to spread sensors like this over many computers, and then they'll want to be gathering the results in a central place. Your web-usb bridge would reduce the custom software on each node.

Games and other interactive sites could make use of unusual input devices, like the PowerMate or a dance pad.

I can connect my laptop to my cell phone for networking (or use nearby wifi). I have a GPS that is reached via USB (and then bluetooth). While it's nice for the laptop to know its position, I go to some trouble to broadcast it to a mapping website. It would be fine to instead connect the GPS to the mapping site.

I know all these are separate from your original goal (setup the new TV). I'm in favor of your usages too.

In the dryer

brad — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:17:37 -0800

I can see an easy way to detect you're in the dryer -- the temperature -- though that could be too late. Is there a cheap substance that makes a loud noise if you heat it up? I could see perhaps a little capsule of some alcohol that boils at dryer temperature, bursts and then vents out a whistle hole. But it would have to be pretty loud to hear it.

Perhaps better if you can figure a way to have something in the pen that a sensor in the dryer can detect, as that sensor can be much more expensive and the thing in the pens cheap. I don't want unique serial number RFIDs in my pens, though. Though there has been talk of RFIDs in clothes that contain the information on how to wash and dry them. In that situation, the dryer tells you you've put in a delicate item and should not have the heat so high, or perhaps put it in the dryer at all. Such a system could also work on pens -- and perhaps on fragile items that should not go in dryers, like cell phones and wallets.

Destructive Pens

Solar John — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:04:11 -0800

We also need pens with a built-in alarm. They need to sound off when they're about to be put into the dryer. A pen in your pocket ruins one piece of clothing. A pen in the dryer ruins many.

John

Clip

brad — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:01:04 -0800

I don't clip pens to my pocket. I put them in my pants pocket. If I put them in a shirt pocket, which I often don't have, this would be a good idea.

Lamy pen

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 20:09:02 -0800

Lamy made a pen to accomplish this in a different way. When you extend the pen point, the clip retracts, preventing you from clipping it into your pocket with the point extended. Retract the point, the clip comes back!

Signing cheques at the ATM?

Phillip Helbig — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:11:32 -0800

Why do you need to sign cheques at an ATM? Are these cheques you are
depositing (how quaint!) or do you need to sign it to get cash? I haven't
physically signed (pen and ink) anything relating to financial transactions
in years, except for the occasional EC- or credit-card payment where they
want a signature rather than a PIN. (Many EC-card payments are via PIN
rather than signature now, and in Scandinavia almost all credit-card payments
are by PIN as well---not just cash withdrawls.)

Pencils

brad — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:49:58 -0800

Are no good for signing cheques at the ATM and a few other purposes, alas.

mechanical pencil

Laurence Gonsalves — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:24:35 -0800

My thought when I read this post was: why not just use a mechanical pencil? They already exist, they're cheap, and if you don't retract the tip before putting them in your pocket the damage done to your pants is minimal. If you're loose enough in your definitions, a mechanical pencil is even doing what you ask for by only "feeding ink" (rubbing off graphite) when the tip is moving over paper.

The only disadvantages I see are that you occasionally need to advance the lead (not hard to remember, since it'll stop writing) and the marks aren't permanent (which can be advantage depending on the situation).