Swinging Wicket

Ok, the trigger for this was the recent dismal performance by the Indian cricket team in England.

I know that we keep giving excuses like - our players are not used these conditions, the swing off the pitch, the movement in the air etc.

My idea is to resolve this by using a combination of 'special' type of cricket balls and some simple wind generators in the practice wickets. For example,
- The special ball could be constituted in such a way that it behaves differently that a normal ball and simulates "movement" off the pitch. It can probably have different weights on both the halves.
- The wind generator could be a simple instrument placed on the sides of the practice wicket such that it simulates the ball movement in the air. I think it should be very cheap to make and deploy...

Anyone listening?! :)

Screen to Paper

I know that the world is moving towards digitization of content. But, I am still not ready to go with the flow! Here is what happened today - I had a small control-key references for an application on my desktop. Now, I want it to be on a physical post-it that I can paste next to my monitor. But, I don't want to go through the pain of writing the info manually! :)

How about having a 'sensitive' paper that I can just keep-pressed on the area that I need to copy from my desktop monitor!...this paper will copy the portion of the monitor onto itself auto-magically! No need to write things down anymore!

Geyser

I often switch on my Geyser and forget to switch it off. Result - waste of power, money etc.

Typically, we switch on the geyscer for a particular duration - say 15 mins, 20 mins etc. Now, why not have the Geyser switch itself designed like a rotary knob with minute marking (may be upto 60 mins), so that we can just toggle to the amount of time we want the geyser to be ON and then, it will turn off automatically after that. The knob could just have a coil spring like the analog stop watches - It will manually turn back from the preset time and stop when it reaches zero!

Touch sensitive cell phone pads

Ok, I know what you're saying...'dude, this technology is already there...' - right?...but, this idea is about making effective use of this existing technology.

We all hate to type our SMS message on the small key-pad of the 'normal' cell phones (not talking about clunky smart phones here). This is because, if I have to type character 'c', I need to press '2' 3 times. Also, if I have to type letters 'bc', I need to press '2' twice, then 'pause' for a while, and then press '2' 3 times!. I think you get the point now.

Coming to my idea - Why not make the touch sensitive keys 'directional'. That is, if you press '2' and slide to the LEFT - it means 'a'. If you press '2' and slide the finger UP - it means 'b'. See the following picture. It should make things clear:

No more awkward silence!

There are many common areas such as toilets, lobby, even elevators, where awkward silence exists. People would feel more comfortable if some soft music plays on in the background (imagine the toilet situation). Many places already have speaker that play soft music. But, the problem is that the locations for these speakers need to be thought through during building design to ensure wiring and control for these speakers.

So, how about manufacturing a small inexpensive stand-alone recording device with a inbuilt speaker that runs on a small AAA battery, that comes with the default soft music. This device can be made to play soft music in an infinite loop in all these common areas to cut off the awkward silence. This would also allow the buyer to record some other music/sound of their Howz that?!

Getting thin!

Well, I've been thinking about it...or let's say, been forced to think about it by my 'well-wishers'!... :)

One idea is - with all these advancements in medical technology, why not have a way to pump out the food out of the body as soon as we swallow?! Think about it - we don't really care what happens to the junk food after we taste and swallow it...

Another idea - create a magic 'pill' that we can consume after eating high-calorie food which will "nullify" the calories before the acids in the stomach get to work on them!

Automatic Road barricades!

Like most congested cities in the world, we in bangalore also have huge traffic problems, especially during peak hours. On many roads, the traffic is usually one-sided, meaning, it overflows on one-side, while the other side enjoys a very thin or no traffic situation. This is usually caused by concentration of large-scale companies on a particular location. During the day you will see huge traffic going towards this location and the other way in the evening.

Now, for the whacko thought - how about designing an automatic road barricades system that moves to widen the road on one side during day and do the opposite in the evening? For example, if we have two lanes of traffic on each side of the road, In the morning - the traffic-intensive side of the road will enjoy three lanes now while the other side would have only one (which is good enuf for that moment). What say?!