Daily Archives: February 4, 2006

Invention: Multi-Currency Gambling in Shipol Airport

Ther is a casino in the Schipol Airport called the Holland Casino. They need to build a slot machine that takes all of the world’s common coins.
Thousands of people file through Schipol daily leaving countries with pockets full of change that they will likely throw away when they get home.
Now there are a few places where you can give your change to charity – but I never find them. (By the way – US airports need the Chainge for Chairty right before every security line).
But what you do with the slot machines is walk up, put in your Euros/Quarters/Quid, etc and pull the lever. Most of the time it just eats your money. But sometimes you get some fun $$ back like say $100.
The odds in this slot machine will be bad because the cost of exchanging the “hard” currency is bad. And why not give 10% to charity. Charity would get more taking 10% off the top at these slot machines than from the little places that they currently have.
It is a win win situation and people woould love Schipol even more than they already do!
(Sorry – I wrote this one down during climb out form Stuttgart Airport – so I have to put it in the blog so I can throught the little scrap of paper away).

Invention: Home PDA Server

With the advent of WIFI Based PDA’s and video games – a new need arises. Effectively a lieelt home router with PDA suppport built in. It would be great to have a simple mail client, a calnedar tool, and an AIM client. Probably the easiest way to do this is to have this be a browser based tool that does all the hard work in the server and serves up extremely light markup.
Someone will build this into their home gateway like Link Sys and then build a set of phone/PDA units for about $100 apiece – effectively cheap blackberry’s that only work in the house.
This will actually solve the problem that WebTV has failed at so miserably for 10 years now. Instead of reading mail on the TV – you will read mail and do IM on the remote control!

Invention: Retractible iPod Earphones

Sometimes I just get ideas that jump into my head – often in the shower or in that part of a plane flight where you cannot have electronic devices turned on – so I am reduced to thinking, pencil and paper.
I invent many things, never write them down and then get ticked because folks make a zillion dollars and I am still driving a 1996 Oldsmobile.
So I am going to start putting my ideas into my blog. Not to get rich – just to get credit when someone else does:)

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