SWPhoenix

Resurrect the idea of the ARG (Alternate Reality Game). This is an idea that was pioneered, but short lived by EA for their game "Majestic" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game) and shown in the 1990's movie "The Game".

In an ARG, the line between the game and reality is blurred in which the game interacts with you via everyday communications methods, such as phone, fax, IM, text message, email, Twitter, Blogs, etc., all based on parameters you define. The goal is to provide you with clues to solve a mystery or problem to get to the next level.

I think that ARG's could be more successful if they were created on a more local level, that actually promoted local interaction to get you away from your computer and out in public. For example the game could provide you with hints relating to a physical object that could be virtually located anywhere and you would need to use the clues to locate the object to find a piece of the bigger puzzle. The game should also be realtime, so that you must accomplish things in a certain amount of time. It would essentially be an intelligent scavenger hunt of scavenger hunts, based on predefined parameters about your capabilities and interests.

You could also turn this into a platform for others to develop their own games and storylines, and setup their own puzzles and challenges.

A web-based research tool for people in advertising that allows them to see how print ads have evolved over time. Magazine ads are scanned, catalogued and then presented in a structured format online to allow a visitor to see how the ads have changed. Lessons can then be extracted and applied to one's own ads.

You earn your access to the service by scanning and contributing a new ad campaign each month. Alternatively you can purchase a subscription. Commentary from participants creates a vibrant community and makes it a must-have tool for every marketer.

Venn diagrams are the shaded circles that show intersection of two result sets in statistics. Start this project out as a web app that allows you to enter a list of contacts and have it hash the list and compare it to someone else's list to determine who you share as mutual friends.

Initially make it so you just paste in a list of email addresses. Add the ability for it to pull contacts from your gmail, facebook etc. Eventually this would be a great iPhone app that uses your iPhone contacts and overlays them via bluetooth or wireless with another iPhone user. The whole idea is not to expose your contacts but to match a "fingerprint" against another person's list to see who you both know. Charge to reveal shared contacts after x number of matches.

While there is an abundance of first aid information on the web, in books, and from other resources, in an emergency, you need help fast. When an emergency happens, most people don't have time to find that often misplaced first aid book. What you need is a convenient source of accurate information that everyone in the household can easily locate in an emergency. What better place for that information than a magnet on your refrigerator or inside your medicine cabinet?

Segments include real-estate agents or other people/organizations needing to promote themself with long "shelf life" products (i.e., much better than the sports schedule and calendar magnets that just get thrown away at the end of the season/year); fundraisers (better and more responsible than "cookie dough", candles, etc.); Give-aways by hospitals, doctors offices to their customers; tradeshows, and the list goes on ..

Like I've said before, there's no way the iPhone was usability-tested for one-handed use. Try typing an email while driving, or walking. Let's fix it.
The idea is that on activation the app does things like enlarge keyboard buttons when you type emails, send tweets, or enter text on web forms, etc. What else should it do?

A free centralized repository that allows users to post their resume and portfolio in a standardized format that any other participating job board or social network could accept. I have hated in the past when I was looking for a new position and submitting my resume to all of the big job boards having to enter the same details in every site to get the optimal results that just uploading my resume could not produce. The system would offer a potential API for third party job boards and social networking sites allowing you to post this resume to their system rather than going through the tedious steps of each individual site out there. Finance could be achieved with the use of vendor advertising, extended services and features. Imagine one single place to manage your employment credentials.

Many times truckers end up coming back empty... termed "dead heading" because they can't find a load to haul back. This would be "Priceline" for truckers and shippers. The shipper would list a load they need transported or delivered and truckers in the pickup area for the load would be notified by phone message. They would then be able to bid a lower price than the current bid to see if they can win the load. We would make our money the same way eBay does... a small % form the shipper and maybe the winning trucker too.

Many people need childcare but have problems finding GOOD childcare providers who have 1) openings, 2) are in the area where the person lives or works and 3) has reasonable prices.

The results of a search by a parent looking for childcare could be plotted on a google map with a clickable link to get more information. Some information could also be listed in a table on the web page just like many searchs do today.

The way to make money at this would be to charge a monthly fee for each childcare, preschool or daycare that wants to be listed. Facilities without openings could list as wait-listed.

Banner ads for childcares, etc, could be purchased for a monthly fee and static or rotating sidebar ads.

Google ads could also be run for associated items, web sites, etc. plus links to affiliate web sites.

Every parent wants the best for their kids. They want their kids to be successful, intelligent, stay in school, and don't get in trouble with the law. They are under the parents wing their entire lives until they hit college.
With their new freedom, kids are now able to do whatever they want because they are away from home. Well now, parents can hire a PI(who is also a student) who can watch their child to see if they are getting into anything they aren't supposed to be(drinking, partying, sex, etc.).

An application that can help people with diabetes track their medical testing history (blood, exercise, weight loss/gain, etc). Also provide a way to import blood sugars tests from the different testers. The consumer can create graphs and charts to show progress. Also they can print out copies to give to their Dr. at their normal check ups.
The app can also connect to resources for nutrition and other helpful information.
Basically give the consumer the ability to keep their own personal medical record at home.

Year after year we hear people being crippled with debt yet the financial institutions are doing little to offer their products in addition to assistance to help their customers control debt. How about changing the thinking in the industry. What about a credit card that you can set a rules engine on? How about allowing me to say that my wife can only spend $40 this month on retail and if it goes over to alert me or to alert her to stop the purchase? The same could be said about my gadget purchases, of course.

Let's explore creating a smart credit card and still empower a consumer to build credit, but also help them be responsible with the credit they are building.

Technology can aid this solution of course.

The ability to interact with an industry expert is a valuable sales and marketing tool. For example, consulting with an attorney or a physician, seeking the advice of a financial advisor or just bounce recipe ideas off a prominent chef. The advice seeker gains valuable knowledge and the advice giver has promoted her business. ExpertKnowledge is a website that allows such interaction. An industry expert, via a paid monthly subscription, streams her video cast to an audience. She has her own custom page where viewers can tune in. Her page may have auxiliary media files that compliment her video cast. Her audience consists of passive and active viewers who can text or ask questions via video and audio interaction.

There are many sites that contain static knowledge-based content like videos or text documents. But once you read a white paper or watch a video, it’s very difficult to obtain feedback. Sure you can add to a blog post, but the level of quality is far inferior to real-time human interaction.

There are also many sites that allow streaming videos and text chat, for example, UStream. But the content is generally a hodgepodge of hit and miss videos. If a person is seeking genuine content of substance, the search can be daunting and yield minimal results.

It is my goal to establish ExpertKnowledge as the source for knowledge, how-to advice, opinions or counsel. Viewers can choose channels based on categories, then narrow their choice based on user feedback and audience participation. When someone needs live, real-time advice from a nutritionist to a mechanic to an interior designer, their first destination will be ExpertKnowledge.

People contstantly claim to live in communities. But we really live in neighborhoods and don't leverage our own community neighbors as resources. This is especially true of stay-at-home moms most of the time. Over the past 5 years my community has led a "co-op" environment using each other as resources for stay-at-home parents to be able to leverage, stay sane, and accomplish any tasks they need to do. The management of this is very cumbersome and could be improved. How could this "co-op" idea be improved, leverage automation, and be packaged to bring it to other communities in a pre-packaged, easy-to-get started format? I can provide an overview of the problem statement, challenges faced, desired solutions, etc.

Many of us spend some time hunting around for the best online banking deal, the best CD rates, etc. But even if I find that INGdirect has fallen a few basis points behind HSBC, it’s rarely worth my time/energy/hassle to switch.

How about a “banking front end” which lets me manipulate my money and pay my bills from a common screen, hiding from me the details of where my money really is. Meanwhile, I have a seeker backend that is constantly shifting my money to find the best deal, taking into account any latency or processing fees. I think you could probably squeeze out an extra percent a year or something with a program like this, and you wouldn’t be fooled by “introductory offers,” because your backend would immediately note any change.

Similarly for credit cards, your backend could be continually seeking out new introductory offers and performing “debt arbitrage” for you by moving your balances around and keeping track of exactly what needed to be paid when.

An alternative and/or supplement to the traditional yardsale, passivesale.com uses the capabilities around tagging video segments to make it painless for anyone to document all their possessions and assign a price to each. Everyone has a ton of stuff they'd part with for a price if the process of having the "virtual yardsale" was easy enough. The simplest version of this idea would allow anyone to upload video, tag & index segments, search and view possessions by geographic proximity. Revenue model is to charge a small fee to connect the buyer with the seller.

Right now there are no good options for hearing-impaired people to enjoy a movie in the theater without going to special theaters. This is an experimental concept but I would think an iPhone-based player could be developed for playing the time-coded closed captioned transcripts that accompany all movies. I don't know how access to those transcripts works nor if there would be issues of disturbing other movie viewers by brightness or if it would be too annoying to constantly change depth of field in viewers vision but it seems like this would be a $5 iPhone app that hearing-impaired people would buy to be able to enjoy movies with their friends. All kinds of opportunities to get theaters' to do the promo required as simplified way of achieving handicapped accessibility without buying and supporting extra hardware.