10,000 Brilliant Ideas

I saw in some DVD special feature that with each new film, Pixar tries to push the capabilities of computer animation. Here's the next one to push. Film dubbing in other languages has very high quality in terms of voices and acting, but the problem of lip-match perpetuates. "What can ya do?" we all say to this problem. Well, with computer animation it wouldn't be so hard to design a program that modifies the mouth and face of the character a bit to match certain vowel and consonant sounds. And while you're at it, why not replace the face and skin color of the character in certain situations to better match the audience? Obviously this wouldn't work everywhere, but how cool would that be to live in Mozambique and a brand new, top-of-the-line hollywood movie comes out, in portuguese, with mouths matching, and using Mozy-like characters?! Okay maybe the face thing would only work for like one movie as part of the gimmick. But the mouth thing could totally work.

This isn't a particularly clever idea, but it begs the question: why hasn't this been done? I want a global bank. A real global bank. One where I have an account, and with a mouse click I can open a new account in any currency I wish. And close such an account. And I can use that account in the city of my choice with usability comparable with any other bank in that country. And then I can transfer money between my accounts at competitive exchange rates. When I move to a new country, I don't have to close and re-open or whatnot. All I ask for is simplicity. There's a lot of financial institutions that appear global (citi, paypal), but it's actually just the name. The glue between different branches is sticky at best. Rich people have accounts everywhere. So do corporations. Why not me? I get that most people just bank in one country, but there must be plenty of people operating between different countries who would love this convenience.

An idea stemmed from my conversation with a friend last night. For teens who's eyes have just been opened to the world, how about an on-line group where each logger-on fills out a profile for where they're from, and nationality, etc. and are then matched into a group with exactly one person from each country/region. The group defines a strong community and each member feels important since they are the only one of their kind in the group. Perhaps this could overcome the insulated effect that teens get into where the rest of the world is just too far away.