10,000 Brilliant Ideas

"Oooh, what cute watches your kids have!" "Thanks, they're Twennies." "What are Twennies?" "Funny you should ask. The Twenny watch is the latest, greatest, kid communicating and tracking device! I simply put the watches on my kids in the morning with a key we keep at home. They don't come off without the key. If they ever need to talk to me, they just push the button on the top. I can them communicate with them from my smart phone. If I ever need to talk to them, I call them in a similar way. They don't even need to answer, it automatically connects so they can hear my voice and I can hear what's around them. And with my smart phone I can see precisely where they are to within 5 meters! I can even set an alarm to tell me if my kids are more than a few meters away from me. I don't have to ask 'what's your Twenny?' I always know! The watches are waterproof and virtually indestructible. Should some low-life ever try ...

If you're one of those people who absolutely must answer your phone no matter what meeting you're in, then this might at least avoid some embarrassment. You answer by pushing the green button, you push another button that plays a pre-recorded greeting in your voice to the caller that says "hello", then you decide to take it or not and push another button that either says "I'm in a meeting, hold on one second while I walk out of the room" or one that says "I'm actually in a meeting, can I call you back as soon as it's finished? Okay, thanks. Bye." And you never have to say a word out loud.

There are people who are late, and then there are people who are really late. Most of us have had a run with showing up 5 minutes late for a series of events - there's just too much to do in the time allotted. But then there are people who are really late - like hours late. I won't pretend to understand the science behind this, but I'll give these people a cop-out and say they are just running on polychronic time. I may be misunderstanding this, but for my purposes, I'll say it's looking at time like when you were a kid. You didn't know when the school bus came. You just waited until you mom said "your bus is here" and then you went outside. 7:52 meant nothing to you. I've occasionally relapsed into this mode as well, but I think the hour-laters are in it much more often. Enter the polychronic watch. It works thusly. You enter an appointment in your watch and it asks you a series of questions: what time the appointment is, how much time do you nee...