10,000 Brilliant Ideas

We are quickly nearing the time when the once-cool CD is going to tip its hat and fade out the door into the fog of obsolescence. The CD was a great way to get people data that would be difficult to obtain over the internet - either due to the size of data to be shared or due to poor connections or both. Now we're seeing cheap USB keys fulfilling this function. You attend a conference, and receive the background materials on a USB key rather than a CD-rom. Why? Probably a few reasons, not the least of which is CD drives are heavy and more and more people are leaving them off their laptops. But getting a bunch of the same info on a bunch of USB keys one by one could be a bit time consuming. What is the new mass CD burner for USBs? Why the USB copy coil of coise! Imagine a little USB with a plug part on one side and a receiver part on the other. Then imagine a hundred of these keys hooked to each other in a long train. Then imagine this train coiled up into a snail-like shape. Then i...

For the hands-on cook who needs clean hands, but not necessarily scented hands. This soap is specially unscented (or MSG scented) so you don't worry about your tossed salad tasting like musk (or your goulash tasting like grapefruit).

Everyone's a collector of Christmas ornaments, but now you can be a collector of Christmas lights too. You buy a strand of lights originally and then you collect different ornaments and lights that plug into the strand. Each ornament moves or lights up or both.

This is a very basic business model that's success probably relies on its simplicity and firstness to succeed. Simply this: A hired amateur photographer with a cool camera (or at least a cool lens) attends a school event, let's say a high school football game wearing a T-shirt that reads "check out these photos at That'sMe.com". The photographer shoots oodles of cool photos, making sure to get at least one good shot of everyone in the game. She then goes home, uploads all the good ones, labels them by jersey number, writes up a little blurb about the event and that's all. Meanwhile savvy parents log on, look at the impressive shots of their little one and either buy the .jpg file or order prints. Stratified pricing structure makes it possible for everyone to get something - from the rich mom wanting a walnut framed print, to a fellow student who wants some locker decor, to a low-res file for facebook. Easily franchiseable. Relatively untouchable by "the b...

When it comes to door locks you basically have two options-the latch or the deadbolt. Latch pro: you can shut the door and it's locked-no need for a key. Latch con: it can be more easily picked with a credit card (not that anyone actually uses credit cards for this. Let's say library card.) Latch-key children: Irrelevant to this discussion. Dead-bolt pro: a lot harder to pick Dead-bolt con: you have to use a key to lock it. The answer? Why the latching dead-bolt of course! Using that one technology on the glass doors of the entertainment center where you push it in and it pushes out farther, you know-the latching dead-bolt is short until the door shuts, pushing it in and making it come out longer the way a dead-bolt should. The lock is reset to short latch-position when unlocked again.

The sled, sledge, sleigh or whatever you call it is due for a revamping. Introducing the Slayboard (misspelled for coolness sakes). It better resembles a knee board then a sled, but the idea is to cruise down ski and snowboard style runs on your knees - pro style. Noting the past trends of this kind of sport equipment (bikes, scooters, etc.), it seems clear the time has come for the sled to see the spotlight and become the new extreme sport.

I want little porcelain figurines, or music boxes or what have you that you use to decorate your house. But instead of being made of porcelain they are made of some indestructible plastic or rubber. They still look nice (and grown-up), but they don't break with curiosity.