Ideas for Free

Problem: Sometimes frozen food melts and refreezes.

Refrigerated trucks don’t.  Freezer doors stay open.  The freezer case goes out.  Groceries get left in the car for a long trip.  The power company decides to play power line roulette.  Later, the problem is fixed, and the food freezes again.  It’s hard to know if food thawed out and was then refrozen.  For some foods, this can be dangerous.

Solution: Fancy Ice Cubes.

Put a small “safe to eat” ice solid inside each back of frozen vegetables.  If it’s missing or unreadable, the vegetables have been thawed and refrozen.  The ice solid is made from water with two or more food colorings, so pick colors like the food.

When ice melts, the liquid will mix.  If you make ice cubes out of two or more colored waters, the two colors will mix.   For the simplest example:

1. Fill an ice cube tray so that each hole is half full.
2. Put in one drop of yellow food coloring into each hole.
3. Freeze.  You now have half height yellow ice cubes.
4. Fill the rest of each hole of the ice cube tray with plain water.
5. Put in one drop of blue food coloring into each hole.
6. Freeze.  You now have ice cubes that are yellow on the bottom and blue on top.
7. Leave the ice cubes in the freezer.  Have a three day power outage and then restore power for a day.
8. You now have green ice cubes.

That’s the core idea.  You have a way to tell if the item was refrozen.  From here, you can get fancy.

• Adjust the surface area ratio to signify how much thawing is acceptable.  Use thin slices when less thawing is allowed.
• “Print” tamper proof cubes in multiple colors.   You might ship cases of vegetables with a thin slice with the date and company logo in different colors.  If it the slice arrives a melted mess, don’t accept it from the trucker.
• Use multiple fluids or widths to make a ‘gauge’ to show exactly how melted the shipment got.

This could easily commercialize as a money saver by identifying truckers making expensive mistakes or as a premium brand spiff by making the ’safety tag’ inside each bag.
Shoo, go make money.

Problem: People Fail To Understand the Whole “Gays Can Marry” Thing

Solution: A T-Shirt!  It’s Always The Solution

FIRST THE COLOREDS…

THEN THE WOMEN…

NOW THE GAYS?

LIBERALS AND THEIR “RIGHTS”

Problem: Hard to Get People Not To Smoke

Solution: Pressure sensitive ashtrays

Some people smoke in non-smoking areas.  Sad, but true.  How about putting ashtrays for their pleasure?  These ashtrays cough loudly when you rest a cigarette on the edge of ashtray.  If you mash your cigarette in the ashtray it screams “Ahhhhhh!!!! It Burns!  It Burns!”

There are worse things to build on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Problem: People balk at having online access to seldom used financial, insurance, and service accounts.

Financial and insurance institutions want consumers to access accounts online.  It lowers costs and provides consistent service.

People note the potential for high cost losses, the one-sided user agreements, and complete lack of recourse for most fraud.  Some may choose online access for primary banking; the convenience outweighing the risk.  Many more will avoid online access to a 401(k) plan.

Solution: Provide information only accounts by default.

Information about an account is less valuable than the money in it.  Being a little careless with your account, such as accessing it from a computer, becomes similiar to throwing out printed statements without shreading them.

These accounts would let people see their balances and fees, make most routine changes, but not make ones that severly compromise security.  For example, transfering money from savings to checking is OK; changing mutual funds is OK; adding a newborn to your insurance is OK; changing your address is not OK; disbursing money to outside accounts is right out.  The risk of catastrophic loss decreases.

There are some implementations approaching this solution, aimed at preventing catastrophic losses.  Bank of America provides alert notifications by email when selected activities occur, such as adding a new Payee.   E*Trade uses separate passwords for viewing information and trading securities.

This idea provides lower costs to institutions, more convenience to consumers, and less loss to fraud all around.  What’s not to like?