Over the years, I've had a few good ideas, ideas ahead of their time...which I mentioned to close friends.
1) Green Exercise Machines at Health Clubs
Several years ago, I asked why fitness clubs don't harness the energy of its members... particularly with exercise bikes and treadmills. I even asked Dr. Mike Mullens, an engineering professor at UCF about this wastefulness. I am encouraged that some gyms have just started to incorporate this technology. The picture below shows a battery being charged at a micro-gym but I recently read of a larger gym employing this technology. In terms of power generation, I believe that these batteries can only power a small amount of the power needs of a gym...enough for lighting the building. The ideal exercise remains walking or biking to work and for your shopping.
2) Servers Using PDAs for Orders
Many years ago, when PDA's first came out, I wondered about all of the possibilities for PDA's and thought that taking orders in restaurants by servers was extremely inefficient. I thought that wireless PDA's could send orders back to the kitchen immediately and also minimize errors that come from trying to read illegible handwriting.
Servers using PDA's have started in some locations.
This is an example of software that can be used with the PDA.
3) 'Treat Receipts' by Starbucks
Years ago when I was working for a fast food restaurant, the manager mentioned having really great traffic for lunch but that company-wide they wanted to see more dinner traffic. I proposed the idea that customers could buy breakfast or lunch and if they brought back their receipt, would receive a discount for the dinner meal. The manager told me this was a great idea and other staff told me to be careful because he would probably introduce this idea to his bosses and not give me credit. To my knowledge, he never followed up on my suggestion.
Read about something similar at Starbucks from a recent Business Week article:
From Business Week, August 17, 2009. Howard Schultz v. Howard Schultz, By Susan Berfield. pg. 32 "And Gillett's store sales data helped Schultz see an important difference between the morning (when coffee is a necessity) and the afternoon (when it is an indulgence). "We never had that level of segmentation before," Schultz says. "It's a new tool in terms of being able to move the business in different ways." The numbers prompted Starbucks to offer any grande cold drink for $2 after 2 p.m. to customers who had already made a purchase that day: The company calls it the treat receipt."
4) Archived Video & Lecture Notes Changing Education
Years ago in college, I had a Technology-In-Education class that, as a side-note, was worthless because they were teaching out-dated technologies: Lotus in black screen and WordPerfect. Anyway, I asked the college professor what was to keep technology from laying off scores of professors in the future. With streaming video and now archival video and lecture notes, why would a student want to take a class from a good but not great professor? With streaming and archival video, students now have the possibility of seeing the best professors teaching courses at MIT, Harvard, Princeton. She was MAD!! But the question about a revolution in education remains and was recently mentioned in a Fast Company magazine article entitled Who Needs Harvard? September 2009. In the article, writer Robyn Twomey quotes Jim Groom an instructional technologist at University of Mary Washington who has coined the phrase 'edupunk' who embodies the DIY education. Twomey writes that since colleges are SO expensive and borderline unaffordable, many 'edupunks' have decided to learn on their own with free content online.
When I went online to search for subject materials, I was inundated with videos from prominent professors and speakers, lecture notes, exams, etc. Just going to MIT's site, I found 70 courses in economics; many of which held:
Lecture notes
Projects and examples
Projects (no examples)
Online textbooks
Assignments and solutions
Exams and solutions
Multimedia content
Assignments (no solutions)
Exams (no solutions)
As an example, I found this Newton and The Enlightenment lecture by Courtenay Raia from UCLA. It is a little hard to hear so turn your volume up all the way.
I watched an incredible video last year on the creation of mini-markets (matching buyers/sellers, donors/receivers) related to organ transplants. The speaker is a specialist who creates mini-markets whenever/wherever these markets are failing.
What is missing is an accreditation process that measures actual mastery of subjects for the self-learner (edupunk). Bob Mendenhall, president of the online Western Governors University and mentioned in the article, has forged a new path where students do not have credit hours or receive grades. Instead they receive assessments based on competencies and are then awarded a degree. Some students already working in their chosen fields have signed up and have finished their bachelor's degree in six months.
5) Using Phone Cameras When Shopping
My dad has been doing the family grocery shopping for years but several times has been told by mom that he bought the wrong thing. I thought that dad, whenever he was in doubt about a particular product, should take a picture of the item while in the store and send the picture to mom and she could text back whether this was the right product or not. I have not seen this practiced yet.
6) Comparison Shopping
I mentioned comparing prices online before sites like Pricegrabber, Nextag, Bizrate came about. I don't have the coding skills to put this into practice, but was shocked when I heard recently about a PDA attachment that supposedly has a barcoding wand that you can take to the supermarket. So, say you are at Kroger's, you can 'scan' the 2 liter of Coca-Cola and it will pull the prices from all the other supermarkets within a 5-mile radius for Coca-Cola. Whether Kroger would allow you to bring this into the store is another thing; for places like Home Depot, Best Buy, etc. this could be devastating. Whoever doesn't have the lowest price loses the sale and price pressures intensify. There could either be no profit or collusion among stores for setting prices.
7) Appliances Networked
I mentioned that appliances in people's houses should be connected to the internet so that they would both a) identify any problems they have and report them to the manufacturer, and b) be on file with the house records itself to prevent fraud when selling homes. This idea hit me when I had had enough of seeing vague descriptions in home sale advertisements: nearly-new water heater or barely used washer and dryer. I've read recently that several companies like Toshiba and Hitachi are actively engaged in producing home appliances with these networked capabilities.
1) Green Exercise Machines at Health Clubs
Several years ago, I asked why fitness clubs don't harness the energy of its members... particularly with exercise bikes and treadmills. I even asked Dr. Mike Mullens, an engineering professor at UCF about this wastefulness. I am encouraged that some gyms have just started to incorporate this technology. The picture below shows a battery being charged at a micro-gym but I recently read of a larger gym employing this technology. In terms of power generation, I believe that these batteries can only power a small amount of the power needs of a gym...enough for lighting the building. The ideal exercise remains walking or biking to work and for your shopping.
2) Servers Using PDAs for Orders
Many years ago, when PDA's first came out, I wondered about all of the possibilities for PDA's and thought that taking orders in restaurants by servers was extremely inefficient. I thought that wireless PDA's could send orders back to the kitchen immediately and also minimize errors that come from trying to read illegible handwriting.
Servers using PDA's have started in some locations.
This is an example of software that can be used with the PDA.
3) 'Treat Receipts' by Starbucks
Years ago when I was working for a fast food restaurant, the manager mentioned having really great traffic for lunch but that company-wide they wanted to see more dinner traffic. I proposed the idea that customers could buy breakfast or lunch and if they brought back their receipt, would receive a discount for the dinner meal. The manager told me this was a great idea and other staff told me to be careful because he would probably introduce this idea to his bosses and not give me credit. To my knowledge, he never followed up on my suggestion.
Read about something similar at Starbucks from a recent Business Week article:
From Business Week, August 17, 2009. Howard Schultz v. Howard Schultz, By Susan Berfield. pg. 32 "And Gillett's store sales data helped Schultz see an important difference between the morning (when coffee is a necessity) and the afternoon (when it is an indulgence). "We never had that level of segmentation before," Schultz says. "It's a new tool in terms of being able to move the business in different ways." The numbers prompted Starbucks to offer any grande cold drink for $2 after 2 p.m. to customers who had already made a purchase that day: The company calls it the treat receipt."
4) Archived Video & Lecture Notes Changing Education
Years ago in college, I had a Technology-In-Education class that, as a side-note, was worthless because they were teaching out-dated technologies: Lotus in black screen and WordPerfect. Anyway, I asked the college professor what was to keep technology from laying off scores of professors in the future. With streaming video and now archival video and lecture notes, why would a student want to take a class from a good but not great professor? With streaming and archival video, students now have the possibility of seeing the best professors teaching courses at MIT, Harvard, Princeton. She was MAD!! But the question about a revolution in education remains and was recently mentioned in a Fast Company magazine article entitled Who Needs Harvard? September 2009. In the article, writer Robyn Twomey quotes Jim Groom an instructional technologist at University of Mary Washington who has coined the phrase 'edupunk' who embodies the DIY education. Twomey writes that since colleges are SO expensive and borderline unaffordable, many 'edupunks' have decided to learn on their own with free content online.
When I went online to search for subject materials, I was inundated with videos from prominent professors and speakers, lecture notes, exams, etc. Just going to MIT's site, I found 70 courses in economics; many of which held:
Lecture notes
Projects and examples
Projects (no examples)
Online textbooks
Assignments and solutions
Exams and solutions
Multimedia content
Assignments (no solutions)
Exams (no solutions)
As an example, I found this Newton and The Enlightenment lecture by Courtenay Raia from UCLA. It is a little hard to hear so turn your volume up all the way.
I watched an incredible video last year on the creation of mini-markets (matching buyers/sellers, donors/receivers) related to organ transplants. The speaker is a specialist who creates mini-markets whenever/wherever these markets are failing.
What is missing is an accreditation process that measures actual mastery of subjects for the self-learner (edupunk). Bob Mendenhall, president of the online Western Governors University and mentioned in the article, has forged a new path where students do not have credit hours or receive grades. Instead they receive assessments based on competencies and are then awarded a degree. Some students already working in their chosen fields have signed up and have finished their bachelor's degree in six months.
5) Using Phone Cameras When Shopping
My dad has been doing the family grocery shopping for years but several times has been told by mom that he bought the wrong thing. I thought that dad, whenever he was in doubt about a particular product, should take a picture of the item while in the store and send the picture to mom and she could text back whether this was the right product or not. I have not seen this practiced yet.
6) Comparison Shopping
I mentioned comparing prices online before sites like Pricegrabber, Nextag, Bizrate came about. I don't have the coding skills to put this into practice, but was shocked when I heard recently about a PDA attachment that supposedly has a barcoding wand that you can take to the supermarket. So, say you are at Kroger's, you can 'scan' the 2 liter of Coca-Cola and it will pull the prices from all the other supermarkets within a 5-mile radius for Coca-Cola. Whether Kroger would allow you to bring this into the store is another thing; for places like Home Depot, Best Buy, etc. this could be devastating. Whoever doesn't have the lowest price loses the sale and price pressures intensify. There could either be no profit or collusion among stores for setting prices.
7) Appliances Networked
I mentioned that appliances in people's houses should be connected to the internet so that they would both a) identify any problems they have and report them to the manufacturer, and b) be on file with the house records itself to prevent fraud when selling homes. This idea hit me when I had had enough of seeing vague descriptions in home sale advertisements: nearly-new water heater or barely used washer and dryer. I've read recently that several companies like Toshiba and Hitachi are actively engaged in producing home appliances with these networked capabilities.
4 comments:
i bet you $10 that i know who the professor in college was that you made mad. i made her mad a lot of times.
It's really interesting what might happen in education. The current system (which implies years of debt for all but the super rich, and produces people who --I'd argue-- don't really have the skills that you'd think after 4 years of study) isn't good, so I feel pretty good overall about the academic system changing and higher ed becoming more open source.
Oh yeah, and one of many reasons why living in the netherlands feels like living in the future is that all the waiters use PDAs.
I had thought about electric-generating exercise equipment as well.
Regarding PDAs for servers, the gains for employers in the US would appear small. I presume the biggest gains from PDAs come from server labor (have one less server each night). Servers where I work are paid federal minimum wage of $2.13 (since 1991) though I've heard many states have a higher one. Though this might also reduce food wastage by improving communication. Quicker service means higher table turn-overs (thus less space needed). Plus other things I'm missing...
The county fair always had a stationary bike hooked up to a TV when I was a kid. To watch TV, you had to pedal hard enough to generate the power to operate it.
Brent, if we had profs that were as easy on the eyes as the one you feature here, I wouldn't have missed a class!
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