Tag Archives: ideas

Thoughts

Music players should match genres with equalizer presets

This idea is so simple I can’t believe it’s not already in use! There I was during lunch, listening to my iPod in Shuffle mode, and it dawned on me how annoying it was that if I wanted to change the Equalizer present, I’d have to maneuver through several menus, then when it advanced to the next song, which might be of a different genre, I’d have to adjust the Equalizer once again. Since I didn’t want to bother, I left the Equalizer on None, but how much better would it be if these Equalizer modes could be automatically changed!

It’s so simple, too! They’re already named about the same as Genres, and so all the player would have to do is to look for an Equalizer mode that matches the Genre of the music currently playing. When I’m playing Pop music on my iPod, the Equalizer should automatically switch to the Pop settings; by the way, if you haven’t noticed yet, my last name is Pop. 🙂

There should be some level of tweaking though. I should be able to select different Equalizer presets for different genres, and I should be able to edit presets, as well as create new ones. These last two options are already available in most music players, but what I’m trying to get across here is that they should work together with the genre/equalizer matching.

I look forward to seeing this feature in upcoming versions of the popular music players like iTunes or WMP! I think it should also be integrated into the portable players like the iPods, which were really the impetus for this idea in the first place.

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Thoughts

Speedometers should store speed for last 10-15 minutes of driving

I got a ticket on the 1st of December, a trumped up charge for “reckless driving” through the Virginia countryside. My wife and I both looked at the speedometer when the trooper started flashing his lights behind us, and we were doing 72-73 tops. We’ve got a MINI, and it’s really hard to miss the speeds. That speedo is stuck right in the middle of the dashboard and it’s big. The trooper said he clocked us at over 80, then came back with a nicely rounded figure on the ticket: 85 in a 65 mph zone. Isn’t it so nice of them to round up our speeds? I know that gives me a really warm and fuzzy feeling about cops… Anyway, I tried telling him about our real speed, but his desire to give a big, fat ticket was much stronger than his sense of justice.

Later in the evening, as I mulled over it, I got this idea. Why shouldn’t speedometers in our cars store the speeds we’ve been driving at for the past 10-15 minutes? The computer could sample our speed every 5 or 10 seconds, then graph it nicely and be able to spit back some figures at us: maximum speed, average speed, instant speed at certain time intervals, etc. We should be able to review that data, and confront these ticket-happy cops on the spot with real data from our cars. Of course, this sort of a system should be tamper-proof in one way or another, so it can’t be tweaked by hackers.

I really think this would solve a lot of the problems with false speeding tickets. One could go to court with a printout from our cars listing the speeds we drove at the time of the ticket, and we could also obtain a certification from our dealer or mechanic stating that our speedometer is accurate and hasn’t been tampered with, and then we’d have some real ammunition against all these cops out to make quotas.

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Thoughts

Google should offer web hosting

Google has been tinkering with the idea of immediate indexing of changed content in websites for some time. Its current solution is to have you place certain files and bits of code inside your site, that can notify the Google bots when your content has changed. But there’s a much simpler solution: why not offer web hosting? With content already on its servers, Google won’t have to go out over an Internet connection to index stuff – it will be able to do it much faster in-house.

Granted, this sort of a decision from the juggernaut may run afoul with web hosting companies, but it’s a thought. If they’re giving away 2.5 GB of space for Gmail, why can’t they give away the same amount for web hosting, or offer paid plans?

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Thoughts

The next media player

I sat down to breakfast this morning and kept thinking about my media and the problems I face when trying to get things properly cataloged, and realized the tools still aren’t out there to do things correctly.

Current media players (such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc.) are good for playing music, or for playing video, and are fairly good when it comes to cataloging audio, but they have a ways to go when it comes to cataloging video or – and this is the most important thing – cataloging MEDIA.

Let me explain myself. Audio files are one type of media. Video files are another. Writings are yet another. So are photos or graphics. Web pages can use all types, and they can be though of as another media type as well, a hybrid, so to speak. There isn’t a media player out there that combines the ability to play and properly catalog ALL of these different types of media, and in particular, to correlate them in meaningful and flexible ways. Here’s are a few example that illustrate the current shortcomings:

  • I have a song by a certain artist, but I also have his or her music video for that particular song. They are seen as different files by the media player, and they come up as two different search results, when really, a common container should be created for that particular piece, and within it, the two pieces should be displayed together. While playing the song, I should be able to switch seamlessly between the audio version and the video version, without having to restart the song. The lyrics should also be stored as a third piece within that container, and if I want to, I should be able to display the lyrics onscreen for either the audio or the video version of the song.
  • If I have a video file, I should be able to properly catalog it within the media player, but I have yet to find a player that will do it right. iTunes has recently started to offer the ability to view and store videos within its library. It also happens to be my favorite player. Skipping right over the misnomer inherent in the name of the software – Tunes means songs, not videos – it doesn’t allow me to catalog the videos correctly. I can enter tags for the videos, just like I can for the songs, but the same fields that apply to songs (Artist, Composer, Album, etc.) are provided as tags for the videos. That’s wrong. Appropriate, but parallel tags should be provided, such as Actor, Director, Studio, Series, etc.
  • Lyrics can be entered for songs, but they cannot be entered for videos. That’s a clear shortcoming. What if I have a video interview. A transcript is also provided for that interview, in text format. I should be able to store that transcript right alongside the video, so I can access it as needed.
  • Let’s look at books. The audio and written version of books should be stored in the same container in my media player. I should be able to switch between both. Also, if a movie was made of the book, and I have that movie in my library, it should be stored in that same container as well. If I’m reading a paragraph in the book, I should be able to switch directly to the movie scene that deals with that subject if I want to do so. If I want to access a list of the photos (provided with the book), I should be able to browse just the photos.
  • Similarly, if I have an album by an artist, I should be able to see all of the cover art and photos for that album by switching to it while I’m playing the song.
  • In my photo library, I should be able to store audio narration for a single photo or group of photos that I have taken, or have received through email from one of my friends, or have purchased or downloaded from the Internet.
  • These containers that store the different media types for a piece of information, should be easily importable and exportable as a whole or in pieces. If I have two computers at home, I shouldn’t have to re-create each container by combining the pieces. If I want to copy a container from one computer to the other, I should be able to do so without problems, even if one of the computers is Macintosh and the other is Windows or Linux, as long as the media player was written for each of these operating systems.

The good news is that we can do this with the current technology. This isn’t some fairy tale. It should only take about 6 months to 1 1/2 years or so to develop the product. Yes, some of the media types will have to be re-tooled to allow for syncing of text and audio/video, but this CAN be done, and an amazing product awaits at the end of the tunnel.

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Thoughts

Using recycled plastic to minimize collision impact

My wife told me about the difficulties with recycling plastic, and that so little of it can be re-used for the same purpose. Most of it can unfortunately only be used for utility purposes such as benches, garbage cans, etc. Immediately I thought of its potential use to minimize collission impact on our roads. We’ve all seen how concrete pillars are wrapped in collapsible plastic so that head-on collisions will be somewhat dampened. We’ve also seen big plastic containers filled with sand or water and placed in front of highway bifurcations, so that high speed head-on collision impact will be somewhat dissipated by the sand or water. Well, how about these next uses for low grade recycled plastic?

  • Instead of using sand or water, this low-grade, non-tensile strength recycled plastic, made from grocery bags and other cheap recycled materials, could be used instead of the sand or plastic. It would be naturally porous and somewhat elastic. I think it would work well to dissipate the impact and reduce the deceleration force encountered by a vehicle.
  • Different iterations of it could be used inside vehicle bumpers as well – instead of the foam or polystyrene currently used.
  • It could also be used in highway railguards, not to replace the steel bumpers but to bolster them and reduce damage on a car, should it bounce off the rails.

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