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Another interesting place for logging ideas is something like http://www.shouldexist.org./ Websites like this should be on any patent search's hit list.

David Darling has tons of info on spaceflight and advanced propulsion concepts. Some of them are present-day stuff, like ion thrusters and solar sails. Others are pure wild speculation, various forms of faster-than-light travel, etc. It's incredibly readable and quite broad.

Are you familar with ShouldExist and HalfBakery? They're also not sci-fi-specific, but a good place to check out ideas and post your own.

Definitely not new.

I've been participating in http://www.shouldexist.org/ for years...

"ShouldExist.org: Idea exchange, news of the future."

another comprehensive approach (almost like a dev wiki and CVS for offline ideas) is at http://www.thinkcycle.org/ ...

"ThinkCycle provides a shared online space for designers, engineers, domain experts and stakeholders to discuss, exchange and construct ideas ... "

There are a number of "idea banks" already on the Web such as Should Exist and Halfbakery. These sites are a bit diffrent from the approach described in the NYT article though.

Check out http://www.shouldexist.org/. ShouldExist is a superb place to anti-patent ideas. I will not be surprised if a fair number of software patents being filed have been already mentioned on ShouldExist.

TimJowers

Nokia has dropped the ball and are believing their own marketing fluff. No-one actually wants a Carl Zeiss lense on their phone. No-one cares how good the optics are on a phone. Optics snobs buy cameras.

Seriously - rather than trying to turn phones into appliances, Nokia should learn from Apple and see that what people want are tiny, elegantly simple gadgets that do just one thing and do it very well. Instead of a phone costing $900, make one costing $20, and you can expect people to buy many.

How about a phone stripped down to just:

  - GSM module
  - speaker
  - mike
  - battery
  - on/off button

Carries a single number and dials this when it's switched on. About the size of a fat CF card. Pretty colors. Very cheap - $10-20. I wrote this idea up on: http://www.shouldexist.org/.

Long time in coming. This is what people promised with bluetooth at the turn of the century... after we realized we'd be working stiffs the rest of our lives we posted this idea to an anti-patent site.
Network Companion Assistant: http://www.shouldexist.org/story/2001/4/2/181510/2 356
It's a variant of something we worked on in '95. In fact, around the '96 timeframe people had computer-CB-phone networks going from what I remember. I remember seeing one setup where the dude used his CB to make phone calls through his home phone.

TimJowers (Global Solutions, Inc. long forgotten, long remembered. :-)

Already in progress here:
http://boards.thethrillhammer.com/cgi-bin/forum/ve nture.cgi?board=OSP

Being dicussed here:
http://www.shouldexist.org/story/2004/3/1/8946/319 04

And there was a place for it here:
http://opensourcepron.net/
But registration doesn't appear to work.

Keith

I was thinking of some sort of website, done in PHP and MySQL or something. It would allow for people to file ideas, any ideas that they can think of. These would of course get stored in a database, which would then be available to the public. People could then comment on the ideas, come up with better ideas, etc.

Should Exist might interest you.

... I only discovered it a few months ago, and what really struck me was not only was the quality quite high, but the technology itself. The wiki concept is rather striking.

So then I got to thinking, what if instead of using wikis to have a homepage, or an encyclopedia or a text book - a site recording fact - if you had something recording ideas and thoughts.

You know, you come up with ideas for say coding projects, or even just things that should be made and you know you're not going to do anything with them, and you want to let them form into something more with other people. So you go to sites like ShouldExist.org and bandy them around.

But what if you did it as a wiki? And you didn't restrict it to your software todo lists? And what if you could write fiction there and hold debates? And you know, muck about with other people's idea and perhaps form them into something that could happen?

So a few weeks ago, I got hold of Mediawiki, the software used by Wikipedia, and setup VagueWare.com. And it's starting to work. It's good fun. Open source think tank. A kind of a "Bazaar" in the ESR sense for thoughts and ideas.

So for me, the best thing about wikipedia is not the 300,000 articles, all of them quite good, but it's the software underneath it. It's allowed me and my friends to build a big playpen that anybody can join in with.

So, well done for 300,000 articles, but most of all, thanks for the best wiki software on the planet. My life would be worse off without it. :-)

There are actually a lot of pros that I didn't think about initially. Besides the safety problem with diving into fire zones, there's also a fuel problem, since each climb out consumes almost as much as taking off. This constraint reduces the weight capacity of each mission -- many tankers seem to fly with only a fraction of their rated weight.

The ability to load a plane up to its full capacity with retardant, fly to a fire area, and make repeated, accurate drops from high altitude, without running out of gas, seems like a major plus to me. There are also benefits in being able to make "quick response" drops, eg from Smoke Jumper aircraft, with less risk.

• Halfbakery.com - a lively discussion of partly-baked ideas
• Smartfunusa.com - Cartoons by Kiva Sutton
• Idea-x.net - idea exchange software
• ShouldExist
• Global Ideas Bank
• ThinkCycle
• yet2.com
• Idea Exchange
• brainhead.com
• Ideas Happen - contest site for 18-29 year olds
• I Called It! - site for posting predictions
• openideas.net
• BrainFlower - revolutionary idea exchange
• Ideas by Creativity Pool
• Idea a day - "Where ideas are free."
• The Idea Oven
• Prior-Art-O-Matic - truly random product ideas
• Totally Absurd Inventions - America's goofiest patents
• Forbes
• Springwise.com - Springwise is an inspiring free newsletter that tracks emerging why-not ideas from all around the world
• Trendwatching.com - Trendwatching is a second free newsletter that lives up to its name

Should Exist has a very strong little commmunity centered on actually carrying out the ideas that they come up with. I seriously suggest checking them out.

In light of the exceptional (and continued) success of the Open-Source Software model as well as the proliferation of peer-to-peer networks, I would like to get Slashdot readers' opinions on how a similar fledgling model is being applied to ideas, inventions, and patents. Particularly, I am interested in how advances in 3D and circuit board printers could lead to the 'Napsterization' of commercial products.

We have all had our own version of the Jump to Conclusions mat which never saw the light of day due to our own time and resource commitments. What if implementing that idea were as easy as contributing to an open source project. Ok, what if it were almost that easy?

My reasoning is this: I have noticed a recent rise in "open idea" sites such as Half Bakery, SlipHead, and Should Exist. These sites all have one common theme: put your idea out in a public discussion forum for others to enjoy, contemplate, and critique. My thoughts are that this methodology, coupled with the growing ease of desktop manufacturing, has a potential to revolutionize the way new concepts are created and developed. It also has potentially profound effects on procuring patents, business practices, and intellectual property in general. The question then is: How can these open ideologies and development processes excel within a predominately capitalistic society?

What are your thoughts?

Me too. I did a Cobol copybook - to - XML Java class and actually got good example copybook sent to me within a few days. How one could have done this without open source (sourceforge in my case) would be a mess.

The article could say: "everybody and their brother wants to do a project but sometimes nobody can understand what they are doing." And "They usually don't try to find pre-existing projects into which they can fit".

My exp is the issues are 1) PITA to setup an open source project (the first time) 2) Bad organization means lots of projects. If we could organize/work together better then we'd be much more productive; but maybe less productive; and probably still better efficiency than non-cooperative "old source development".
TimJowers
Ps. Another plug for Eric's Should Exist concept brainstorming site.

Sorry, the site is Should Exist .org

There's also shouldexist.org

For us mere mortals who've got cool inventive ideas, check out ShouldExist.org. This web spot could very well become a great breeding ground if enough good minds participated.

Maybe this is totally naive, but what if we setup a "thought bank".

shouldexist.org

Perhaps they can steal a few good ideas from shouldexist.org

Here is a very interesting idea fishing site. Go fish. :)

While I'm here, let me plug my Shouldexist postings:

• Large Public DNS Service
• Wireless Vorbis-based recording unit
• Extreme Sleeping Bag for Couples
• Human Communications Carrier
• User Empowering Browser

While I'm here, let me plug my Shouldexist postings:

• Large Public DNS Service
• Wireless Vorbis-based recording unit
• Extreme Sleeping Bag for Couples
• Human Communications Carrier
• User Empowering Browser

While I'm here, let me plug my Shouldexist postings:

• Large Public DNS Service
• Wireless Vorbis-based recording unit
• Extreme Sleeping Bag for Couples
• Human Communications Carrier
• User Empowering Browser

While I'm here, let me plug my Shouldexist postings:

• Large Public DNS Service
• Wireless Vorbis-based recording unit
• Extreme Sleeping Bag for Couples
• Human Communications Carrier
• User Empowering Browser

While I'm here, let me plug my Shouldexist postings:

• Large Public DNS Service
• Wireless Vorbis-based recording unit
• Extreme Sleeping Bag for Couples
• Human Communications Carrier
• User Empowering Browser

While I'm here, let me plug my Shouldexist postings:

• Large Public DNS Service
• Wireless Vorbis-based recording unit
• Extreme Sleeping Bag for Couples
• Human Communications Carrier
• User Empowering Browser

I think it was a very severe mistake by the W3C WAI to say that accessibility is an issue only for those with disabilities. Gigadollars really doesn't matter a lot if they're not among your target audience anyway.

However, what does matter, is that if I want to use a TV to read your web page, then the web designer is stupid if he does not allow me to. If I want to use a cell phone, he should allow me to do that too. If I want to sit back comfortably and use an 18 pt font, he should allow me to do that as well (I happen to do exactly that, and you can't imagine how many sites doesn't like me to do that).

The problem is that many, if not most, web designers think that they know better than I, what I find appealing. Accessibility is a lot about leaving to me to decide what I find appealing. That might be a concern for the big masses of web users, if they ever had the choice. Most don't even know what they're missing. I'd like that choice.

On a related note, see my User Empowering Browser idea on ShouldExist.

I posted something similar to shouldexist.org back then too. Just to share the thoughts.

ShouldExist is a Scoop community website for people who have innovative ideas to donate. Know-How Wiki is a community website for people who have problems to solve, or who have advice to give on how to solve them. Any kind of problem, really.

In the efforts of keeping the discussion going.

I have heaps of innovative ideas (eg how many commerical products do you see that make you think 'ha, I thought of that 5 years ago') and my common sense does not tell me to sell them or make a profit, common sense tells me you can't sell an idea without first putting the hard work into it to make it a product - and I have far more ideas than I can ever in a lifetime bring to fruition.

Innovative ideas are a time a dozen, the people who are willing to put in the hard labour on those ideas are the ones who get the profit, and rightly so - having an idea is no work at all, it just happens.

There are a ton of innovative ideas to revolutionize or just plain improve OS's out there (for free), but what hope is there of revolutions when even minor progress like losing the case sensitivity can't be achieved (in the entire history of computing, have case-sensitive file systems or command lines produced anything other than user errors or dodgy code?).

When linux has yet to even lose the case-sensitivity (and probably can't due to numerous things with their roots in decades old computing), I have to admit that Microsoft completely replacing the whole paradigm (hate that word but my vocab sucks) of their file system impresses me greatly and makes me think maybe one day we will get out of the OS rut we are stuck in, but I digress...

ShouldExist.org exists as an anti-patent site, and as a place to air your ideas so that hopefully someone will implement them (Tho I must admit I've been slack and have yet to used it for something serious).

This story on shouldexist provides arguments finer than mine.

In the efforts of keeping the discussion going.

I have heaps of innovative ideas (eg how many commerical products do you see that make you think 'ha, I thought of that 5 years ago') and my common sense does not tell me to sell them or make a profit, common sense tells me you can't sell an idea without first putting the hard work into it to make it a product - and I have far more ideas than I can ever in a lifetime bring to fruition.

Innovative ideas are a time a dozen, the people who are willing to put in the hard labour on those ideas are the ones who get the profit, and rightly so - having an idea is no work at all, it just happens.

There are a ton of innovative ideas to revolutionize or just plain improve OS's out there (for free), but what hope is there of revolutions when even minor progress like losing the case sensitivity can't be achieved (in the entire history of computing, have case-sensitive file systems or command lines produced anything other than user errors or dodgy code?).

When linux has yet to even lose the case-sensitivity (and probably can't due to numerous things with their roots in decades old computing), I have to admit that Microsoft completely replacing the whole paradigm (hate that word but my vocab sucks) of their file system impresses me greatly and makes me think maybe one day we will get out of the OS rut we are stuck in, but I digress...

ShouldExist.org exists as an anti-patent site, and as a place to air your ideas so that hopefully someone will implement them (Tho I must admit I've been slack and have yet to used it for something serious).

This story on shouldexist provides arguments finer than mine.

In his book, TimBL, very clearly said that software patents is the number one threat to technological progress in the software world.

Further TimBL has made it clear that the main reason for WWW's success was that CERN released it to the public domain. If they hadn't, there wouldn't have been any web.

Unfortunately, the US government has decided that profits are so important that technological progress must be sacrified for it. US corporations are using that for all that it is worth. European governments (I'm in Europe) is following suite, because they fear that if US corps can profit from undermining technological progress, European corporations will die.

What a great situation! But, unfortunately, the W3C can't turn the blind eye to all this. They have to work up a policy that takes software patents into account. Also, you know, if the W3C hadn't attempted to gather the big ones in the industry, the big ones wouldn't have listened to anybody anyway.

TimBL, Dan Weitzner, Jane Daly or the World Wide Web Consortium folks are not the enemies in this. The government bodies that allow patents that suck are the ones that needs to be blamed.

The W3C knows perfectly well that they are in a balancing act. If they accept patents too easily, M$ will take over the web with a few obvious, but well-chosen patents. If they don't work with M$ and the like over patents, M$ will take over the web by disregarding W3C alltogether.

But that is not to say that I don't agree that the web should remain in the public domain. In fact, I made a post to Shouldexist long ago forwarding the concept of Human Communications Carrier, where the basic point is that protocols that become popular for communication must be released to the public domain.

I may also agree that a fork may be needed if this gets out of hand. I have been thinking along the lines of making a high-quality network, where user agents will reject anything that doesn't validate, isn't digitally signed, etc. Also, protocols for making payments needs to be added very fast. Documents could be downloaded from anybody's cache, so that availability of a document is not impacted that much by the availability of a single server.

OK, let me round off by posting flamebait (yeah, I'm Karma Kapped, so don't even try modding me down! ;-) ): Why don't we move the whole standards process to Europe, and just let the USians rot in their software-patents infected hole? Lets do it right now before software patents go through, and show the officials that patents hinder growth. So, when technology flourishes in Europe, USians can just sit by and watch, cause there are a few small little details they have to spend a few years in court deciding whether or not they are allowed to use.

In his book, TimBL, very clearly said that software patents is the number one threat to technological progress in the software world.

Further TimBL has made it clear that the main reason for WWW's success was that CERN released it to the public domain. If they hadn't, there wouldn't have been any web.

Unfortunately, the US government has decided that profits are so important that technological progress must be sacrified for it. US corporations are using that for all that it is worth. European governments (I'm in Europe) is following suite, because they fear that if US corps can profit from undermining technological progress, European corporations will die.

What a great situation! But, unfortunately, the W3C can't turn the blind eye to all this. They have to work up a policy that takes software patents into account. Also, you know, if the W3C hadn't attempted to gather the big ones in the industry, the big ones wouldn't have listened to anybody anyway.

TimBL, Dan Weitzner, Jane Daly or the World Wide Web Consortium folks are not the enemies in this. The government bodies that allow patents that suck are the ones that needs to be blamed.

The W3C knows perfectly well that they are in a balancing act. If they accept patents too easily, M$ will take over the web with a few obvious, but well-chosen patents. If they don't work with M$ and the like over patents, M$ will take over the web by disregarding W3C alltogether.

But that is not to say that I don't agree that the web should remain in the public domain. In fact, I made a post to Shouldexist long ago forwarding the concept of Human Communications Carrier, where the basic point is that protocols that become popular for communication must be released to the public domain.

I may also agree that a fork may be needed if this gets out of hand. I have been thinking along the lines of making a high-quality network, where user agents will reject anything that doesn't validate, isn't digitally signed, etc. Also, protocols for making payments needs to be added very fast. Documents could be downloaded from anybody's cache, so that availability of a document is not impacted that much by the availability of a single server.

OK, let me round off by posting flamebait (yeah, I'm Karma Kapped, so don't even try modding me down! ;-) ): Why don't we move the whole standards process to Europe, and just let the USians rot in their software-patents infected hole? Lets do it right now before software patents go through, and show the officials that patents hinder growth. So, when technology flourishes in Europe, USians can just sit by and watch, cause there are a few small little details they have to spend a few years in court deciding whether or not they are allowed to use.

Cheers, Joshua

But what would happen if circumvention patches were released within hours or minutes, and automatically transmitted (verification would be critical) from client to client? Not only would the API unify and abstract any IM platform (ICQ, MSN, AOL, Odigo, Jabber), the abstraction code itself would mutate and evolve under the authorized influence of viral patches that propogate thru the network.

But what would happen if circumvention patches were released within hours or minutes, and automatically transmitted (verification would be critical) from client to client? Not only would the API unify and abstract any IM platform (ICQ, MSN, AOL, Odigo, Jabber), the abstraction code itself would mutate and evolve under the authorized influence of viral patches that propogate thru the network.

--

Yes. Despite all the windows bashing that linux users seem to enjoy, one of the few advantages linux has over windows for me is distros.

While I can (have, infact) create my own CD of utils to install on top of windows (proper task manager, editor, mp3 player, ICQ, FTP, terminal, thesaurus, calculator... the list goes on, and that's not even counting the programming stuff), I still have to install them one by one rather than stick in a disk and hit go (and then bind them to keys blah blah blah, life is so difficult :)).

Hmm, maybe there is a market for a one disc windows 'upgrade' (many of the apps on my disc are Free), it would have the advantage that you can upgrade without re-installing - ie you can upgrade your work PC to have all the apps etc that your home one does.

Off to www.shouldexist.org...

This robot's sensors are way better than mindstorms, but I'd still have to agree with you.

If any of you hardware geeks out there are listening, there is a market here. Make a microcontroller brick that fails to suck and is interoperable with lego (ie has lego panels stuck to the top and bottom), compatibility with the programming environments could be irratating, but imagine what you could do with a mindstorms that had 8 analogue in's (provide sensor bricks too), 8 digital ins and 8 trinary outs (the brick being big enough to support 24 2x2 plug blocks)

My other 'lego product begging to be made' idea is radio controlled servos for lego (and a radio control reciever). Might make this one myself as I can just buy an off the shelf radio control and put it in lego blocks.

Suppose I should post these to ShouldExist.org at some point. RC lego might already exist, but I'd be willing to bet they didn't do it properly - probably have a tiny lego-ified handset etc :)

Isn't this implemented at ShouldExist? Of course they use Scoop instead...

Thats kind of like ShouldExist.org Its a kind of idea exchange place. Sounds a whole lot like your idea (but it doesn't run slashcode, it runs scoop.

User Interface Markup Language is a device independent way of creating interfaces. For instance, UIML intefaces would display as well on a Palm as a desktop. XUL (Extendable User-interface Language) for Mozilla is another effort. Orbeon is working on a project called Albatross which is to be a GUI for all browsers. Thanks to the folks at ShouldExis t for these links.

ShouldExist.org is a band-aid on some of the problems with the patent system. It acts as an intellectual property repository and a place where anyone can post their ideas. All ideas, patentable or not, are released into the public domain as "reverse patented". They can be used by anyone for anything and act as "prior art", preventing ideas from being patented by someone else with more selfish intentions.

http://www.shouldexist.org/