Sunday, June 16, 2013

Messaging for "Internet of Things"

Pricing for a message broker platform for the "Internet of Things" (IoT).
  • Is a message broker necessary for these devices?
  • Is the price reasonable for the benefits received?
https://xively.com/pricing

Monday, June 10, 2013

Free Certificate Authority, Public Key Clearinghouse

In the wake of the recently confirmed blanket spying on Americans, provide tools to help securely encrypt.

  • Host a person's public key.  Add-ons to chat clients to encrypt the session (encrypt with public key each way).  Do the same for SMS on phones.
  • Even with https and ssl, governments can masquerade as man-in-the-middle.  Provide unofficial self-signed CA hosting.


Friday, May 24, 2013

Online Product Documentation

Online product documentation, with links.  Seems like it could be an add-on to Scribd or Google Docs, not an entire company focus.

Documoto allows users to find technical information visually with our icon driven platform, or search by keywords, descriptions, part numbers or other identifying information.

 They also offer a parts catalog shopping cart, and single sign-on.  These features won't add up to a sustainable company, though there could be a few years of integration consulting work.

Cheap Medicine Shortage

Barriers to entry - manufacturing cleanliness, regulation, sales - must be high enough to prevent newcomers.  Or is this an area to explore?

Supposedly these medicines are so cheap they are not worth manufacturing in sufficient quantity:

... shortages come and go by the week—Atticus’s hospital is low on intravenous calcium, zinc, lipids (fat), protein, magnesium, multivitamins, and sodium phosphate; it’s completely out of copper, selenium, chromium, potassium phosphate, vitamin A, and potassium acetate.
...
They’re not getting any calcium or any zinc. Or they’re not getting any phosphorous, and that can lead to heart standstill. I know of a neonate who had seven days without phosphorous
...
There are 300 drug, vitamin, and trace-element shortages in the US, the highest number ever recorded by the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which began tracking national shortages in 2001. Approximately 80 percent of these are generic injectables, or drugs given intravenously.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Kickstart environmental monitoring project

From NPR podcast recorded 2013.
Not Your Grandpa's RV: This Roving Lab Tracks Air Pollution
Atmospheric scientist Ira Leifer installed special air sensors on a camper, then drove from Florida to California, measuring methane levels all along the way. More than 6,000 readings later, he found some noticeable spikes, especially around petrochemical

Kickstart a self-containted device that would only require power and wifi.  The box would have monitoring equipment inside.

Cost?
How delicate are the instruments?  Will end user damage the calibration?
If the cost is too high or instruments too delicate for home use, put a solar cell on the unit, add batteries, and sell to pipelines and drillers and state regulatory monitoring groups.  The pipelines would save money from fixing leaking gas.

    Measure:
methane and possibly other gases
temperature
humidity

Saturday, May 11, 2013

WIX.com App Market - Detect Mobile Browser

No revenue potential.

Host on http://www.wix.com/about/app-market

Usage reports, like the standards google would provide, for when intercepts occurred.

Intercept when mobile devices access the page to put up a small static page with contact info, and a link to go to the main website.

http://www.handsetdetection.com has a mobile device detection API.

http://detectmobilebrowsers.com has scripts in many languages.

Parked Car Temperature Management

Using existing electronics in new car, or a plug-in box to control electronics of a car, keep a set temperature.

Crack windows
Crack sunroof
Turn on ventilation
Check web for weather forecast and close windows tighter if rain is predicted
Close windows completely if windshield wipers sense rain
Start car and turn on A/C or heater to achieve a temperature at a scheduled time (or when person sends text message to the car)

Start engine if battery is low.
Close everything and shut off devices if battery is low or fuel is low.

Car Club for Friends

Fun Car Club, LLC would own and insure cars.
Can this be done for half the cost of a nice rental car?

Members of club would pay:
yearly fee
check out/in fee
day use fee to have the vehicle
mileage fee

Track and report on all expenses and scheduled maintenance notifications.

Like a shared boat or plane or vacation house, this club would allow rotating cars.  Club software:
Crescent Club Management System

2013 May update:  Keep track of actual costs and mileage payments by person, per car.  When car is sold, any profit would be given as credits to the people who paid into that car.

Track Customer Movement In Stores

    Sell stand-alone, self-install, package to grab mac address to track times at any queue:
ticket counters
store pay counters
restrooms
airplane boarding jetway
car wash
    For self-install, include first months of SaaS data upload & reporting.

    Full-blown traffic for all areas in a store would require setup by a trained installer.



This is already being done by a private company.  http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=2227229
... broadcast requests or whether it also applies to directed probe requests and the SSIDs that were probed for. Were the later "previously connected to" SSIDs captured and a geolocation database queried, that could reveal information about where people are from. Which I suspect many stores would love to know.
http://euclidanalytics.com/product/how/
Our plug-and-play sensor installs in 2 minutes - just connect power and internet. Each sensor is the size of a deck of cards and covers up to 24,000 square feet.

If you have existing in-store Wi-Fi from Aruba, Aerohive, or other leading providers, you can turn your existing access points into Euclid sensors with the push of a button.

Once your sensors are up and running, you can view reports for all your locations in our easy-to-use web Dashboard.

    A standalone device to generate MAC addresses could put loads of meaningless data in the system.  Running on a small battery or vehicle plug-in, this device could probably be sold for $20.

Thursday, May 09, 2013

Replace Key Cards With RFID

If everyone in a company office is carrying a smartphone with RFID, why have traditional key card readers?  Replace those readers (or add an RFID module to the readers) so it reads the smartphone RFID.

The benefit to the employee is one less thing to misplace.  The benefit to the company is one less physical thing to issue.  The physical security system would interface with the RFID replaces, just as they interface with the keycard devices.

For employees who want to implement this themselves, they could glue the keycard to the back of their phone.

Sunday, May 05, 2013

Government Farm Subsidy Paperwork

This was mentioned in the podcast:
NPR: Planet Money Podcast
#224:  The Cotton Wars


In US, there are four cotton subsidy programs.  Create a virtual office to submit and follow-up on farmer's paperwork.  Put the workflow and document management online, along with farmer collaboration and notes.

Global trade rule-book of the World Trade Organization caps & regulates some of the US payouts.

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Using SaaS APIs - dropbox recycle bin

On the idea of using SaaS APIs (basecamp, dropbox, freshbooks) etc., what add-on products can be created?

For desktop users (Windows, Mac, Linux) make deleted file go to a more-or-less permanent web space in Dropbox.  Either go immediately upon deletion and move into trash can, or wait until trash can is emptied.

For what other transient files could it be useful to have another copy stored offsite?  Application log files and error files could be sent to dropbox and shared with product manufacturer to help with debugging.

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

SIM Swap

MVNO that can add a service to allow SIM swapping from a pool of used SIMs.  This can muddy the tracking of a user.  To allow person to swap SIM yet keep their phone number, would need to intercept in/out calls and route calls to the new SIM.


Saturday, April 27, 2013

Niche Commercial Financing

Big commercial credit companies (the ones the taxpayers bailed out in 2008) are cutting off lending to gun shops.  This provides an opportunity for private companies to step in and profit.

GE Capital Cuts Off Lending to Gun Shops

This is not focused on consumer financing of purchases.  This is about business owners financing inventory.

Joe Sirochman of American Spirit Arms talks about Bank of America, gun control and more

Monday, April 22, 2013

Microsoft Windows XP Upgrade Consulting

MS Windows XP is nearing end of life.  This will force an upgrade cycle and consulting opportunities. 

For example:
Some Windows XP users just can't afford to upgrade
The problem was that the specialty software she uses that had been upgraded for Windows 7 required an upgrade fee of close to $10,000. Something tells me 15% off Windows 8 will not make up the difference for that cost.

From Slashdot conversation on that article:
Buy new machine running Win7/8, install free vmware/virtualbox, run specialist software in VM fullscreen.

You want support for a medical instrument / software -- you can't even theoretically take that to futureshop's geeksquad to sort out... but remote support via teamviewer/gotomypc/etc now saves shipping expensive equipment around or flying expensive technicians around in many cases. The equipment has to be online for that. Nevermind that they usually outsource IT because they're pretty small shops that can't support in-house IT, and remote admin / support for routine maintenance is a lot cheaper than onsite.
Meanwhile doctors want to be able to send exams to partners, manufacturers, consultants, and so forth. Doctors want to back up the data to the cloud.
The software itself has started moving towards cloud storage and cloud backup integration, and there are even patient management systems now that are SaaS.

Many Practice Management Systems are also responsible for billing... If they need send records to an orthodontist or other 3rd party provider, then the sharing of medical records through an HL7 interface is necessary as well.

Spend Management

The functionality has been in Oracle Financials.  A startup puts it online.  Any reason this can't be cloned with a focus on Asia?


Service for Website Footer/Disclaimer

This could be convenient, though it is not a "must have".

SaaS service would allow account creation, then creation of a per-domain (or per-subdomain) footer include file.  The include could be anything, though the default would be to add:
  • copyright notice
  • DMCA "click here"
  • privacy policy "click here"
  • contacts page "click here"
  • sitemap "click here"
  • website performance timings
End user contacts through those links would be viewed through a dashboard, and provide configurable workflow for follow-ups to the end user.

There would be reports for everything.  Website performance timings would likely be useful to a different group than the DMCA contacts.  This could allow corporate legal to feel like they are covered by assuring all disclaimers are included.


Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Dorm Refrigerator with Safe

Take a tall dormitory refrigerator and build in a gun/cash safe into the back.  The door would open to the side.  Or allow top to lift up.
Optionally have hole in bottom for bolt-down.

Target market is a house/apartment renter or office where quick access to a small hidden space would be useful.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Like Kickstarter...

Like Kickstarter, with a couple funding options:

  1. Allow buying of future use gift certificates at deep discount.
  2. Buy into pool of lightly regulated stock shares (less than 100 investors?  depends on state?)

To make it interesting, allow these funding options to be refer-a-friend (MLM type).

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Testing for drug aversion

DNA and genome testing to determine if certain drugs will be rejected by a person.  As an example, morphine and derivatives are frequently used during surgery.  After the surgery some people find they don't quickly metabolize the drug, leading to extended withdraw symptoms.


Opioid Metabolism
Clinicians understand that individual patients differ in their response to specific opioid analgesics and that patients may require trials of several opioids before finding an agent that provides effective analgesia with acceptable tolerability. ... several factors contributing to this metabolic variability have been identified.


Though a true medical allergy to morphine is rare, there are some people who are allergic to morphine and many others who suffer severe adverse side effects from morphine.

Thursday, February 07, 2013

Manufacture Phone Adapters

Convert your traditional pulse dial to a modern DTMF tone.   
$39.95 + shipping

Pulse to Tone converter.
$39.95 + shipping $15.00