Book lending for air travellers

I was thinking of creating a book lending business in airports for travelers on long flights. Instead of buying the book in the airport bookshop the passenger can borrow it only for the course of the flight by having the credit card charged full retail price of the book. Upon arriving in the destination airport the passenger returns the book and gets full refund in their credit card. The book can then only be re-lent to passengers traveling back to the country airport the book originally came from.

If a passenger really likes the book they will have the option to buy it by simply keeping it. In this case a new order to re-stock the book will be automatically made via the system and a small profit realized from having sold it retail price. People can also donate books in this business and if their used-book is sold they get to keep a portion of the profit.

http://thinkaloo.com

Passenger-phone interactive screens for subway ads

Japan is the country of long train commutes. I commute 2 hours every day to my work. The trains have print ads hanging on the walls and TV screens above the sliding doors that display animated ads. I watch them all the time when I'm not sitting down. I thought it would be interesting to make them interactive with passenger phones. Allow phones within a certain radius to be used as remote controls to send instructions to the TV screen.

The commercial could ask questions relevant to the product advertised and then collect and display the answers given by the passengers who will press buttons on their phones or send text messages. It can turn into a fun game. For people on long commutes it can add some excitement to the train ride.

http://thinkaloo.com

How They Won...

This is not a story of an imaginary pun. This thought association is live and taking place as I type it in the plane. I'm copying and pasting the text as I'm reading it right now from the stranger businessman sitting next to me on our flight to Zurich. He's reading the Financial Times and is too absorbed to see me typing off his copy of the newspaper which I find very amusing. The article reads "The South Korean Won lost 4.7% of its value on fears that the Korean government will stop intervening to support the currency..."

I'm thinking of the journalist who wrote these lines. Did he see the pun but left it there in the hope his readers will see it too? Why couldn't he phrase it otherwise so that the words 'won' and 'lost' don't read next to each other? How can something that is Won be actually Lost?

Perhaps he saw it but left it there intentionally. Perhaps not. My mind veers suddenly into an imaginary ad propping up the 'lost' South Korean currency. A full-page flashing George Soros and Warren Buffet side by side. The world's two most iconic and revered investors describing 'How They Won...' by investing where else in the South Korean Won!

Perhaps the story of how the South Korean Won Lost serves as the perfect metaphor of our times. Something Won Lost because it was all Made off. Who knows why the journalist contrived the sentence so that the words won and lost parade next to each other.

A few years ago perhaps no one would have noticed. But now, amidst the worst financial crisis, nothing of the sort can go unnoticed. I am too tempted to ask my neighbor if he noticed the pun but I hold back. Perhaps it's better that I keep it to myself for now.

My mind drifts again. The most unexpected associations can sometimes come just by taking a glance at the newspaper of the person sitting next to us. Even if I never read the finance and business sections of the news - I admit I find them too boring - at some funny level I guess we can all somehow find humor in words whereby we can then converge or diverge our thoughts.

It's simply amazing, isn't it? The stranger sitting next to me is too engrossed in his reading of the finance world. But what is he reading? He is reading of a South Korean Won which lost 4.7% of its value where as I am reading of a South Korean Won which is 'Lost' and making the most unexpected and unrelated associations in my mind while killing flight time. Does the guy next to me also see anything funny in them?

How can anyone not find it funny, ironic or paradoxical when something that is so Won is also so Lost? The story perhaps starts to make sense to the reader as he jumps to the next article describing how Madoff lost what his rich world clientele had won over the years.

I guess it's only when it is made off from the start that something arguably so hard won can also be so easily lost at the same time...

http://www.thinkaloo.com

An intranet system for commercial flights

What about installing an intranet system on commercial flights whereby passengers could text chat or play games with each other? Passengers could use live text chat to meet or talk to other passengers or play games with others on the flight without having to change seats to do that. Isn't a long flight more fun when you happen to be seated next to someone who is very interesting to meet and talk to? How often does it happen though? Instead of leaving it all to chance and serendipity, an intranet system that can connect each and every passenger in the same way online social networks and playing games do would make flights more fun and interesting.

http://www.thinkaloo.com