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.

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For UK police dial 007 or 1-800-Superman (USA)

For psychological reasons why not change the universal emergency telephone number in every country to something more inspiring and reassuring taken from pop culture?

For the UK the number can be 007 and for the US something like 1-800-Superman. Imagine you are in an emergency in the UK and your friend asked you to call 007 for help! Wouldn't you pick up the phone right away to talk to 007? :) Give your suggestion for a 'cool' emergency phone number in your country :D

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baby stroller racer

maybe motorized baby strollers already exist. i was thinking of a remote-control baby stroller with 2 soft pedals on its end (brake/accelerator) for the baby to play with its feet and train as a racer. The stroller is motorized which makes it easy to use on uphill slopes. The max speed of the stroller will be no more than 2-3 miles/hour and the parent can jog or walk next to it hands-free. it will also be mp3/mobile phone/iPod compatible to allow parents to turn it left and right by using the navigation buttons of their device. just don't let kids use it without supervision :)

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Press conferences going Japanese

Following the shoe incident with Bush in Iraq, press conference organizers are thinking of instituting new rules and manners. All participants will be asked to take their shoes off and wear paper-thin slippers. The measure is expected to improve the hygiene and ambience of the press room and make everyone relax and feel more comfortable.

Initially the idea was to ask participants to tie their shoes and hang them on power lines and phone wires outside the venue to give it western-style semantics but the fear this could be interpreted as a gangs-in-town sign or a drug dealer's marking made everyone revise and adopt symbolism-neutral Japanese manners on room hygiene.

I guess the most symbolic and heard-out-loud kind of peaceful protest to a future Bush-style US president, might be to hang shoes from power lines and telephone poles everywhere in town so that the message is visible from everywhere no matter what route the presidential motorcade will take to get in and out of town. It will be a spectacle to remember and the number of shoes hanging in protest a new Guinness world record countries will compete in!

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Remind yourself of this joke when...

As a senior citizen was driving down the freeway, his car phone rang. Answering, he heard his wife's voice urgently warning him, "Herman, I just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on 280 Interstate. Please be careful!"

"It's not just one car," said Herman. "It's hundreds of them!"

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Your cell phone can repell mosquitos

That's right, I just heard about a software that you install on your cell phone and supposingly repels mosquitos within 2m range of the phone. Do you really believe these things work or smart people who thought of these ideas first figured out a way to make millions why you with your phone are testing to see if it really works? For sure the marketing works!

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The 'letter of the law'

Last year, they passed a law in California to make it illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving. This year they made it illegal to text. Thank God I can still check email and comments on people's facebook pages. I love you so much 'letter of the law'. The world's a much safer place now!

http://www.thinkaloo.com

Telemarketers should pay for your time

What if consumers were paid-per-minute to take an unsolicited call by a telemarketer or from someone conducting a survey? The interested consumer will use a special-prefix number that gives consent to marketers to call. The money goes straight into the bank account or tops up phone credit.

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How to raise money for the Olympic Games

Olympic Games cost a lot of money and often leave cities and countries in large debt. Here's an idea to raise money for them. It's based on user hanagasa's thought about fireworks advertising.

For a very small charge (few cents) send a short personal text message from the mobile phone that will appear along with your name in the fireworks of the opening/closing ceremony. Only 1 lucky message gets displayed. The lucky sender gets refunded and his message read by everyone around the world watching the games. The hundreds of millions of people whose sent messages won't appear will raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the organizers.

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Long-range bluetooth for free talk

Many cities offer free wireless internet. What about offering long-range bluetooth coverage in the cities so people can talk for FREE on the mobile phone with their friends who are in the area?

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instant date replacement

If your date doesn't show up why not meet someone whose date hasn't shown up either? An online service where people post the time and place of their planned dates and photo. Look up to see whose date in the area hasn't shown up either and text them to meet up. You can easily break the ice by talking about how annoying it is when your date doesn't show up but also how fun it's to meet someone whose date hasn't shown up either. I'd call the service Date Awol Solutions! To encourage use of the site by everyone install internet terminals in major meeting spots around the city :)

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Sextimates

When I log into Skype to talk to my girlfriend with whom we are in a long-distance relationship I see that another 12 million people are online and probably chatting or talking to each other. I read in an article yesterday that online communication has helped people maintain long-distance relationships more than in the past. So I always wonder, what percentage of the 12 million people talking for free on Skype are having phone sex? If the percentage is too high, I suggest we introduce a new verb in the English language to describe the activity: ' Phonycate'

On another note, do you think all 12 million Skype users (and probably millions more that use other software or normal phone) experience phonycation once at some point in their lives? What's your guess?

Being hypothetical in my thinking here. What if Skype added to your status the following options:

"Phonycating - Feel Free to Join", or
"Phonycating - Do Not Disturb".

How many people do you think would take advantage of the 'Feel Free to Join' option?

PS: If you vote for my poll below, be honest. I am hoping that if everyone votes honestly, I can get a pretty good sextimate about how many out of the 12 million people or so I see online on Skype phonycate. I tried to ask Skype but they gave some phony reason not to release the data, it was privacy I think...:D:D:D

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talk without being heard?

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 19 March 2008 by member luppo

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imagine you are in a public place, the mobile phone rings and you answer the call right there but you don't want others to hear what you are saying and neither the people around you want to listen to your conversation anyway. what if mobile phones could do lip reading and transmit with your voice what you want to say to the other end?

it often happens in trains and buses in southern europe that people talk loud on their phones and the whole conversation is heard by everyone whereas with lip reading you could lip talk the words without being heard!

If silence is gold, stop eating pop-corn!

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 13 March 2008 by member kirby

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Turn off your mobile phone, don't play with your keys but feel free to eat pop-corn or snacks while watching a movie. Silence is gold but gold is hard to get in the movies! Pop-corn munching, paper folding...if the theater is full, then eating corn and drinking pop makes very annoying noise. If silence Is gold, why don't we ban pop-corn and other food in the movies so we can all get rich?

improve writing of text on mobile phones

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 5 March 2008 by member birand

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it has happened to me many times. if i am in the middle of writing an sms message to someone and i get a call and answer it, the text message isn't saved and i have to write it all over again. this is very annoying and a waste of time. i think mobile phones should save in memory all the text written on the screen the moment it's written so that it is never lost by accident.

Dating software for mobile phones makes cheating easier

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 27 February 2008 by member jim

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You with your girlfriend, she with her boyfriend. In a bar. You keep flirting each other with the eyes but can't find a way to exchange numbers to meet later. Your girlfriend all over you, her rich tough boyfriend all over her.

What if there was a software on mobile phones that sends your number and photo via blue tooth to whoever is close by, is female and also has the software activated on her side to receive your cheating vibes?

I expect at least two things to happen if such software is introduced.

1) Cheating on the rise
2) More dates with rich guys' girls

Can you think of the rest?

Wind-shields for camera and mobile phone

This thought was posted on Thinkaloo on 16 February 2008 by member hendrik31

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don't you hate it when the video you take with your camera or phone is noisy with wind? It happened to me many times when i try to take video on a windy day. Why don't they make cameras or phones with a wind-shield in the microphone area? you should also have the option to record video on mute