The Idea Factory - Learn you an idea for great good

An ongoing project to think creatively and produce business and artistic ideas.

The List

chipset music lessons

• Learn music improvisation through short lessons delivered in a style reminiscent of 8 bit computer games.
• Backing tracks are 8 bit chiptune loops
• instrument and fingering diagrams are pixel art
• As an app, a user can score points, level up, create a character/avatar in 8 bit pixel format.

• each level is a lesson with a new digital teacher. The fretboard images are both view of teachers fretboard, and view of your own
• each lesson is presented in a pixelart space

block soap

• The last part of the soap bar, the small thin portion left after many lathers, is often thrown out or left to fall apart and clog the drain.
• Create soap bars that have a shallow indentation that could fit the old soap bar.

personalised soap bars

• sell soap online, where each bar has a personalised name stamp.

photo measuring

• Take a digital photo of any object along with a special brightly-coloured, square-centimetre sticker, and the app can measure the object
• The app will find the square sticker in the picture, save the pixel distance of one centimetre, and then measure any points mapped out on the photo

coffee compare

• a site that allows people to upload photos of coffees along with the name, the place they bought it, and the price.
• a latte ordered in a Collingwood cafe can be wildly different from one bought in Rome, which is different again from Las Vagas.

succulent desk delivery

• plants don't travel well in the mail. The only plant that might would be a succulent.
• sell tiny succulent plants online. Each plant is potted in a connectable pot. Buy many plants and snap them together to create a small garden.
• target office workers, companies who employee office workers, students, artists.

8bit Alphabet book

• a childrens book with a 8bit pixel image for each letter. 'Barry the bird' - followed by an 8bit pixelart parrot

local chicken eggs

• An online place to search for producers in your area. Swap vegetables, eggs, offer surplus food to your neighbours.

coffee art shazam

• Take a photo of your latte art and the app will return an image that best matches the contours of the art

html, command-line, css, javascript, web, computer classes

• Create a curriculum that tackles each subject
• Audience is absolute beginners, computer illiterate, anyone who feels more comfotabe learning in person
• Demonstrate using only a whiteboard, and explain the lessons concepts
• Pair students and get them to tackle the problems
• wander the classroom helping others
• needs a community space
• hire teachers to run the classes (only works when the curriculum is well definied)

seedbed seedbox idea planting

• An ideas board for an organisation
• Post an idea, a problem, an improvement
• Give the seed(idea) some love with one or many clicks (like claps on medium)
• Each idea can be tagged so searching is easy
• The site has users, posts, comments, love(clicks), tags
• Top ideas this week
• Top ideas of all time
• Most innovative user this month
• Most ideas posted this month
• Encourage posting small and often
• Home page has a top ideas like Hacker news
• Seedbed, idea planting, stay innovative, utilise an organisation's best asset - their teams imagination.

Hash value visualiser

• SHA hashing algorithms produce long random strings. These strings could be used to generate icon tiles that conform to colour and layout rules
• The icon tiles could be used as profile picture substitutes like in Slack
• The strings could generate a colour palette of RGB values, (x,y) pairs for drawing lines, or svg values.

Reverse order dictionary

• Find which words end with '...eed' or '...oger' or '...athe'
• A reverse dictionary could be created from a normal dictionary and sorted by an algorithm

STABL

• Stuff Todo A Bit Later
• Keep a list of interesting things, articles to read, topics to explore.

Training partner

• Shared workouts
• fitness with friends
• create a workout plan and check off your workout by starting the timer for your exercise
• compete with friends who can be first/do the most/most consistent exercise

Chip packet picks

• guitar picks made from shrunken chip packets
• Foil-llined chip packets will shrink when placed in a hot oven
• When shrunken, the packets are hard and brittle and only 1/10th of the size
• Keep them flat when shrinking and then cut them to the shape of guitar picks

Cleaner jobs board

• jobs app that matches cleaners with customers
• become a cleaner and schedule regular jobs every week
• use a timetable view to book a cleaner in your area

Long Now Pages

• A place to commit to ideas/goals and see you plan
• Some parts might be immutable?
• Each account has a public facing page (Make it your homepage to see your commitments regularly)

Bookbook

• A book to write notes about the books you have read

Clothes by measure

• A website of second hand clothing where you search not by style but by specific fit
• Each item on the site is specifically measured and categorised
• When a user arrives, they are asked to enter their preferred measurements (take a favourite piece of clothing a measure it)

PostOff

• a distributed postal service (ala Deliveroo, Uber, AirBnb)
• Parties include a Sender, Receiver, and Courier
• Track your parcel delivery
• Payment when Reciever agknowledges the delivery with a given delivery id

Farmers Market Check in

• Local market check in app so communities can see which stalls will be available
• Sellers can claim a spot and there can be a waiting list when the spots are full