Category: Services & Products

Years ago, whenever I visit a bookstore, I would spend a long time around a revolving bookstand next to the cashier – the bookstand of “Bluffer’s Guide”. There could be two dozens guides and each of these cover a topic – from astrology to wine and women. And I reckoned it’s the perfect way to learn something new in 10, 15 minutes, especially before a cocktail party that you need to talk to some total strangers.

You still can buy those guides nowadays from Ovalbooks (the publisher). But the point is you no longer need those books before attending a party, as all you need is to go to Wikipedia.org, type in the keyword and you will be an “instant expert” in a few minutes. The trouble is you still need to spend a lot of time to search around …

The idea here is to create a web site such that visitors can type in a keyword / topic and the web site will return a page of results – the history of the topic, the recent news of that topic, the famous men and women of this topic, and lastly, some jokes related to that topic. You see, all essential materials to make the visitor an expert, just in time for a cocktail party or a in-law dinner.

All it costs to the visitors is only US$ 6.99 – about the cost of the guide book. Of course, the real experts of the topic can contribute the much-needed information to the web site and get some handsome income. Hmmm … let’s call this website instant-expert.com.

One of the obvious problems of getting old is you forget things, things that you treasure most. So all along I want a tool on the web that can help me to “store” things. And I like to call this tool “Memory Box”. The box, reside on Internet, can store photos, videos, music, voice-recordings, links, stories, jokes etc.

Then I share the box with friends, or let my friends to “put in” something to this box. For example, I can create a box call “University Days”, then my mates can put in their “memories” in that box … a box that stores all our memories of the good old university days.

I don’t like Flickr, as it looks like an album, same to Youtube. And del.icio.us is a bit too limiting. Hmmm … can someone help me to build one ?

Do you, ever in your life, need to check the schedule of the next movie, train, ferry, or bus ? How many times do you need to check it, in a day ? Is that easy to “check” ?

I do it a lot and found it a very inconvenient task. You know, first you need to take out your PDA, notepad or wallet, find the schedule table (be it a spreadsheet file in your PDA, or a piece of paper). Then check your watch, tell the time and check against the schedule table. You’d probably need to check multiple times as well since you’d misread the schedule easily. Why can’t we have a simpler system ?

Let me introduce My Timetable Checker (version 1.0) :

1. Dial a phone number, or surf to a web page, from your mobile phone / PDA
2. Select the item (ferry / bus to certain destination, a movie’s name etc.) you want to check the next schedule
3. The system will check the time of your mobile phone, perform a search , compare your phone’s time against the schedule table and then tell you (by replaying a voice record or just showing you the information) the next closest schedule.

Isn’t it simple ?

And My Timetable Checker (version 2.0) :

1. As long as you preset where is your ferry pier or where is your preferred cinema etc.
2. The system will check your location, based on the GPS system in your PDA, or cell stations around your mobile phone.
3. The system will then warn you that you are not going to make it because you’re too far away from the ferry pier, bus terminal, cinema etc. and suggest other schedule.

Isn’t it even better ?

Who’s gonna do it ? Let me call this great system – Personal Information Search System (P.I.S.S.).

There are now many “Smart Elevator System” installed for new commercial buildings in town. Here’s how it works:

• Let’s say you have 4 elevator cars in the building lobby;
• Numeric pads are installed in common areas where elevator passengers wait. Passengers enter their destination floor on the touch screen.
• The requests are processed, and a message is displayed informing users to ride one of the four cars.
• And in the cars, there are no floor buttons (!).

In a way it works like magic – because it groups passengers to different cars to minimize travel time.

So, is it a good system ? I think it depends on who you are … I mean if you work in that building, this design is pretty good.

But what if you work for DHL, UPS or Fedex ? In other words, you are a courier and need to deliver packages to say 3/F, 11/F, 21/F etc. etc. ? There are no buttons in the elevator cars, you know 😎 So, you have to press “3” in the lobby numeric pad, get into a car, go to that floor, deliver the package; then go back to lobby and press “11” in the numeric pad, get into yet another car. etc. etc. etc.

Lesson Learnt: It’s good for you, but may not be good for others.