Monday 12 October 2009

Sealed alcohol cooling pad

If you put alcohol on your skin it cools it as the alcohol evaporates. Cooling your skin is just what you want if you have a fever. But obviously that would keep using alcohol, and putting alcohol directly on your skin isn't good for it. So perhaps you could put the alcohol in some kind of pad such that it evaporates where the it is near the skin and condenses elsewhere, thus disappating the heat.

Roofrack windshield

Roofracks must have a significant impact on the air resistance of cars and vans. Would it be possible to add some kind of windshield for the roof rack that reduces some of the air resistance whilst the roof rack is not in use? Obviously this would be removed and stored inside the vehicle when the roof rack was being used.

TV series model for computer games

Has anyone ever tried a TV series-like business model for computer games? With a TV series you get a new episode ever week, the equivalent would be getting a new computer game level every week. The advantage would be more regular contact with the customer through which to sell advertising.

Organogram as a wheel

Traditional organograms place the most senior levels of leadership at the top and the most junior at the bottom. Such information may be better expressed as a wheel:


Perfectionism

Perfectionism gets a hard time. And I have some sympathy for those that give it a hard time. Perhaps it's not that perfectionism is wrong, it's just missapplied: if you apply perfectionism to your environment or to others, then you're going to upset people; if you apply perfectionism to yourself you can only do good.

A 5-box model of leadership and management

There seem to be no end of 4-box leadership and management models, so I thought a 5-box model was necessary.


Management
Leadership
Self

What am I doing today, tomorrow, etc?
How can I satisfy my needs and get the best out of myself?
Others

What are my team doing today, tomorrow, etc?
How can I satisfy the needs of and get the best out of my team?
Resources

What are we going to do with this surplus of widgets?

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Bringing globes into the 21st century

I like maps. But I don't like the compromise of projections. If only the world were flat.

So globes are where it's at. But whilst we have Google Maps etc, we don't yet have the equivalent in globes: it's a hardware rather than software problem.

What would the ideal globe hardware look like? Spherical, obviously. A lcd-like sphere that is levitated and rotated by an electromagnet, and powered by some kind of wireless energy transfer (e.g. induction). The lcd would be able to show varying maps of the world with different layers: physical; political; historical political; weather; sunlight (like a geochron); etc.