A company that's designed to provide clerical support for the police department. I once did a ride along with a San Diego Police officer and I was amazed by the amount of time he had to spend filling out and compiling a police report on an incident we responded to. It was about 2 hours, time that could have been spent patrolling, interacting with the public, etc. The main issue was the slow internet connection they were using at the time and the really clunky, difficult to use software they were using inside the car to complete the report. The idea would be to create a simple software that allows the officer to click on various parts of a standard report on a tablet (iPad) and voice dictate how it should be filled out. The system would transcribe most of what he says, but a human in a central location would review the transcription, insert proper statutes and legal language, when necessary, and finish up the report. The report would be pushed back to the officer's tablet in 10-15 minutes, where he can review it, make any last minute alterations, and digitally sign it. First Steps: this all depends on the connections in the government, the actual product is easy to build. Make some connections, sell them on the project, build it, free up a ton of police time to make sure they can do their job better.
Coin battery operated micro remote control with a single button. This is for those instances where you have a TV connected to a computer or an Android box, and you literally only need the TV remote to turn off and on the TV, the rest is done viea a BT keyboard. Some BT keyboards have a built in learning IR function, but for those that don't, a simple, double sticky typable, round IR remote with a single button would be quite useful. First Steps: check if this exist, test market it on Ebay and Amazon.
Bank safe that uses AI and camera feeds from around the bank to detect robbery in progress. If it detects a robbery it automatically locks itself for 24 hours and calls the police. The difficulty is in detecting robbery, this can be done by monitoring people in the lobby and detecting stress levels in the bank employees. None of the employees can unlock the safe or trigger the lock manually, so they have a better chance of surviving the situation. First Steps: this is an idea outside my scope of expertise, would have to do more research on way of implementing it.
An app for the iPhone X that can use the 3D scanning feature of the front camera to remove the background behind the subject and replace it with a picture or a video, or anything else. Could be a really cheap way to do blue screen effects. First Steps: test the iPhone X camera when it comes out, and see what kind of APIs developers have access to.
Simple web app that allows anyone to create a profile (example amon.com/bob) with links to all of their social media profiles on top of the page, and a list of their last 10 posts gathered from all of the linked social media platforms. Basically, a one stop shop, instead of providing multiple links to all of your profiles. Free to use, monetize with ads. First Steps: this is a simple project to create but difficult to promote.
iPhone attachment that allows you to take pictures through binoculars. This could be a useful little gadget for hunters and bird watching people alike. Basically a iPhone case that adds an optional lens to the camera that allows the phone to focus in and take a picture of an image through one of the eyepieces of the binoculars. Simple to make, could be very useful for different outdoors people. First Steps: figure out the collector lens to use and test out a 3D printed prototype.
Updater. A service you can setup to check an arbitrary website and to email or message you if something on the website changes. Ideally you would be able to select the portion of the website specifically where you are looking for changes. This is useful for stock market research into smaller companies. Monetize by making it free to use, but charging if the user needs to check the site more frequently than once every 48 hours. First Steps: make it and post as a free service at first, see if people use it and if anyone requests a more often check in period.
Social Experiment: Ok, so for my last idea I just want to propose a social experiment. Make an elaborate, techy looking booth for soul extraction. Offer people on Craigslist $200 for their soul. See how many of them will take you up on the offer. Make the booth believable with a crystal that simulates soul extraction and removal. Film everything. A week later contact people and offer them to buy their soul back for $500. Make profit. First Steps: Ok, this is just me having fun and not feeling like coming up with another idea, but I think I am going to post a CL ad and see if anyone takes me up on this.
What, only 8 ideas, what happen to 9 and 10? I wanted to end the month long experiment with exactly 300 ideas. The first day I had 11 ideas, then at some point I wrote up a really long idea for an Apple Cloud. So those, plus 29 days of 10 ideas each, plus these 8 add up to the grand total of 300 ideas.
I am going to take a break for a few days, then write a post mortem on this project, and then continue writing, so stay tuned. But I want to take some time to write more interesting articles, and explore some more in depth ideas about life, and politics, and philosophy. I also need more time to work on some of these ideas, and turn at least a few of them into reality.
Thanks for reading!