Those of us old enough to remember reading e-mail on UNIX systems from the command line (with the mail or elm programs) might recall a utility called "biff". Once turned on, biff would interrupt whatever you were working on to sound a bell and display the first few lines of an incoming message right in your terminal window.

Along with many X-Windows systems came a biff improvement in the xbiff utility. Besides keeping notifications out of your terminal windows, xbiff displayed a cute mailbox with the flag up or down depending on the status of your e-mail. New mail comes in and the flag went up. Read your mail and the flag went down.

I think it's time for the next generation in biff... the "Chumbybiff". Chumby is a small, friendly networked device with text, audio and video capabilities. It is designed to be "hackable" which means the makers of Chumby encourage you to "upgrade" the device. You can change the physical look of the device by embedding it into another product (like a stuffed animal, or an appliance). You can augment the electronics of the device (e.g. with sensors), and you can change (and share) the software inside.

That's where Chumbybiff comes in. You could program a Chumby to make a sound for any incoming messages. It could be updated to listen in on the phone line and/or voicemail as well as e-mail or IM messages from the Internet. A system could be setup to easily change the sounds for each type of message by recording a sound or choosing an MP3 file or something similar.

I can see this being useful for people at home with babies. Once you get a baby to sleep, the ring of the phone can just ruin your day. Chumby could soften the phone by playing a more soothing ring sound, and could also make quiet "ping" reminder sounds when an IM or e-mail comes in.

Just a thought. Since Chumby is wireless, it's easy to move from room to room (like parents often do with a baby monitor anyway). I don't have a Chumby (or the time) to try this out, but it seems like a good idea.

I happened to be walking with my kids earlier this summer when we bumped into one of my son's school mates. We stopped to chat for a bit in their back yard and I noticed that there were several lush spots of green lawn when most other yards in the neighbourhood were patchy and brown from a recent dry spell.

The neighbour noted that they had moved their trampoline around periodically when they noticed how well the grass fared underneath.

I wonder if you could build and market a device that worked like a large retractable awning with a material similar to the trampoline surface, covering your entire lawn during the hottest parts of the day (when you wouldn't normally want to be outside anyway) and have it hidden away when the yard is in use and during the night and cooler parts of the day.

It could even be automated, sensing the temperature, angle of the sun, amount of changing shade, etc. It might be viable for smaller rectangular-shaped lawns that you might find in the suburbs, but likely not on an estate. Perhaps an roving cover that moved from place to place would work for large areas?

A built-in low pressure mister would likely help keep the lawn lush at the same time.

What do you think?

This isn't much of a technological business idea, but if you had the mechanical skills it might be worth a shot.

I watched a small-town holiday parade just recently and one of the floats was a tractor pulling a hay wagon loaded with people. When the tractor pulled away from a complete stop, all the people on-board the trailer were jolted out of their place. For farm equipment this shock might not be such a big deal, but when you have kids in tow it's not really safe.

I wonder if you could build a hitch that would dampen the shock of fast starts and stops so passengers wouldn't be jolted. It would have to be as easy to attach to the tractor as a regular hitch, yet have the ability to even out sudden changes in velocity. Do you think it's possible? Such a device might even be good for delicate farm equipment... although I don't know if that's a problem or not.

They're doing amazing things with computer generated imagery (CGI) these days, creating fantastical and unreal characters, scenary and special effects for the movies. But what if you want to put an object from the past in your film? You could go out and find someone that has what you're looking for (like a classic car, or an old kitchen appliance) and pay them to rent their treasure for the duration of shooting. Or... you could pay someone to rent/generate you a computer model that you could animate and drop into your scene.

You could be that someone. A database of full, three-dimensional objects could be created by "scanning" real items now before they're gone. Then you could place them in the background of any movie, or use them to accurately create a CGI model if you need to have your object animated.

Now... how much would you have to charge for a model? How would you manage the rights to the use of the model? Does the technology for creating a high definition scan for objects of any size already exist, or would it have to developed?

I just read the post "Can Computers Detect Suspicious Behavior?" on Techdirt and it got me thinking. Companies put a lot of money and effort into making and deploying anti-virus and intrustion detection products. Why not make something that profiles what a user normally does on a computer, and have it flag things that are out of the norm. Anti virus programs are only as good as their definition files and intrustion detection packages (like Snort) are only as good as their rules files. These programs only catch what they know about, but the "bad guys" are making up nasty software to take over you computer all of the time (just watch http://www.incidents.org/ for a week or two and see).

Is there some reseach out there already to detect suspicious network or process activity? Are there any products like that? Of course, the period of time where the system "learns" what type of behavior is acceptable would have to be done on "clean" systems that were not already infected. That would be hard to do in today's environment.

After seeing Seth Godin's post pointing out a restaurant's tea menu in their window which had over 50% of the items messily corrected or blanked out, I wondered if you could make an electronic sign that you could update from the restaurant kitchen as items became unavailable or as the specials changed from day to day. Why stop with the sign in the window, though? You could have the system update a page on the restaurant's web site at the same time... even with an RSS/Atom feed!

The display could be as simple as a flat screen panel with a wireless receiver to avoid running wires... although you would have to design it so that it couldn't be hacked. If you're broadcasting to the sign anyway, chances are that the signal will spill outside of the restaurant. You could give regular patrons a program for their laptops that would allow them to "read" the sign on their laptops as they drive by. That way... they could see the specials without even getting out of the car.

And... why stop at the menu? Why not display what reservation slots are available or how many of the desert specials are still available that night. There's a lot of items and data that could be worked into the system.

Could you make a business from this?

Setup a system which combines helium balloons lifting video camera platforms, and raise them at 3 or more locations of an outdoor event. The platforms should allow remote control of viewing angle and zoom level, likely constructed in a half-bubble inverted dome arrangement. With a wireless video signal transmitted to a control station on the ground, you could view any area of the event. This could be useful for surveillance, live actions shots (for sporting events), promotional photos and the like.

Maybe it could be used over hazardous areas (remote viewing of a forest fire). A level of autonomy could be added to the system as well... maybe tracking an individual in the crowd if they were suspected of stealing something. Likely a lot of privacy issues to deal with there, however.

Update 2006/06/13: I just saw this very thing floating near where I work. It's run by Blimp Pics, and they provide low altitude aerial photography. Check out their site at http://www.blimppics.com/

Not having written too much code for a period, Larry Borsato has jumped with both feet into a coding project only to discover "The state of protocols and APIs for a lot of new stuff is abhorrent." Here's a crazy idea... someone should setup a site that provides quality API and standards documentation for new technologies. This would likely work best for open source technologies and projects, as vendors would prefer to keep a tight reign on their products. Even if there were copyright or other legal issues, perhaps using a way to annotate a vendor's documentation with coder's comments on pit falls, performance issues, bugs and the like could be worked up.

Larry jumped to Google to find his answers (as I often do) and will likely offer his (no doubt well documented) code to the public at some point to help others avoid the trials that he went through. If my suggested site existed, he could take a few minutes and put his comments there for an even wider exposure.

Is there anything like this out there already?