Fresh food tracker

How do you feel when you look in the refrigerator and notice food that has gone bad? I personally feel frustrated that I wasted the food.

Suppose that refrigerators had a touch-screen monitor that kept track of all the food in the fridge, and displayed a list of when each thing would go bad. Here's how it could work:

When you buy the food, you input the type of food and the approximate day that it will start to spoil. The touch-screen would be similar to what the store clerks use. First you choose from about 12 general categories of items. After you select one, then choose among several specific options within that category. After you've selected the specific item, input the date that the food will begin to spoil. Some products (like milk) have an expiration date stamped on them, while others do not. If it has the expiration date, you could select the option to view a calendar, then select the day. If it does not, then you select the option to view choices for number of days (up to 21 days). If you use the "number of days" option, then "1 day" represents tomorrow, "7 days" represents a week from now, etc.

To summarize, with 6 taps, you could input all the information:
1. Add new item
2. Choose general food category
3. Choose specific food type
4. Select expiration date
5. Select input method for expiration date (calendar or number of days)
6. Tap the day you expect the food to spoil.

When the touch-screen is not being used, it displays the list of food that is closest to spoiling. If any food has reached its expiration date, a red light flashes to let you know.

When you use up an item, just scroll down the list and select it, then push the "Delete" key.

A Nocturnal Community

I grew up in an area that is very hot in the summertime. The middle of summer is so hot that they had the 4th of July parade a night. That got me thinking: what if the whole community did life at night during the entire summer? Stores, restaurants, and offices have the lights running all the time anyway; they might as well be open at night.

Also, there tends to be a lot of crime at night, but I think that is only true because so few people are awake. If everyone was up and about at night, crime may go way down.

In today's world, every city is interconnected with several others, so I know that a noctural switch would require some adjustment on the part of other cities. However, I'm sure that they could learn a lot of tips from companies that have international branches across the world. For example, those companies learn to schedule phone conferences at the end of one branch's day and the beginning of the other branch's day.

The main benefit to being noctural is to avoid the heat. I wonder, though, whether people would go into depression by not seeing the sun very much.

Jet Lag Calculator

People who travel a lot often complain about jet lag. However, there may be a way to quickly adjust. First, just realize that you sleep 1 hour for every 2 hours that you're awake. In a 24 day period, you're asleep for 8 hours. Using that ration, supposing that you had a 3 hour day--then you would need to sleep for 1 hour. If you fly from Boston to Los Angeles, you'll gain 3 hours and have a 27 hour day. Therefore, you need one extra hour of sleep (9 hours total) and then you should be on track. If you fly from Indianapolis to Taiwan, you'll gain 12 hours, so you need to sleep for 16.

For longer flights (like Indianapolis to Taiwan) it might be difficult to remember how many hours you've slept or been awake. Perhaps it would be helpful to create an app where you type in the hours you are awake or sleep, and it tells you how many hours you should stay awake or sleep.

Shopping List Organizer

If you want to buy something on a friend’s gift registry, you go to the store and print out their registry list.  It tells you which item to find each item on.  Each store layout may be unique, but the computers at each store tell you the location of things in that store. 

 

This kind of technology could be helpful in your regular shopping too with the help of a special program for your mobile device.  You type your shopping list into your mobile device and tell it which store location you’re at.  The program would tap into the location data for the items in that store, and would put the shopping list items in geographical order of where they are.  You could even set up certain rules like “Save frozen foods for the last”. 

Roller Coaster Status Monitors

Have you ever been to a theme park and found out that some rides were temporarily shut down?  That can be a little frustrating, especially if you had walked all the way across the park to get there!

 

It would be great if there were TV monitors around the park that told you which rides were shut down and when they were expected to re-open.  The same monitors could also tell you the estimated time you might need to wait in line for the rides that were currently open. 

Refrigerator/ Oven

How would you like to have a gourmet lasagna ready to eat the moment that you walk in the door? That sounds nice, but lasagna takes a long time to cook. Somebody would need to put it in an hour before you're ready to eat.

Suppose that an oven can actually switch functions to also be a small refrigerator. Before you leave for work, you put the lasagna in and select the refrigerator option. then you type in the cooking temperature and the time that it should start cooking. The device keeps the lasagna cold until the time that it needs to start cooking; then, it switches over and becomes an oven.

Traveling Bank Tellers

Small business owners need to go to the bank to deposit checks and get money. However, it can take a lot of valuable time to do that.

What if a bank sent one of its employees around the town to visit all the small businesses that bank with them? That bank employee would show up at their business on certain days at certain times and process basic transactions like deposits and make withdrawls. With advance notice, they could do more sophisticated things like cashier's checks.

The traveling bank teller would want to carry a lot of cash, but there would be the risk of theft. Therefore, they could hire another person to ride along ("riding shotgun") to help guard the money. Or, they could have an emergency button that notifies the police (similar to an alarm burglar system).

Flags at Half Mast

Do you ever notice a flag at half mast and wonder why the owner put it there? You rack your brain to figure out whether it's a significant day in history, or if something bad happened locally.

It might be great if people would also fly another flag (below the American flag). There would be different colors of flags to represent different reasons that the flag was at half mast. For example, red might mean that a local resident had died in a war, blue might be for national remembrances of tragedies, etc.

Air Taxi

People always joke about how in the future cars will fly us around rather than driving on the ground. Well, some people could really use that kind of service. What if you live on the north side of a metro area and work on the south side. Your commute might be an hour each way! What if there were small airports around the city where small airplanes could fly you across town? If you have two cars, you could leave one at the airport on the south side and use your other one on the north side.

Would this be expensive? Sure--until a lot those stuck in traffic jams look up in the sky and see people zooming to work. As more and more people use this service, the costs would go down.

How safe would a city be to have lots more aircraft flying around? I'm sure you've heard the statistics that airplane travel is safer than driving. There's less chance of collisions in air than on the ground. But just in case, the metro area should designate a few emergency landing spots (like parks). If a plane is making an emergency landing, the pilot would push a button and an alarm would sound at the park to tell people to get out of the way.

Green Bananas

Do you enjoy eating green bananas? Most people don't because they're not ripe yet. However, a green banana will be ripe someday, so it's okay to buy them and let them sit on the shelf for a while.

This blog is a place for me to share ideas that are not great ideas yet--but they will be. If you read one of these ideas and have a way to make it "ripen", please post a comment about it and let me know.