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Idea 50: Trash, Trash and again Trash

Problem:

Trash – a problem that many cities know. Sometimes, the regular schedule of city cleaners is not congruent to the amount of trash that is produced by the citizens or that trash collectors can hold. The consequence: mountains of trash piling up. Especially in a city that lives of tourism this could be a tremendous setback.

Solution:

Citizens oftentimes care about their city and want to help sustain it. Thus, giving citizens a platform where they can contribute to the “cleaning” process, might offer great value. This platform could come in form of an App that allows people to indicate “mountains of trash” that were accumulated and do not fall into the regular cleaning schedule of the city. The city then could deploy certain cleaning trucks that take care of the problem in “real-time.”

 

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Idea 49: Smart Street Lights

Problems:

Advertising space – something that multinational companies as well as political parties pay millions for; especially in metropolitan cities worldwide.

Solution:

Street lights are already being used by, usually individuals but also political parties for their campaigns, as an easy “advertising space.” However, combing this “habit” of using street lights as an advertising space with the technology of  HD curved screens and mobile internet, one could leverage this already existing space to the maximum by including these technologies into the actual street light, thus creating a 2.0 version of the street lights we know today. These screens could also  be touch sensitive as to permit people to interact with the messages they are being shown. These screens could be powered by the same power line that powers the actual street light, and be distributed around the city to obtain maximum coverage of a particular message. Another usage, other than advertising, would be the overall spread of a generally important message, such as earthquake warnings or other things that could harm the population of a city equally.

Idea 48: Sound Emails

Problem:

Emails in the work place – enough said. They are always there, you can never truly catch up to them , and many people give you good advice, such as “The most successful people don’t check email first thing in the morning.”However, maybe the problem is not the emails themselves, but the act of having to respond to them in a written format and the time that this action takes based on trying to write a clear message that cannot be misinterpreted by the other side based on the missing “tone of voice” which is often forcefully added to one´s personal interpretation of what the sender of the message was “really” trying to say.

Solution:

Whatsapp and other messaging apps already are using it – voice messages. Simple, quick and to the point. Thus, developing a secure software that could be build into your email provider that allows you to respond via voice or via the written word might add value when trying to solve the problems of efficient “responding to emails.” Especially when talking about internal company communication between coworkers, a voice messaging service might save some time, as the nature of these messages usually involves a question about certain processes and a “standard” answer.

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Idea 47: eBay from another Side

Problem:

Single households oftentimes cannot take advantage of “bulk buying” and thus the advantages of companies that are focusing on economies of scale. Especially when talking about more expensive items, such as solar panels, single households, although understanding the benefits of such products, do not have the purchasing power and capital that is required  to reap the benefits of such technologies.

Solution:

Thinking about the power of technology to bring people together through creating online communities, and combining this power with the advantages of webpages such as eBay, a solution to the previously mentioned problem could focus on the creation of an online platform that offers single households the space to “gather” around a certain product with the goal to create a higher order of single units of that particular product.  In the end, the trick is that this community of consumers would put up their order, lets say 5000 solar panels distributed in Germany, for auction to further reduce the price for a single unit based on transparent competition among the companies that are part of the auction. Payment methods and other aspects need to be taken into consideration and still thought about, but the idea is to give more purchasing power to single households through the benefits of bulk buying and transparent competition among businesses based on an elevated purchases of the same product units.

 

Idea 46: Translation through Comparision

Problem:

Let it be Chinese, Japanese, English, German, Russian or Spanish – translating can be a time-consuming activity, especially when the alphabets are different and one does not have a dictionary at hand.

Solution:

When considering that any word, any sentence or any phrase can be defined as a “symbol,” one might be able to create a system that translates through comparing “symbols” with a given database. For example: the sentence “I like to play tennis” is not “4 english words including a “subject” and “predicate” etc but a symbol/picture  consisting of lines and dots. It would work like “face recognition” but with words and allow instant translation using a smart phone.

Idea 45: 3D Busts

Problem:

Photos, letters, videos, and pictures are often the common ways to capture memories and preserve them over the years. In the past, one more “tool” was used – statues and busts. Mainly used by the upper class, royals and aristocractes, statues and busts were a symbol of power and an attampt to prepare one’s likeness for eternity. Today, statues and busts are still rarely used as, although living standards have increased, the number of people with the abilty to produce them decreased, which conseqeuntly resulted in an increase in prices.

Solution:

Thinking about pet owners for example, statues and busts might offer a way to help their minds to keep their favorite animal “alive” due to the physical characteristics that speak directly to one of the five senses – touch. To make this possible and affortable, the idea is to use 3D printers or lasers that would work based on 3D models of somebody’s favorite pet and hand in hand with materials such as glass/krystal and different types of plastic.

Idea 44: Waterfall Turbines

Problem:
Renewable energies open the gateway to clean and sustainable energy production. In some cases already existing kinetic energy is used and turned into electricity, for example in water turbines. A question connected to this example is where this constant flow of water exists and how we can use it.

Solution:
Although water turbines are already used in many different settings, one of the places that might open up room for future innovation focuses on waterfalls. Waterfalls would offer a lifelong stream of energy if we would know how to capture it. Due to its vertical flow, multiple turbines could take advantage of the same water stream at different heights. There are several problems with this idea, but one of them surely is not the number of capable engineers in the world to think about it.