Will someone please make these things so I can go out and buy them?

My brain seems to have much more energy than my hands do. With that in mind I thought I'd post some of the things it comes up with here so someone who has the opposite problem can have something to work on.

As far as I'm concerned anyone, or company, that makes anything on the list can have all the rights to it as long as I get a chance to buy one of them at some point (or benefit from it if it's one of those kinds of ideas).

Window Sharing - Change your neighborhoods with the flick of a switch. These windows would show you what you normally see outside when they're set to normal mode. When switched to changed mode you could pick a house anywhere on a world map and the scene outside your window would immediately change to whoever's house you chose, (directionally mapped and frame-adjusted so it makes sense) . 

Crossbow Kite - An extension of the crossbow fishing pole idea. For days when you can't get a kite aloft because the ground level wind isn't strong enough, or you just don't feel like running around trying to get it up in the air, the Crossbow Kite would make life easier. At rest it would be folded like an umbrella. When you shot it into the air it would stay folded until the end of the line was reached, at which point the sudden stop would snap it open. Then you could hand it to your child and let them play with it while you just laid down in the grass and watched.

I Wouldn't Sit There If I Were You - The Nasty Toilet Recognition System. Ever wonder how a blind person knows if the smell coming from a public toilet stall is just left over from a previous tenant or continuing to be emitted by a dirty seat? They could always wipe the seat of course but that still wouldn't tell them if the toilet was clogged (or about to be). That's where the Nasty Toilet Recognition System would come into play. They would just point the camera on their phone at the toilet and if it was dirty the phone would say "I wouldn't sit there if I were you." If we can create a program that's capable of matching one face in a million then we should be able to create one that can tell the difference between a clean toilet and a dirty one.

Stealth Windmills - They only come out at night. People object to building offshore windmill farms for at least a couple of different reasons - they're an eyesore and they're a danger to birds. The solution is simple - stealth windmills. These would only pop up from beneath the water at night when no one can see them. Most birds aren't usually flying around at them time either so they'd be safe. The power to raise and lower the windmills would come from the windmills themselves - they'd get first call on the energy they produced and it would be stored in their base. They would also have to lights built into them that would turn on to keep planes and ships from hitting them.

In the event of severe weather the windmills would just drop back down into their silos, getting them safely out of the way in time to avoid major repair costs.

The "What the Hell is That!!" App. This smartphone app would let you point its camera at something and run it through a database in the cloud to identify what it is. If you took a picture of something on your body - a mole, cyst, skin tag, fingernails, your eyes, etc... - the app would tell you whether the mole was worth worrying about, if there's any signs of diabetes in your eyes, if your fingernails show signs of a heart issue...things like that. It could either give you peace of mind or tell you that you better go see a doctor. You could also point the camera at things like spiders and snakes too if you wanted to find out how much danger you were in.

Black Box Backup - If I die in a crash I want people to know how it happened. This idea will solve that problem. First, the current black box should continue to function the way it does now. Second, a backup black box should automatically be ejected from the plane when any of several critical conditions are met - a sudden drop in air pressure, loss of engine power, the pilot or an engineer uttering the most common set of words during a crash (which happen to be "oh shit"), etc... Third, the first black box should keep sending data to the backup black box to keep it current. Fourth, the backup box should have both a parachute and auto-inflatable raft attached to it. The minute it lost contact with the plane the parachute would open up. If it landed in water the inflatable raft would automatically open to keep it from sinking beneath the ocean. (If money was no object then the backup box could be strapped to a drone that would follow the plane until it went down.) If the pilots somehow managed to save the plane at the last second then the airline would only be out the cost of the backup box.

Dam toilets - I'd be willing to pay 25 bucks for a stylish and disposable Mae West kind of lifejacket that you could wrap around the bottom of your home toilet so if it started to overflow you could just pull a tab and have it inflate to catch the water while you're trying to find the water shutoff valve and shut it off.

Immigrant Wizards - Clash of the avatars. There are a variety of online games out there based on different themes, from magical wars to futuristic wars. If someone created a gateway between the games it would be interesting to see what the players would do if a wizard walked through a cave and stepped out into a scene from something like Halo. Each avatar would have the same powers it had in its original game just to make things more chaotic. To sum it up, this would be a gamegate along the same lines of a stargate.

World of Warcraft Psychiatrist - An avatar for the addicted. While we're on the subject of games more than one person has complained that their child or spouse spends too much time on them. This is where the psychiatrist avatar would step in, join up with the player in a team-oriented game, and slowly convince him or her that it was time for a break. If the gamer ignored the hints then the psychiatrist could pull out a set of wires, attach them to the gamer's avatar, and give it a little electroshock, disabling it for a couple of hours.

Complaining Containers - Now that we've developed odor sensors that are small enough to stick on a mobile phone there's no reason they couldn't be stuck on plastic containers and given as gifts to people who are likely to leave food in their fridge long past its usable date. The sensor would be light sensitive so whenever the refrigerator door was opened it would take a quick sample of whatever was in the container and shout out an alert if the food was spoiled. It might even be able to tell when food was in danger of going bad and issue a warning, something like - "Hey, eat me now or throw me away." A whole chorus of alarms would tell the user that it was time to clean out the fridge. They could also put one of these sensors on the handle of a toothbrush to test for bad breath. It would keep saying 'brush harder' until the job was done. (You might have to stop and use some mouthwash if your arm gets tired.) Another thought - a kid's version of the toothbrush with an age-appropriate cartoon character telling them to brush harder might sell well.

Shark Alert Surfboard. I don't surf but I think if I did I'd probably wonder what was swimming below me every now then. The Shark Alert Surfboard would answer that question. It would have a new kind of fish finder embedded in it near the front, with the screen being flush with the board's surface. It would be programmable using a remote controller so no dials or buttons would be needed. Unlike other fish finders this one would have a size selection feature. You could set if for anything from 1 to 100 feet. Once it was set the fish finder would display a blank screen until it found something that was the same size or bigger than your setting. At that point it would show you a symbol of the fish, flashing bright red to catch your attention. Depending on how big it was and what you thought it might be you could either just stop dangling your arms and legs in the water or paddle like hell for shore.

Octopus Vacuum - Because I hate lifting chairs out of the way. This would just be a regular vacuum cleaner with a bar across the front that contained several retracted appendages until you reached a spot where there was a chair or something else you didn't feel like moving out of the way. At that point you'd press a button and the appendages would roll out on extendable tubes and swirl around whatever was in the way like mini-roombas on a leash. When the area was clean you'd let go of the button and the appendages would retract again, transferring the air intake back to its normal route.

Numbered Socks - I don't know how many people might also find this annoying but whenever I do the laundry I have to spend several minutes trying to figure out which of my many black socks form a pair. Pairing them correctly might be part of my OCD but I don't like wearing ones that are different shades of black (because one was washed more often than the other). This minor issue could be solved fairly easily if the manufacturers simply sewed an identification number onto each pair. That way you could just match them up by numbers.

Will Work For Whiskey - An objective test. A lot of roads in our state (Florida, US) have signs under them saying they're maintained by "ABC Company" to keep the state clean. It's a win-win situation - the companies get free-advertising and the public gets clean roadways. This idea is a variation on that theme. Local panhandlers, and there are quite a few of them around here, could put in a claim for a section of road the same way that companies do. Once a claim was granted it would be up to, let's say Bob, to keep his particular section of road and its shoulders clean. If he asks you for some spare change when you're stopped at a light you could take a quick look around and see if he deserves a donation. Along with making your city a cleaner place to live this could decrease both the cost of keeping the roads clean for municipalities and the number of panhandlers drivers have to deal with at red lights.

Pop up street signs. One of the major problems after a hurricane or severe storm is telling outsiders how to get someplace when all of the street signs have been blown away. If the kind of help we're talking about is emergency personnel then this could be a critical issue. Here's the solution. Bury a narrow vertical tube beside each existing sign. The cap on this tube should be held in place by a cotter pin beneath ground level. A wire would run from the cotter pin up the regular street sign pole to the sign itself. During a storm if the sign blew off this would pull out the cotter pin. Nothing else would happen right then. Once the storm was over the lid on the tube could be opened and a new pole lifted out of it, complete with the appropriate signs. (The signs themselves would have been turned vertically too so they'd fit in the tube.) The reason for the cotter pin is simple. It would keep the neighborhood kids from popping the signs out whenever they felt like it.

Ferrofluidic Beds – Wake up the hard way. Instead of waking up to an alarm clock a timer would be built into this new version of a waterbed that was filled with ferromagnetic fluid instead of water and which would slowly, or quickly, harden until it was rock solid by the time the alarm was set to go off. The rate of hardening could be adjusted via a second dial designed for that purpose. Another feature - the bed could be sectionalized so each spouse could adjust their side to the level of comfort they desire. If the same feature was incorporated into this bed then a different alarm could be set for each side of the bed, thereby letting whoever gets to sleep late continue sleeping instead of getting woken up by an audible alarm. I'm showing my age by talking about waterbeds though. The same principle could be applied to Sleep Number beds.

River Generators for Canoe Trips - More comfortable camping. The river generator would be a set paddlewheels inside small floats that would be kept in place by the anchor you dropped when deploying them. The floats would be separated by telescoping bars to keep them spaced in such a way that each one downstream from the lead float could take advantage of the wake created by those that were upstream. A waterproof extension cable from the floats to the campsite would provide some measure of electricity (maybe enough to recharge some of the other devices you've brought along).

Where Graveyards Go To Die - Saved from the plow. I know of a church where the membership is slowly dwindling and which will someday cease to exist if the trend continues. The church also has a Memory Garden where the ashes of some of its former members are buried. If the church closes then the property would have to be sold, most likely to a commercial developer since it's in a favorable business location, and the Memory Garden would be demolished along with all of the buildings on the property to make room for whatever the new owner wanted to build there. This will pose a bit of a problem for the descendants of the people who had their ashes in that Memory Garden. They might end up staring at a brand new Walmart when they came to pay their respects. This idea is for the creation of a public graveyard for graveyards where Memory Gardens could be moved to when their former owners can no longer maintain them. That way the survivors and descendants would have a suitable place to go to when they wanted to sit down and quietly remember someone.

Underwater Pier - For people who would rather watch fish than catch fish. This would be similar to the clear Plexiglas tubes some theme parks already have, only instead of creating an artificial environment around them they'd be built close to fishing piers that are already in existence. You'd just walk straight out for a hundred yards or so, going down a gentle slope. At the bottom there would be a viewing room so you could sit around and watch what swims by. If you really wanted to get a deep view they could build the pier out a few miles and run trams to the end of it. There would be less turbulence there and you'd probably see many more fish.

Immortality bricks - Let future archaeologists discover you. This idea is actually a derivative of one of Saddam Hussein's practices. He had his name imprinted on a lot of bricks so it would be passed on down to future archaeologists. I'm thinking some enterprising brick manufacturer should offer to embed nameplates inside the bricks for a reasonable price. The nameplate would contain your name and a short bio. That information would also be repeated in a couple of different languages, giving you a chance to become the next Rosetta Stone.

Fair Market Monopoly - Who cares where Marvin Gardens is? This new electronic version of the monopoly game would have a GPS in it so it would know where you were playing when you turned it on. The game would do a quick search of the property appraiser's office in your area and give the spots real names based on the values in your neighborhood. That way you'd know what you were playing for. (I guess it would stink if your house turned out to be the cheapest spot though.) Since it's an electronic version you could also have driveways coming out of each property that linked up with a network of roads. That way when you bought a house the board would sense its presence and generate a random reaction from the former owners as they drove off. (We'd need a couple thousand potential reactions in the database to keep it interesting and unpredictable.)

Progressive Puzzle - The pieces remain the same, the picture changes. The pieces for this puzzle would be capable of changing to form different scenes based on the code sent to them in an electronic initialization box. The pictures would start out simple and get progressively harder as your skills increased, going from basic scenery to Escher type prints. This would give you several puzzles for the price of one. (If you found yourself in the middle of an easy one you could up the difficulty mid-game too, having it change the goal picture on the fly.)

Anyone who has reached this point is probably starting to get bored so I'll stop here. If you happen to be the kind of person who can make one of these things, or put the idea into action, I'd appreciate you adding a note about it in the Comments section. That way I'd know when I could expect to buy it or see it.

#ALL400s