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Ideas released to public domain prior to signing very restrictive employment contract (January 2014)

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Michal Stefanow edited this page Sep 2, 2015 · 1 revision

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#Little Baby Ideas

Toothbrush

  • she's 1.5 year old
  • scaling down regular toothbrush doesn't work
  • it has to be redesigned from ground-up
  • brush on both sides

Set for going out / travelling

  • it contains: nappies, wet tissue, basic equipment.
  • you take one or two and you are good to go

Child-proof flat

  • Basically everything is stored at 1m level.
  • Everything easily wipe-able.
  • Think of a temporary flat for toddlers up to 2 years old.

Burning Man vehicle made of a suitcase

  • Technically speaking we don't go to Burning Man but Boom festival in Portugal.
  • Any regular toddler buggy won't be operational in rough terrain.
  • To fully enjoy the festival we would like to have a way to carry around a baby
  • Initial idea was to use a bathtub - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL5xDIvS2Ek
  • It has to be transported as registered luggage (no bathtubs)

Babysitting service

  • We are looking after our baby anyway
  • Use case: conference in London and someone travelling with family
  • Why there are no on-the-spot babysitting services?
  • (while on holiday I would love to have some actual rest)

Family conf

  • http://2014.jsconf.us/ "Bring your friends and family, make a good time of the event."
  • https://www.google.com/events/io/help#!/child-care "We will again offer group child care near Moscone West to conference attendees at no charge. Children ages 6 weeks through 12 years are eligible. When you complete your registration form, please indicate if you’re interested in child care. After you’ve registered, we will contact you to gather more information and provide specific details on child care."
  • jQueryUK 2014 - so many people raised their hands when T-shirts for kids were distributed from the stage
  • http://snowcode.co.uk/ - code as an addition to other activities
  • significant part of target audience of tech conferences (mostly male, mostly 25+) have families
  • I'm not into event business, just connecting the dots

Lanzarote

Directly related

Vibrating wallet

Wedding rings

  • http://nfcring.com/ - it's already happening!
  • Bluetooth to your phone
  • When partner thinks about you it vibrates
  • Wirelessly charged
  • Main difficulty - compact form factor?

Vehicle for commuting

Hyper productive workspace

  • I tried hammock (doesn't work)
  • I'm using standing desk
  • Ideally I would like to leanback so everything would be projected on a dome
  • Brain-Computer Interface, gesture recognition, voice recognition
  • LeapMotion, MYO, http://minuum.com/
  • (days of mouse and keyboard are counted)

Context aware FTW

  • by the time I reach my hand to open lid of the laptop it should start booting
  • by the time I approach meeting room the projector should display my slides
  • by the time I mention a 'bbc article about whales' I want this piece of content displayed in front of me
  • are we there yet? (partially I believe)

Fitness card for Cambridge UK

  • among other benefits my employer pays 50% of my yearly gym subscription
  • but which gym to choose?
    • close to work?
    • close to home?
    • close to center?
  • in Krakow, Poland (my hometown) there are two competing vendors who are widely accepted:
  • (not only they are widely accepted but they are very frequent listed as benefits on the job specs)
  • I'm not into fitness / partnerships business, just observing market gap and product that would fit

#Communication

iPhone holder

Digital Window

  • Skype / Hangout that is open 24/7

Simplified Tablet for 80+

  • Allowing to call for help
  • Contact 3 frequent contacts.
  • Displaying plan for a day
  • Monitoring medical data

Knowledge Organisation

Super-fancy web framework

(I believe it already exists)

  • Offline First
  • All links loaded via AJAX
  • "wetware" - perception of speed - potentially using loaders / spinners / progress bars
  • Prefetching content when idle
  • Minimal footprint
  • Hosted on Dropbox (easily exportable)
  • Using natural folder structure *(so files can be edited online and offline)
  • Related: FTLabs + http://www.igvita.com/

Workflowy on steroids

  • This is the best note-taking app ever.
  • I'm missing some features so I regularly mail to the founder offering them my commitment.
  • Client Side Encryption: http://bitwiseshiftleft.github.io/sjcl/
  • Support for multiline code snippets - already there (use note feature)

Long term storage

  • They say it's paper...
  • I keep my bitcoins here: http://icevault.ch/
  • I would like certain data to be preserved indefinitely
  • Potentially send data into outer space?

Stackoverflow for Legal and Psychology counselling

  • People are looking for help online anyway. Why don't democratize help?
  • I remember commenting on one of the posts with a disclaimer "I am not a lawyer" even thought I knew the answer perfectly.
  • Let's quantify all the circumstances and let the computer decide.

Open Source legal documents

  • Most of the contracts are pretty much the same.
  • And they favour mostly employers.
  • Employee has little to no rights (see preamble to this wiki)
  • I would really like to keep my IP, patents and right to stuff I do in my free time, on my own equipment, that is unrelated to my role.

Gmail (email) address extraction

  • Why would you spend months building mailing list?
  • Extract your existing contracts and cluster them
  • Build targeted email lists
  • (my feeling: when promoting these ideas I'll be using it)

#Kind of random (totally no experience in that)

Electroluminescent Clothing

  • Goal: Lady Gaga wears it
  • many sensors, reactive to the environment

Vertical food production

Organic Raspberry Produce

  • There are rural areas of Poland with really cheap labour (and uber-delicious raspberries)

Black PR Company

  • Some rumours here and there: "he hasn't denied being a ..." (you can link to me)

iFight (find an opponent)

  • Think: Fight Club
  • Release you primate instinct!

Meta idea - research institute

  • I don't have enough knowledge and understanding of the world
  • My ideas can all be rubbish
  • I'm willing to place 'hedge bets' on various projects
  • Having research institute would be a way to eat a cake and have a cake.

Meta wiki - Meta idea (how it all started)

Steve Jobs

And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.

Releasing IP before it is too late

14. Intellectual Property and Related Rights
14.1 All records, documents, papers, databases (including copies and summaries thereof) and other original matter, work or creation (collectively “Creations”) made or acquired by the Employee in the course of the Employment shall, together with all copyright, database rights and design rights both registerable and unregisterable that subsist in all such Creations worldwide, be and at all times remain the absolute property of the Company.
14.2 The Employee hereby irrevocably and unconditionally waives all rights granted by Chapter IV of Part I of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that vest in the Employee (whether before, on or after the date hereof) in connection with the authorship of any copyright works in the course of the Employment with the Company, wherever in the world enforceable, including without limitation the right to be identified as the author of any such works and the right not to have any such works subjected to derogatory treatment.

Tax relief

Meta Idea

This Wiki page is the result of the recent research, I investigated what options are available out there.

There are so many wiki platforms and even this one doesn't meet all the criteria (offline first) yet it has timestamping feature and it can be proven beyond doubt that such and such content existed at a given time. I also believe in github mission to store documents for extended periods of time.

I would really like to create offline first wiki-like collaborative note-taking app that would sync using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation That would also serve as communication in a small group: http://www.iamthespecialist.com/2014/01/how-to-communicate-in-small-self.html

(even in always connected world time before 3G activates is too long - I want my app to be always there)

[29 Jan 2014] Update: https://twitter.com/stefek99/status/428322156884525056 - it seems like Hackpad offers what I've been looking for. Some of the recent examples:

It seems to me as if GoogleWave was disassembled, code open sourced and many clones has spawned. Too bad that Mozilla Etherpad - https://etherpad.mozilla.org/ - and Etherpad - http://etherpad.org/ - look totally different (not even sure if they are the same)! Hackpad (backed by YCombinator) happens to do this right, onboarding process is smooth and it just works.

Wish I could use MiddleMachine:

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