Pop Tops The Car Of Our Future

Let’s face it, self-driving-electric cars are on the way and they will be here. No matter how much we are scared of them we will like them you know why? We’ll get our time back. All that time driving every where we’ll get to do the things we really want to do in a car like text people.

Here’s the idea. What if your car could be better suited for what you liked or wanted to do?

In this case. You might own the chassis and the tops are inter-changeable. Maybe you have a top for your every day use but what if you where going to take a long over night trip. You could get in your sleeper car and wake up in the town you wanted to go too. So why not have a car or a “Pop Top” that is designed for sleeping? You can even bring your high thread count sheets and your favorite pillow!

The chassis sits in your driveway with the standard top on it. You can order your temp “Pop Top” online and the sleeper car delivers itself. By yet another self-driving chassis. I can even pick up your “Pop Top” and take it back for servicing and cleaning.

You car lifts up and off the chassis.

The chassis drives away…

…and under the sleeper car “Pop Top”. The delivery chassis takes off to make another delivery. This could all be automatic and you wouldn’t have to do a thing. Wouldn’t that be a great use of your time? You could spend more time doing whatever you want.

You could even have a “Pop Top” that’s a mobile office. It could be custom just for you or a team. This might be useful for many jobs, giving you an office right on site. Yeah the windows could blacked out too…Say you’d rather bike to work but you live 40 miles away. Well you own a sports model “Pop Top” and have a mobile gym. You could put in 10 miles while you ride to your office. Don’t worry you won’t have to power the car but maybe you can capture some of the power? Yes the bike is mounted in there so you won’t fall over.

So keeping that in mind our cars should be as flexible as the things we want to do in them. In the future we might just rent the tops and be more interested in what we do in them than what we do with them.

Another thing to consider with self-flying-drones that will haul people around in 60 years we won’t even need roads and then we can grind up all that concrete to build mega cities… but I’ll save that for another post.

What if pay per clicks worked this way?

Okay I don’t mind paying for clicks in an effort to get my idea out there but there’s nothing new about this kind of advertising. Once again you’re putting something up there that gets in the way of what everyone else wants to do.

Your Horn is Broken,

I want someone else’s Horn!

Maybe all these social networks should thinking about it this way. So listen up Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook. I’m paying for clicks but the horn you’re blowing my message through is just ignored.

Could you offer my bid to the people with the real social networks? The real people who have real followers, real demographics and a real voice.

Send power users my offer.
They pick or reject. ( maybe I could pay for feedback for why it didn’t get selected)
They hit their promote button.
Social Network and Person with the Horn can split the bid.

After you send them an offer in a separate feed only they see. It’s up to them now to promote or not promote. If it’s something that they like, they just hit the promote button and boom it out in their feed. They get a commission off of every click and I might get better clicks.

We’ll also find out if they have a real voice or not.

Now that I think about it, this could be a stand alone app bypassing the social ad systems altogether and the horns can just take the full commission. Hmmm

Look I know my bids are low, 5 cents. But if this method worked I could say if I had a nickel for…

Drive with a view

I can’t be the only on who hates being behind an 18 wheeler in a town you don’t know and I can’t read the street signs because of the wheeled wall in front of you.

So here’s the idea.

Mount low cost flexible video screens on the back doors of trailer trucks. Someday soon these screens will be able to go on to surfaces like this just like a giant sticker or wallpaper.

The front of the truck has a camera lens with a similar view a car might have traveling behind the truck. (In a perfect world the lens would change based on the rear car distance.)

From the Drivers POV you can see and read what’s in front of the truck almost like wasn’t even there. The trailer door latches and mechanical parts are still visible so it doesn’t totally disconnect drivers from reality.

Now the question is, do you cover the whole trailer to improve the view from all directions?

The WriteLight

The Pitch:

The WriteLight is the size of a ballpoint pen so it fits easily into your pocket and is ready to go just like your phone’s camera. It gives you a an easy to use secondary light source when taking photos with your camera phone.

The Idea:

I work with a few people that love photography, including myself. We’ll take pictures with anything. Now thanks to great cell phone cameras I never feel like I’m without something that will capture a pretty decent image. But I always feel the flash is lacking on these phone. Look I get it I’m expecting way too much from a phone camera flash.

One day we were playing around with our camera phones and trying out alternative lighting. Like pen lights and small LED lights. Then I realized what I wanted was a light that had a bunch of lights like the ones in cell phones, mainly because they are bright. Since I’m an artist I’m always carrying around pens. So I came up with the WriteLight.

You can vote on it at Quirky and if we’re lucky maybe they’ll make it!

I didn’t want a light that attached to the camera or supplements the camera light. I wanted a light that could be positioned any where around your subject work like a video light, add more visual drama and best of all fit in my pocket right next to all my favorite pens.

Key Features:

Size of a regular pen.
8 Super Bright LEDS
SWIPE your Light. Swipe across the length of the pen to turn on the lights one at a time.
The more lights the brighter it will be.
Color Knob so you can change the color of the light to add even more lighting effects.
Rechargeable by a USB cord or use the USB adapter power supply to recharge the light pen.
Has a clip to hang off a short. But could come with an accessory that acts like a tripod.
Different finishes to match peoples phones. Chrome, White, Black

Google Car, YES PLEASE

People say they have freedom in their cars. Well, you can’t text, read books, talk on your cell phone and now the latest study says even singing in the car is distracting enough that it makes it unsafe to drive. Maybe we were never really meant to drive. Sure people say they like their driving time to unwind, cool down or just relax. Honestly what the heck is relaxing about it anyway? Driving at 70 miles an hour just to keep up with everyone else and you hope everyone else is paying at least half as much attention as you are.

Yeah we can go anywhere we want. But is that freedom? Please Google save us! I’ve read more than a few blogs that people think this is taking away our freedom. If you live in an urban area and drive more than 30 minutes to work or to the store. You’ll realize what’s taking our freedom isn’t self driving cars it’s the traffic we have to sit in EVERY day.

I enjoy cars, fancy car, hot rods and custom jobs but driving is the biggest waste of time I can think of and it isn’t getting any better. Maybe you can work at home but you still have to get out and go place at some point.

So I thought I’d sit down and see if I could come up with list of how our lives will change when we really have Google self driving cars. Believe me I’m all in so sign me up NOW Google!

The LIST

Yes, Most people will have sex while riding in a Google Car theres no getting around that…
Senior Citizen never have to get a drivers license again and will no longer lose their independence and freedom again. Plus the car will always bring them home.
I can get a lot of extra sleep.
Spend more time writing dumb ideas down like this on my Google Drive while Google is Driving me around.
Watch movies.
If your car needs maintenance it can go get it on its own.
While you’re at work your car can run errands for you. ( Okay just think about the service industry that could rise out of something like this. My car sends a signals to a store and says it’s out front waiting for whatever it is you sent it for. )
You’ll always have rock star parking because your car will let you off at the door. ( guess we’ll get fatter)
If you’re sick your car can take you to the doctor.
You’ll never need to ask a friend to take you to the airport.
Or PAY for airport parking AGAIN.
You could leave on a trip right after work and sleep in the car and wake up in time for that longer family visit. I would love this for visiting family in Kansas City
Would we still even need road signs or waste money making them?
No more speeding tickets ever.
No more tailgaters.
No more parking violations. Does your car even need to park? See no. 14
The car always knows when you need to be picked up.
Never late for a meeting again. GPS+Car knows where it’s going. It starts honking.
Drop off and pick up the kids from school.
Maybe Stop Lights could go away too?
Less street lights. Less light pollution, more stars at night, more energy conserved.
Now you can really wait till the last minute to do your grooming for the day. Maybe your whole car can look like a make-up room.
You can finally finish reading that novel, newspaper, paperback, or magazine without killing yourself or other people.
Less big trucks in the city as smarter smaller trucks (sst) nimbly drive and deliver their contents to merchants. ( this could mean more people to maintain more agile fleets of cars and delivery vehicles. )
When you’re not using your car it can be loaned out to other people, maybe for a small fee.
Your car can get its own gas, unless it’s electric.
Your car can be the tour guide while you enjoy the view.
No more bad teenage drivers.
Insurance rates go down.
No need for large parking lots
No more Gapers BLOCK EVER, History, Nada!
Someday when I get my silent electric #Google car I’ll get to pick what the custom engine sound will be. I choose Sebulbas Podracer.
Cars can be road quality control inspectors. Every little bump, dip, rough patch, slick spot, tight turn can be mapped and analyzed back a home base for improvements the the next road update.
Autopilot Google cars will mean Street View could be REAL TIME!
Will we still need painted street lines.
The view will be much better. No rear view mirrors, or side mirrors. Just a more open view to enjoy.
Your car already knows where all the construction is going on and AVOIDS it. You don’t even have to think about it.
Since your car might have a better idea where it’s going to be when it gets there, it could reserve parking spaces. That is if you still need them.
If your car can even get stolen it can come back home on its own. It would be neat if it could report the perps too.
Cars will go much faster than they do today.
The elderly will never crash through storefront again.
Maybe really spend some time with your family.

A new kind of Personal Assistant

I see this as a major game changer and really allows us to take back that last little chunk of time that eats away our days and weeks just getting around. The other thing here is the about of other technologies, services and opportunities this will open up.

Automated harvesting.
Other uses for this technology. Normal, roadside farming of foods and renewable fuels. If the harvesters could be smaller and guided by GPS and Google navigation technology we could have smaller far more efficient harvesters that could cultivate and harvest the switchgrass in a simpler, faster more efficient manor? Maybe the cars could harvest their own raw materials for power?

Shipping and receiving.
I envision someday that big trucks will be a thing of the past. Well in fact they might even be more like trains. But trains would be the root of the the distribution then go to 18 wheelers ever smaller transportation devices as the deliverer get smaller and smaller. Our inner city roads and intersections are not designed for these giant 18 wheelers to to be going through town. And I certainly don’t think we need to tear up every street corner to accommodate those large trucks. But a new smaller, automated method might make things simpler and less congested.

Jobs.
The scary thing is this could impact a lot of jobs. Like Taxi drivers and truckers. But maybe that will mean they will become more entrepreneurial? Could they just buy the 5 or 10 cars themselves and find new ways to outsource the drudgery of driving? But it could also spring up a whole new service industry. The people that load and talk to your cars and trucks when they show up to pick up your groceries or run your errands. It might also make things more pleasant for people to take care of certain tasks in their life if all they have to do is click a checkbox off on their smartphone and their car takes care of the task. Maybe cars and trucks will have hands and arms in the future too…

Now we have the opportunity to have the second wave of mechanical personal assistance that can help make the most out of our ever increasingly cramped day. Is driving a skill we’ll even miss or need? True independence is on the way. I hope we can embrace it.

Interest in Pinterest

If you’re creative you’ll love using Pinterest, if you’re not you’ll love using Pinterest because it will make you feel creative.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Pinterest by now if not just ask your web crawling nerd friends they’ll tell you all about it.

1 minute into using Pinterest

1 minute into using Pinterest and seeing shots from all around the world I was was drawn into the beautiful photography. I look at a lot of stock photo sites and Flickr. But some of these images are just stunning, for some reason I’ve never seen anything like these photos. These photos are not just images of great looking places but products, and DYI projects I’ve never seen before.

Okay I’m off track, that will happen a LOT when you start using Pinterest.

1 minute into using Pinterest I was mesmerized by the amazing photography of far away places. Then I saw this thing that I thought I could do that. I have one of those things if I just get a some paint and glue I could… sorry

1 minute into using Pinterest I was mesmerized by the amazing photography of far away places. I kept thinking I want to go to there and there and there….

PICK – CLICK – TRIP

Then I thought this would make a GREAT travel website! Here’s how it would work.

Pick the PICs of far away places.
CLICK the Buy Button
GO!

The website does the rest.

Other possible features:

Running Total ( but that might scare people )
Distance You’ll Travel Meter
How many stamps you’ll get on your passport
Path Designer so you can see where your trek will take you.
Comfort Level Meter, in case you’re a timid person and don’t want to go to far off the reservation.
Bucket List, you know for future trips.

Plane ticket, lodging, passports reminders, tours, mail holding and stopping the Sunday paper. Whatever it takes to get you going to make that an experience of a lifetime the site would just take care of it. It could happen within 3 click or 5 at the worst. Then you go in and noodle it if you really want too. Plus every picture you take while on that trip ends up on Pinterest to sell more trips.