All tyres on all cars are black.

There is most certainly a good reason for this; but it doesn’t have to be.

Once  it was impossible to use anything but freon in refrigerators.  But it isn’t.

Once it was impossible to sell coffee filters that weren’t white.  But not today.

Once every telephone had to be tied down with a cord.  But not nowadays.

So why not make them blue?  or red?  or flowery and spotted?

Babysitting your own children and out of ideas of what to do that is both educational, fun and social?

Why not have a site that is geo sensitive and keeps discussions about local happenings.  Think opening hours of museums, position of play grounds, public transportations maps, happenings, eating possibilities.  It should be crowd sourced so the parents themselves use and update it.  Then big enough so the local businesses (museums, stores, kiosks) updates it to draw more customers.

This idea can be made universal to handle almost anything “what should I do today” but limiting it to parents and their children could be a good idea to make the subject narrow enough to be usable.

If you local surroundings aren’t interesting enough for such a site, think visitors and yourself travelling with children.

As a computer knowing fellow human being it is my ban and blessing to be the answerer for every computer related question.

Short:

Why not create a user interface that is so simple that even your mother can understand it?  And even you can talk her through over the phone?  Then introduce more functionality as the user’s knowledge and self confidence rises.

Long:

Create a user interface to a computer.  Let it run a simple web browser and a simple email client.  Let it have one and one only folder to store files.  Let it be easy to setup for remote control.  Maybe even maybe stop the user from changing things to start with.

Bare with me for a few more lines if the above solution is too rough.

Wire frame example

Let there be only one way to start things.  Skip double click.  Skip drag and drop.

Now let the user use this for a while and become comfortable with reading email, chatting, surf the web and print pictures for the camera.

Add more functionality.  Depending on the savviness of the user – introduce drag and drop or the context menu.  Introduce more programs or the possibility to format emails.  Allow more ways to do the same thing.

By the time of writing I see no way of doing a transparent change from Your mother’s operating system to Windows or MacOS or KDE but one should be able to introduce the ideas, allegories and words from a full grown OS GUI.

A pacifier looking like a facehugger would be both cool and good looking on your toddler.

Short:

A baby cap with a princess crown.  A given success.

Long:

Mothers and fathers and relatives and friends to small small babies believe they have to buy cute things to the baby.  A cute cap with a cute princess crown, preferably in pink, or a cute cap with viking horns or dragon back scales would be easy to sell to them.

Short:

A blog about leavened bread with recipies and votes.

Long:

Baking leavened bread seems to be fashion among fathers on parental leave in Sweden.

So why not geek it and create a blog with recipies and discussions.  And as cherry on top – or rather as tasty crust – there is the possibility to send in pictures with bread and voting possibilities.

Votes and discussions about leavened bred and its mandatory machines.  Extrapolate to coffee and ways to get a snack between bed/wash/cry-times.

Ever so often when I swipe a magnetic card (think credit card) in a card reader I have turned it the wrong way.

The solution is simple: install 2 heads.  The same technique can be used for the chip: install one chip reader on each side.

A computer game where both running-around-and-shooting and moving-body-to-a-rythm counts.   Let two people play in team where one moves and one shoots.  It makes couple with different tastes of game able to play together.

What it should look like and behave is not something I have figured out yet.
But hey, capoeira is something like it, and with wii and kinect we should be able to make something up.  Dance electric boogie and send godly laser beams against your enemy.  Dance battles in hip hop style.

Short:

Create a way to run code on the server, code that users can upload.  The server should still be safe from abuse.

Long:

Creating a home page can easily be done gratis.  Just find a company to host your static files.  Angelfire and Passagen spring to mind even though their heydays are over.  Get a gratis account and upload your static HTML and javascript and flash files and images.  Whole games can be hosted in this easy way.  As long as there is nothing changeable on the server.

Making things interactive is a different horse.  For developing web applications we have to use binaries, byte code or script at the server.  Since running code uses resources and can choke the server there are very few gratis solutions.  We must pay to get an account which we then can use up to a certain Mbits of traffic and Mbytes of data and possibly Mseconds of processor use.

On the client we can use javascript and (ab)use most of the client browser power.  Security and resource handling are already built in and taken care of.

Why not extend this kind of reduced power scripting to the server?  Limit processor time, RAM usage and HD space.  I have been thinking about how to limit dotnet or java but come to the conclusion that since the environment isn’t built for it it will be a faulty solution to start with.
If we instead created a new language and environment we could tailor the functionality to the needs.

If then people could easy upload web applications we would get an explosion of ideas and solutions.

Short:

You and your friend buy a NAS each.  You are able to set up synchonizing between the two without too much trouble.

Setting up rsync with or without a guide is too much trouble.  Naming your NASes and telling the admin interface of each NAS to sync to the other NAS is more like it.



Long:

Many NASes have rsync capabilities.  Setting up rsync is not done by your grand parents.  It also means one must open a hole in the firewall which said grand parents are not comfortable with.  That was many words for too-much-trouble.

Instead say you buy a Netgear NAS and send your NAS’s name to Netgear.  Your friend does the same with his.  Now each NAS can call Netgear through your firewall and Netgear can orchestrate the connection.  I still haven’t figured out how the NASes go from talking to Netgear to each other to not wasting band width at Netgear’s.  Is this solved with bittorrent?