RFID tagging the city bicycles to make them geosearchable

In Copenhagen, just like a lot of other big cities - we have free to use bicycles which is located around the city in special bike-racks. You get one by putting a 20kr - coin into the release mechanism, a coin you'll get back when you put the bike in one of the special bike-racks in another part of town.


The problem

There are never any bikes when you need them... partly because they are simply stolen, I think someone once told me that 50% of the bikes disappeared every year... that's a lot!!!


I don't think that this idea will solve that problem... or maybe it could help relocate the missing bikes if proper geo tagging is implemented.



The spark that created this idea

You take:

- City bikes concept

- An idea about RFID tagged umbrellas called Dutch Umbrella

- An online metro map, showing the current positions of all metro trains called Byens Puls (=City pulse, you know the nerve line of the city)



The Idea

Well it all most spells itself out - adding the 3 together, you get an online map showing where the city bikes are located, so you can decide where to go an pick one up, or don't bother at all. Also enabling the geo tagging /GPS, could enable a return-bike-crew to find lost bikes and put them in to use again - I know they have a crew finding lost bikes in Aarhus, but they rely on common sense - as to where people usually through the bikes after use...


Take a bit more from the Dutch Umbrella idea; I read some place (innovationlab.dk) that they are giving store owners, who offer a so called raindrop (a pick-up and drop point) valuable information of the umbrellas way around town, making interesting data on the whereabouts of your potential customers. So for example a candy-store owner can see that 60% of his customers come from the nearby cinema - making it possible for him to focus marketing and so on.

Another angle on this idea is that it provides some social public awareness. "where is everybody?" is not a question you have to ask anymore, you can check to see where all the bikes are - maybe there is a concert you didn't know about...

Where the Dutch Umbrella works well if it's raining a lot, the bike concept is better during the summer - maybe the two should co-exists...

CowParade - Do some Cow catching with your mobile

This summer in Copenhagen a bunch of cows are invading the city space - read the official explanation here.




At the moment they are moving the cow's out from their "storage" and that is actually a funny thing - because it makes the cows much more alive!! Suddenly a cow is standing in your way...

I don't know exactly for how long the cows are staying, but that is not the important thing here... the focus is the public space, and making people see and interact with it.

On the http://www.cowparade.dk/ they came up with the idea that if you saw a cow, you should take a photo of it and send it to them... that's great, but i thought if they kept moving the cows around making it more live - the competition would be all that more exciting, also encouraging people to explore their own city in new ways.

Well for now - if you spot a cow - take a photo of it and send it to: konkurrence@cowparade.dk

Small storage rooms free to use

You know the storage rooms on trainstations and some shopping centers, where you drop a coin (10-20 DKK) to store your bag for a period.

I never have coins on me, so I though, why not let me store my stuff for free in exchange for some info...

The process:
1. I put my bag in the storage room
2. Closes the door
3. Locking the door by typing a password of my choise
4. Leaving....

5. Comming back, wanting to get my bag.
6. typing the password
7. If the password is correct, then I'm asked to answer a questionnaire of some kind.
could be:
- Polls about Politics or city plans
- Popular music/art...
- Semi personal: What was your purpose of your visit to this city
- Product related questions

The cost of having the storagerooms are sponsored by the questionnaires.

The questions shouldn't take too long to fill out, and should be anonymous.

Inner city beeing space for D-I-Y people

I recently moved to the "big" city of Copenhagen. Comming from the comfort of a house with adjacent garden, toolsheet and plenty of room for my powertools, i suddently found myself having trouble dooing the simplest things. No room for my workbench, and no place where i can make a bit of a mess without the girlfriend gooing through the roof.

Then i remembered this:

http://www.springwise.com/lifestyle_leisure/sewing_cafe_in_berlin/

The idea i simple, in this sweing cafe you get multiple things: Social network, help, machinery (if you don't have your own), space and storage.

Projecting this idea onto my missing garage/work-space i'm thinking of a Work-café where you can come in to make the new shelf, fixing your bike, reparing the chairs and so on.

The place should provide:

- Storage space for your projects and own powertools

- Crowd ordering of materials to get good prices

- Ordering from house-suppliers to get special deals

- Tools to lend if you don't have the rigth tool for the job yourself

- Community workstations for everybody to use (maybe book online)

The cafe will provide a social network you seldomly get in your own garage, and the comfort and safty of collective skils to ensure you in undertaking large/new projects.

Merging Work and Family life

Share selected photos from the weekend trip to the forrest, child birthday or yesterdays party with your co-workers on a public digital photo-wall showing your photos alongside your co-workers.

This is done to spark co-worker relationships and a great way to get to know your co-workers in depth. Rather than just hearing about the kayak trip - see it. Use the photos as an offset to a much more personalized conversation with the person next to you.


So now i've put a feed from my own personal online photo-wall - look at the bottom of the page, or click here
Also i put a del.icio.us tag-cloud up, wich features tags from my favorite links - and a link to the collection. - to the right...

All done in the name of merging ;)

Open-space brainstorming

Imagine if a brainstorm was not carried out in a closed office-spaced, only for the invited...
Imagine an open-space - hallway space, where brainstorm topic and boundaries are posted on the walls, enabling the team brainstorming to get even more input from people passing through... what if that one person that came by your brainstorm was the one with the key input to launch you to the next level ?=!

One topic at a time of cause
The brainstorm owners present of cause
And an active core of people brainstorming, making it into an active environment...

Visible work load

I'm a yes man... and that is not allways good, because i tend to have a lot of tasks on my table at all times.
But it's not always visible how many or if they are looked at in a timely manner...
Thinking about the red and green balls you see in a lot of "innovative" offices, where you put a green one in a bowl if you have a good day or a red if you have a bad...

Having a clear tube where you stack a ball for each current task , making it very easy to see how many you have.
The stacking of the balls makes a first-in-first-out approach to task solving easy to controll. Different colors can represent different types of tasks. A task can be worked on over a number of days, putting the ball back in the stack when done for the day. A DAY ball, making it visible how many tasks you have for that day...

Rape repellent pants

On my way home i heard about another rape attempt on a girl... got me thinking if there was somekind of way to make it harder to actually getting to the rape part - something that would give the girl time enough to react, get away or call for help.

Thoughts:

• Nano tech. clothing
  
• Belt lock-buckle
• Panick button pants
• Auto-call mobile nr.
  

Get 10 alternative reciept ideas on your way out

There has been some talk about food-stores having a more responsible role in the public health. Here in DK some has even removed meet with over 12% fat...

From that i got the idea of the store offering you 10 alternative reciepts on your way out, based on the stuff you just bought +/- one or two products...

That way people could get more variated meals .

A bit of an add-on idea on the previous shopping bag for the fast and indecisive

Spectator cam from Second Life to public website

Just a small idea of having a kind of follow cam, as you see it in shoot-up games today, making it possible for outsiders (outside of SL) to have a look and see what SL is and what is going on right now.

Could be a list of SL-residents wich you could follow arround, if they where signed up on some sort of list...

Public idea-bank...

Why is it companies keep their ideas so tight that they tend to die or get overtaken by others before they are developed into quality products ?!

I've meet more than one person that was good at brainstorming and getting bright new ideas, but only one or two had the same passion for DIVERSITY as I do.

It's with ideas as it is with solution-solving and development in general - it only gets better if more eyes look at it.

So why not have a simple public idea-bank ? - Imaginatory if you will ;)
The thing is - I know that most of my ideas might never develop much further than what you see on core.makebelieve.dk - BUT having a public idea inventory where ideas flourish and idea creators are complemented on their ideas, now that would truly set the scene for an innovative country...

Thinking i Creative Commons can be used to controll use of ones ideas ?

Is this what i mean...
http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/home/

Playlist CD-cover holder

A CD-cover holder connected to an ipod, where the order of the cd-covers decides the frequence of songs from that cd. The higher placement, the more often a song from that cd will be played.

It's a buildt on the well known favorite-star function in Ipod.

The Leftovers Restaurent

Inspired by a Springwise spot regarding a restaurent with no kitchen, but a collection of menu-cards from the nearby fast-food supplyers, I though of having a restaurent where you brought your leftovers - for others to enjoy while you enjoy leftovers that are not your own.

Now i know a lot of health issues is envolved here !!! And I'm not a judge when it comes to the reality of implementing such an idea.

Because of the health issue, i thought that the main issue for most people would be trusting the other "food supplys" so i came up with the idea that the food your shared should be with your friends, so the restaurent should support both a eat with your friends get togeather to eat, and a get offered what your friends might have submitted ... and only what your friends have submitted.

Food should ofcause be free, only paying for any heating or preperation nessasary.

Now again i know the idea is loos, so i put a charity angle on it - make a leftover restaurent for the homeless. People would then donate last nights leftovers to the restaurent, wich would then serve it to the homeless anytime of the day.

Again donating dry-goods would also bee a good place to do this, dry-goods has the quality to stay fresh for a long time, and homeless would be able to carry it with them to the streets. Dry-goods can also be sent to poor countries.

Central USB/memmory readers in-house

As more and more homes becomes equipped with media centers, external hard disks and such, the traditional home computer becomes a thing of the past. Synchronizing and transport of documents, files or programs on usb-keys or other memory sticks becomes widely used.
There for this small idea of having a central placed memory stick/usb wall plug - just like you might have a place for your keys when you come home, you might have a place for those portable data storage's.

Read a danish blogpost about why the car in your driveway was so old-fasioned. Why can't we update the onboard HD with movies for the kids, songs from your playlist. Sorry in danish