Hello!

Which is the bigger announcement? That fish99’s Mob4Hire is the winner of last week’s weekly IdeaWarz tournament? Or is it the beginning of a new IdeaWarz Tournament of Champions?

I guess it depends on whether you’re a cellphone application developer.

Because if you were a cellphone application developer, you’d be too busy trying to test and debug your application to worry about anything else. There are dozens of different cellphone models out there! And if you’re trying to write an application to run on even a fraction of them… you’ll need a lot of different phones and testers!

That’s where fish99’s Mob4Hire comes in. Members who already own the appropriate model of phone are paid to test your application on it. Want to know how your app runs in the “real world”? Does a particular carrier block your network traffic? Do different revisions of the same phone model behave differently? Does network latency hinder your application in certain locations? Does your Java midlet not work on my Moto Q because Moto Q does not come with built in Java support and I’m pretty bitter about it?

Or… as a cellphone owner you can make some cash in your spare time!

Does your spouse nag you to stop playing with your phone, and simply talking to her at the dinner table? Rather than sheepishly slipping the phone into your pocket, you can pound your fist on the table and declare…
“Get off my back woman, I’m working!”

fish99 hopes to have a website launched in September. Give him a shout if you’d like to help.

Tournament of Champions Begins!

Sure, we’ve found a lot of good ideas using the Wisdom of Crowds in our weekly IdeaWarz rounds. But which one is the best? There’s only one way to find out…

A knife fight in the parking lot!

…actually, there are two ways to find out! The “knife fight” is generally deprecated in favor of a process we call “Tournament of Champions“. TOC pits pairs of ideas in head-to-head combat, so contestants must climb their way to the top, one step at a time.

What is that, you say? That this is the least efficient method possible to derive the our member’s intent? Why not simply ask for the 16 ideas to be ranked in order of preference from top to bottom? You say we could sort this out by the end of the week!?!

Well, the state of any given idea at the start of the tournament might be quite different from its state at the end of the tournament. Have the contestants moved forward with implementation? Refined their business plans? Created jobs and incentives for collaboration?

If the winner of TOC doesn’t have at least some sort of demo site up and running, Sean Wise will eviscerate us! And it will probably be an awkward 3 hours of consultation time.

Winner - “Do you like my idea?”

Sean - “So how’s your business plan and proof of concept?”

Winner - “Uh… my idea is great ain’t it? I spell checked it!”

Awkward!

Smell-O-Vision

To fully appreciate this weeks IdeaWarz video, jog around the block a couple times, then hold your sweatshirt up over your nose and mouth while watching the video. Skits are fun, but not when they come at the expense of our cherished social norms. Or so I’m told. Experience for yourself…

OGGtours, the “Opensource Guide to the Globe” is this week’s winner!

Jay’s winning idea is to provide…

“opensource audio guides to the world’s most interesting destinations. Anyone can contribute to the development of an OGGtour by adding commentary.”

As Fruitvale and flix have pointed out, there are other companies already offering audio tours. But Jay appears to be aiming for as painless a user experience as possible. Certainly the open source nature of this project precludes the use of annoying DRM, which will keep the audio files portable.

Jay has set up an OGGtours demo site, which currently offers some Paris, Bankok and and USA tours. Travelers are encouraged to upload their own tours, and Jay is also looking for people to help locate sponsors so advertisements can be tied to appropriate geotagged tours.

Congratulations from Blue and myself to Jay for a great idea (and some nice execution too)!

What other ideas lurk out there? Here are a few that caught our interest…

Practical Idea of the Week

PeaceDeals.org by thestarwheel
Dispute resolution services, from simple private arbitration to the public spectacle of Judge Judy, offer an alternative to the slow and expensive judicial system. Moving such arbitration onto the web will offer increased efficiencies, yet still offer the possibility of a good old fashioned public spectacle!

Both parties must consent to the process and be bound by the final decision. PeaceDeals.org will employ a roster of objective third party arbitrators who will be relied on to render objective, sensible and legal decisions.

I tried moving a small dispute between myself and Scotty onto the PeaceDeals.org beta site, and was quite impressed by its usability.

The next time someone accuses you of misrepresenting intelligence reports, don’t take matters into your own hands! You take them to an arbitration service! You take ‘em to PeaceDeals.org!

Least Likely to Win Nobel Prize Idea of the Week

The World of Gross & Yucky by torgrot

A site for all those adults that are drawn like flies to anything gross. The insane need to slow down and gawk at a car-accident site, is in all of us. Users upload photos and videos of their bodily imperfectnesses and get it rated by the users.

While there is currently competition in this area, we have no doubt someone putting in a serious effort could draw some traffic. For example a couple days ago I stumbled onto firstgoatse flickr pool. What are all those people looking at? Something horrible, I assure you. Don’t investigate any further.

I of course had to look, and it was the same image I’d seen 7 years ago when my co-workers at another job were attempting to out-gross each other with internet images. I didn’t know then that the image was called “goatse”. Now, 7 years later, I know it by name. It won at my office 7 years ago. And apparently it still draws a crowd.

That is why I don’t think humanity will ever travel outside our solar system, and why The World of Gross & Yucky could be a big success.

Guaranteed 15 Minutes of Fame Idea of the Week

Should I Fix My Face Or Now? by VietGuy
Perhaps you’ve heard of a website called Hot or Not? And its inspiring of many permutations.

Clearly, what is missing from sites where people post their own images, is the ability for viewers to make friendly suggestions like, “You need a nose job”, or “You need a boob job”, or “You seem perfectly attractive want to hook up?”

While Blue hedges a bit over the dating angle, I figure everything is fair game once you’ve got the core site up, and demonstrate people really do want others to comment on their possible need for plastic surgery.

Inevitable Idea of the Week

Rent-a-Crowd by Lule
A guerrilla marketing tool where vast swarms of people can be recruited to appear in certain locations wearing advertising on their shirts, branded clothes, participate in political demonstrations or even just stand in line to get into a new bar.

While Lule’s idea is still in the conceptual stage, I do think it offers up some interesting challenges. Ensuring participation? Responsiveness? Potential abuse?

Flash mobs are already something people do for free. If the goals of the campaign coordinator coincided with that of the participants, it might be possible to launch extremely inexpensive mobs. Emerging tools such as GPS enabled phones (so only members close enough to participate in an upcoming mob are notified) will make a service like this inevitable. Here’s hoping that Lule will be the one to provide it!

2007-08-29 (Wed, Aug 29) Tournament of Champions Begins!

We’re pausing the weekly tournaments next week so we can begin running the next Tournament of Champions! Help us select the final crowd-sourced candidate, and earn yourself some Glory Points by voting in this week’s round of ideas and… May the best idea win!

Cambrian House staff was in Salt Springs early this week. You know, you never really know how much you appreciate someone until you spend an entire weekend yelling at them. See for yourself…

TechGuy rides again, presenting us with BlogMashing.com! His Geographical Blog Mashing site will allow bloggers to register and tag their site so that blogs can be placed on a Google Maps. Find new blogs by location, not just topic.

The increased pertinence of exact geographical location will help with localized ad campaigns. And if you’ve ever wanted to find that annoying blogger who’s political views differ from yours… well now you might just have a chance to meet face to face! Ever wondered what insights your stoner neighbor might have about what separates good porn from bad? Solved! All solved!

Techguy has set up a prototype, showing how an appropriately tagged blog could appear on a map.

“But I don’t like to read OR write”, you say? Well don’t despair, our intrepid team (Sarah Blue and myself) of idea explorers have singled out a few ideas we think are especially interesting!

Practical Idea of the Week

Share House Manager by Butaniku
For all my roommates who’ve ever struggled to collect grocery money from me, had to pester me to do chores and who had to nag me repeatedly to pay rent, Butaniku offers the solution!

Already at the prototype stage, his application manages household expenses and chases owed money so the lease holder doesn’t have to.

Pot Stirring Idea of the Week

I Work(ed) There by Jdog
Have you just been downsized? Fired? Left on great terms? Or did you walk out because you were tired of me sticking a videocamera in your face? Don’t bottle up those emotions inside, share your thoughts on I Work(ed) There!

Ex-employee experiences are indexed by company, so prospective employees can get the “real deal” on the corporate culture. Is it a pit of despair? Or heaven on earth?

I Work(ed) There will offer you immediate access to stats and anecdotes. As you’re walking around a potential employer’s office, don’t let yourself be fooled by the foosball table. I Work(ed) There will tell you… its only pulled out on recruiting days!

Hardest to Judge Idea of the Week

Banking Microformat by DaveK
Oh we passed this one around, trying to figure if banks would participate in this scheme, or if they’d have no incentive to publish their products in a format easy to data-mine. And I can’t approach my banker ever since a misunderstanding about me bringing my bagged lunch into a back right after a ski trip.

Biggest Idea of the Week

Rain Harvester by hro_jim
Big pitch, big comments and big boats! We don’t think this idea is viable, but it certainly generated a lot of discussion. Possibly because the typical rebuttal to a softwar idea is, “Its been done before!” Well no one has tried to make a business out of capturing rainwater at sea!

hro_jim explains the pending water crisis, the business opportunity, and the benefits of rainwater over other freshwater sources and desalinization. I found the comments to be an interesting look at the challenges of providing fresh water around the globe.

Bask in the Glory

Earn yourself some Glory Points by voting in this week’s round of ideas and… May the best idea win!

Blue and D4V suffer though the most ill-conceived opening sequence yet! Blue almost pays the Fresca piper! MJ demonstrates proper hygiene! See for yourself…