Joyce! Wins! This! Week’s! IdeaWarz! Round! With! TeeWrapz!

Like milk and cheese, The Wisdom of Crowds can sometimes go bad.

Blue writes:
Seriously, what are you guys thinking? Are we to blame? Is this a case of bad parenting? I feel like one of those single mothers that is trying to improve the quality of life for her teenagers by working two jobs, then the teenagers get involved with the wrong crowd anyway.

Cambrian House has witnessed some great ideas pass through its IdeaWarz filtering mechanism. We admit our current system is not optimal, but up until now it was fairly accurate in separating ideas worth thinking about, from those already implemented, impractical or terribly obvious.

Here is this week’s winning idea:

A shirt wrapper w/ a body of a flexible material having a cartoon/vinyl/plastic fillers and a pair of end flaps that fold up from the sleeve part way over the top of a stack of shirts. A first rectangular side flap folds up along one side and entirely over the top of the stack of shirts. A second side flap folds up along the other side and at least partway over the top of the stack of shirts. A bottom pocket in the base receives a bottom stiffener sheet. A top stiffener sheet of substantially the same size as the bottom stiffener sheet is received in a pocket in the first side flap. A velcro/belt joins the side flaps in folded condition over the stack of well folded shirts. It also comes with free t3fold* innovative clothes hanger.

…and that’s the latest iteration. It was already receiving up-votes when it was simply a collection of tiny undecipherable diagrams…

Great.

So what happened?

Cambrian House encourages members to promote their ideas. Good for us… new members grow the community. Good for idea submitters, as their idea gets more exposure and feedback.

Oh, and you might get more votes too. Your friends will probably vote up your idea. In fact, if you ask them to sign up, and vote up your idea, you can be guaranteed you will get lots of votes.

What does recruiting all your friends to vote up your idea prove? You have lots of friends. Great. You’ve got 20 friends, and I’ve got 2. Your friends vote up your ideas… my friends vote down my ideas and steal my milk money.

Cambrian House is going to treat any members who vote as a mob as a single voting entity. That means less voting power for each member of a mob. We will also be further obfuscating voting data, so idea submitters are less likely to associate votes with members and retaliate against down-votes (or return up-votes).

And, a Viking fist will come crashing down on one unlucky community member each week! Yes, inspired by the BBC show Weakest Link, whoever submits the lamest ideas, comments and forum posts will have their member account closed!

The next rev of Cambrian House (affectionately referred to as CH 3.0) will offer better mechanisms by which the community will be able to police itself. Until then, enjoy the show as Blue and Gord go mad with power!

Ideas We Like

Feng Shui-izer by Gadsden

Sketch out your office space online and makes suggestions for improving the layout based on Feng Shui.

Cliff Notes of Youth Culture by Entreparent

Quick overviews of fads affecting your kids, fad history, what as a parent/adult I should know.

What Should You Do?

Don’t fret if your idea doesn’t win the first round its submitted. Accept the constructive criticism you’re given, and if you’ve decided your idea is unworkable, there is no shame in abandoning it. If you’d like to retract an idea submission, you can make your idea private.

Focus on crowdsourceable ideas, and ideas you can map out an implementation path for. We want to make things happen. If you are not sure about technical obstacles, why not ask others for their opinions first in our forums?

Are you serious? We’d rather hear about what you’d like to recruit a team to create, than what you’d like to see other people create for you. This is a crowdsourcing website, but you’ll still need some elbow grease to recruit an implementation team.

Are you high? Its surprising how many people admit to coming up with their ideas while they are drunk. We recommend holding that thought until sobriety kicks in. If it still seems like a good idea, then submit away!

Don’t comment on ideas unless you have something to say. Oh sure, at the moment we grant Glory Points whether the comment is insightful or not. But they’re sullied GPs, and you’ll feel dirty inside.

Were those points obvious? Possibly not. I don’t have hard-and-fast rules for ideas applicable to Cambrian House, and ones I know won’t go anywhere. Our winning ideas are all over the map. But if we recognize its the diversity of opinion which gives voting and feedback its value, we’ll continue to see interesting ideas rise to the top.

As individuals we each add value to this process. Mobs add no value.

So with that in mind, cast your votes wisely!

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

I’m sure every Cambrian House community member has glimpsed the glory which is ChessSphere (not related to BeerSphere.)

PetersonLimitedCo isn’t concerned about crowdsourcing the manufacturing of his physical game, but would like assistance with creation of the online version of ChessSphere. He expects it would look something like…

If you’re interested in helping out, give PetersonLimitedCo a shout! (And be sure to check out his ChessSphere website.)

Blue is in San Francisco

In fact, just about all the women have fled from Cambrian House today! Jasmine is with Blue. Shelly is in Vancouver. DDT are working from home… which is just as well due to the city work going down behind their desk…

…oh look! A ruptured pipeline!

But did the rest of Cambrian House run home to mamma? No, like MEN, we fought on through the skanky pipeline smell and shot an IdeaWarz video!

Why is Berserker Ccozad’s Idea Catapult praised by Gord?
How did Cameron’s terrifying encounter with Kevin Spraggett end?
Who is the mysterious gentleman in red?

Most of your questions will be answered by watching our video…

Yet More Ideas

Hmmm. 23 ideas this week. Same as last week. Weird… but head on in anyway and cast your votes!

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

How to best deal with spammers? There have been stories recently about Thick Skin (Alexey Tolstokozhev), a fictitious Russian Spammer who was supposedly murdered in his Moscow home.

What is it about spammers which attracts such anger? Could it possibly be… the spam?

Vanhees is This Week’s Winner

As a small child, I once asked my father how holes were drilled before electric drills. He looked at me, smiled, and suggested I look it up in our family’s encyclopedia set. It was at that point in my life, I decided “learning” was for suckers.

Now, as I live frugally in my van down by the river, I often wonder what “learning” would have been like. Perhaps Vanhees knows, as years ago his father took the time to explain how holes used to be drilled. Thanks Dad!

In fact, Vanhees is eager to share such information on his proposed website, How It Was Done.

“How it was done” is a place were we can document soon to be forgotten works and tasks, for all to see.

Many websites are available (such as “how stuff works”) pertaining to how stuff is done in the present. But we’re just focusing on how was it done in the past. Similar to a recorded history, celebrating the world’s progression.

Congratulations Vanhees, on winning our weekly IdeaWarz tournament!

Ideas Which Caught Our Eye

Legal Mums by jimloveuk

Mechanical Turk is an Amazon service allowing people to get paid for completing tasks (such as offering legal advice) which are not well suited for complete computer automation. But MTurk doesn’t organize tasks for particular markets, make it easy for newcomers to submit Human Intelligence Tasks to be processed, or effectively advertise when work needs being done.

By building communities around these verticals, the shortcomings of MTurk could be addressed, and the vertical site could take a cut of every transaction.

Email into RSS by tnt1842

To turn an ongoing email conversation into a book, tnt1842 has outlined an application which would organize such correspondence, offers an RSS abstract, and formats the complete contents for printing.

Libraries, governments and businesses are now required to archive emails and save them in entirety. This form of ‘indexing’ information with the capability to request “full print’ digital copies or physical paper copies would better aid in compressing information, indexing it and making it easily accessible for legal teams and other academics, forensic accountants, justice system and investigative bodies (Think FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD etc.) ability to gather, store, index and make information searches more accessible and relevant.

Blue Attending Web 2.0 Summit

Jasmine, MJ and Blue will be attending Web 2.0 Summit in SF.

If any community members want to hook up, give Blue a shout!

I’ll stay here at the office. As they say… “Gord, if you’re not busy attending a Web 2.0 Summit, be sure to sweep under the tables!”

Another Stash of Ideas

As we roll over into our new weekly idea bucket (23 ideas, once I removed the least appropriate ones), be sure to cast your votes!

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

Ever looked around your kitchen, lacking any inspiration? You haven’t gone shopping in a week, and can’t think how the remaining items could be combined into a delicious meal? And… in frustration… you start chowing down on a tin of sardines?

Yeah, we’ve all been there.

No? Just me?

Either way, LarsBell is here with a proposal which will eliminate all desperate sardine meals:

Reverse Cookbook

This website knows what you have in your kitchen and tells you what you can make from those ingredients, also taking into account your:

• food preferences
• cooking skills
• nutritional needs
• time constraints

It was pointed out by Siddey that the recipe-from-ingredients concept has already been implemented by RecipeMatcher.com. And yet, Reverse Cookbook beat out 180 ideas to be this weeks champion!

One might think either RecipeMatcher is failing to impress or they could be out marketed.

Certainly LarsBell has listed enough features that Reverse Cookbook designed as he describes would be a very compelling choice among recipe sites.

Congrats LarsBell, and here’s hoping your next meal does not come from a tin!

Weekly Ideas Which Caught Our Eye

ChessSphere by PetersonLimitedCo
A fully developed idea, PetersonLimitedCo is looking to build a physical game, and an online game. For the online game, PetersonLimitedCo, is taking bids on development, and looking to see if anyone in our community is interested in crowdsourcing its development.

Free Wheeling by JustMe
Hook up unwanted mobility devices with people needing them. Unused wheelchair over here, guy with a shattered kneecap over there? Put ‘em together. Would include motorized wheelchairs, scooters, specially designed bicycles for the disabled and possibly bicycles for the homeless.

Free for Five Minutes by ArrowHead
Advertisers market products on the site by allowing registered consumer users to view short flash ads/complete surveys. During a randomly selected 5 minutes each day, individual product would be available to consumers who view the ads and complete the surveys. Upon completion of the survey or ad viewing, the user would be notified whether they were within that days five minutes free window. If so, they would need to answer a question relating to the product to receive that product 100% free.

Message The Future by Bjoern
Sometimes you want to send a message that should only be readable in the future, for example if you want to send somebody a message they should only be able to read on their birthday. Another scenario would be that you are in possession of top secret information and are worried that some agency or other will try to murder you before you can leak it out. Send it to a newsgroup in encrypted form, so that it is clear that murdering you will not prevent the information to spill.

CardioPoker by Rafe
CardioPoker is a an interface to your favorite online poker sites that integrates onto lifecycles, treadmills and stairmasters. Most new exercise machines have built in screens and some have connectivity. The key will be a custom game controller making it easy to raise, fold and call without taking you out of your exercise rhythm.

Tournament of Champions Video

OGGtours by the champion Jay, upon his return from Burma, hit the streets of Bangkok with a Canon Elph! When Jay’s not helping at a settlement camp on the Burmese border, he’s crowdsourcing websites and shooting video. Thanks Jay, for illustrating how little I’ve done with my life!

Game, not to be outdone… (well kinda outdone as he came in second)… put in a good showing too! He talks about his Annex 2.0 idea and offered up a critique of the IdeaWarz process. Much appreciated Game!

So that means you have 2 videos to choose from this week! Travel back in time and witness Jay in all his glory…

Or check out what’s new, with this weeks wrap-up video! And find out why Cambrian House staff steered clear of the office yesterday…

(Or watch both. No, really. I insist.)

And… until next week, may the best idea win!

Is Web 2.0 really killing our culture? Is dumbness of crowds leading to our intellectual demise? Some people think so. But I prefer to think that the power of collaboration can lead to amazing results - like sharing information, new discoveries, liberating people and ideas… It’s more than just voting on the funniest cat-playing-the-piano pic or sharing what you’re eating for lunch with a Twitter. To defend Web 2.0, we headed to Vancouver last week to take on the loudest anti-Web 2.0 voice and make our opinions known.

So I made sure to get a good seat at the Wisdom of Crowds panel during VidFest in Vancouver. Like Tyson vs Holyfield, Round One in the battle against good and evil was about to sound off. I was sooo excited.

In one corner: the defender, Cambrian House CEO Michael Sikorsky, tipped the scales as crowd favorite…

In the other corner: the Web 2.0 anti-christ, Andrew Keen was weighing in as a mighty A-hole.

Ding! Dinggg….wha?

To my surprise, no punches were thrown. There were no broken noses or bruised egos to be seen. Come on guys, I wanted my money’s worth!

The loud-mouthed critic of web 2.0 who says we (by “we” I mean people who write blogs, upload videos and create wikipedia entries) are a bunch of bumbling idiots didn’t come into the ring swinging.

After reading his book, blog and manifesto, Cambrian House was prepared to go to battle in the name of crowdsourcing.

We were up against a man who’s been called an internet nazi and who’s been known to detest the rise of the average joe and jane thanks to web 2.0 tools.

Instead Andrew made a few jabs at bloggers, stating there was a crisis of authority growing as more and more people share their thoughts online, and stated that the public needs to be more media literate.

Maybe he wasn’t having a good day. Maybe someone spiked his coffee, but the keenian gloom we were expecting to rain on our parade of liberating people & ideas using crowdsouring, didn’t.

It seems Andrew just might be misunderstood. It may also be that being a grumpy anti-web 2.0 guy lands him speaking gigs and sells books. Maybe being in Canada softened him up.

But overall his points were valid and we share many of them:

1) Web 2.0 is too altruistic, commerce isn’t taken into consideration. What’s in it for professionals?

Cambrian House believes crowdsourcing = wisdom and participation of crowds + social networking fabric + commerce…

2) There are too many amateurs online and determining credibility is difficult.

We need to define better online reputation systems.

3) Media literacy is crucial.

To ensure there is “meaning” in our online interactions, whether it be creating content or consuming it, we all need to be well informed, read more and engage in conversations with one another.

…

I hope that dancing with the devil doesn’t make us Web 2.0 haters, but considering Cambrian House is setting out to create a platform for participation with commerce embedded in our DNA - it’s no wonder Michael and Andrew didn’t throw down the gloves…