Hello!

Nostromo sees world travelers whizzing back and forth across less-than-completely-porous borders, and wants to put their extra carrying capacity to use! His winning idea, Shipping by Crowdsourcing Travellers is all about coordinating such a service.

Nostromo currently doesn’t have the resources to push this idea forward as a project, so if you interested in coordinating development, give him a shout!

DTINGG says:

I like this idea as part of a community site, but not for a standalone site.

Summertime says:

What UShip doesn’t have: I don’t believe they will go out and shop for the items you seek. That function seems a little more like “importing” to me.

Micco says:

I think it’s a great basis for a social network. You’d probably want some kind of bid-ask system.

Blue and Gord’s Favorite Ideas

• From One, Comes Many by Motiggidy
  

  Lets Ch members get their feet wet in managing a web business in an easy way. I think it also fosters a more active community.

  An extremely easy mechanism by which simple sites could be launched, which would eliminate the need for any development skills when rolling out a dynamic website.

• Ping Manager by Edavidove
  

  A program which tells me, within a defined time period, the people that have “contacted me”, the number of times a “contact” was made, the number of times I have responded, and the average amount of time elapsed before I have responded.

  The discussion on this idea quickly centered around the technical aspect of monitoring various forms of communication. Blue has some Blackberry specific thoughts on this in this week’s video blog below.

Competition! Tapscott! Gluzman!

TED Conference this year includes the launch of Kluster, a site which uses a vocabulary of Amps, Watts and Sparks to articulate various aspects of project crowdsourcing.

On one hand, finding the ideal mechanisms by which Wisdom of Crowds and Participation of Crowds can be leveraged is something more significant than any one business venture. By redefining the boundaries between “work” and “play”, and allowing everyone to explore their full creative potential, crowdsourcing (as enabled by Web 2.0 technologies) makes all of our lives richer. (Except for Andrew Keen.)

So it was with great trepidation we decided to sabotage the entire TED conference in an attempt to derail Kluster.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t counted on Robin Williams being present. Is there ANYTHING that man can’t do? (Aside from stop growing hair?)

In this week’s video, we talk about Kluster and alternate approaches to crowdsourcing ideas! Gluzman speaks at length about Jeff Howe on Crowdfunding, Microsoft’s bad month and his own conspiracy theories involving banks! We take a Skype call from Nostromo! And, as usual, Blue is taken out of context via the magic of video editing!

Until next week: Share your ideas. Give us your precious, precious feedback… Take a look through Cambrian House Bazaar and Forums for projects to assist in…

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

The full title of the idea is “Time Delayed Text Messaging Service” and all that’s missing is “for your mobile phone” from the end! (Hint: That is a long title.)

This entirely practical idea (submitted by PropertyGeek) makes sending SMS during the wee-hours of the morning socially acceptable, since the message can now be slated to arrive at a more reasonable hour.

SMS messages to yourself can be handy reminders. An SMS to get you up in the morning. An SMS reminds you to take out the trash. What was that crazy important thing you shouldn’t forget?!? Delayed SMS to the rescue… Pick junior up from daycare!

PhilipH says:

I can see a range of broader applications for this, from automatic entry into text competitions to DELIBERATELY sending messages to ‘friends’ at inappropriate times.

w00dstock says:

It definitely has its uses. For instance, if my buddy is sleeping and I want to send him a wakeup SMS (or send one to myself) I can set it to 8am my buddies time to wake him up.

Or (this is the dark-side talking) if you want to send a message to someone to prove you were SMSing at a certain time to “cover yourself” you can use the delay as an alibi (I am leaving this idea intentionally vague).

rjarvis says:

I wouldn’t use it.

Kevin_Cox says:

“I wouldn’t use it.” To bad I don’t care about you. I am so going to build this thing just so I can slap text messages in your face any time I want.

Congratulations PropertyGeek on winning this week’s IdeaWarz! If you’d like to offer assistance on this project, give PropertyGeek a shout.

Gord and Blue’s Favorite Idea

This week neither one of us would give up our favorite idea, and so we are forced to share: Road Rage Robo by alli.

For drivers who are mad, sad, happy, bored, in need of a friend or a boost the Road Rage Robo is a robot driving companion that entertains you. Unlike your car stereo, Road Rage Robo provides customized entertainment to keep a smile on your face while driving.

While some may worry it is just another distraction drivers need to screen out so that they avoid plowing into pedestrians or hurling over cliffs… is it really any worse than your nagging spouse? And if it can truly calm you down when you’re frustrated, it might just prevent an accident!

Cambrian House Theater Presents: Format War Vet

Somewhere out there is a man… probably in his late 40s. He purchased a Betamax deck. Followed by a laserdisc player. Probably shelled out a small fortune on Criterion laserdiscs. He sold his kidney to buy a DVD player, and quickly replaced it when seamless branching DVDs were the rage. He purchased DVDs then anamorphic DVDs. He also replaced his HDTV when it was clear the early model HDTVs would not support the strong copy protection demanded of the new HD formats.

When HD DVD was announced… he was hesitant. All the money he’d spend on video upgrades could have fed a nation of skinny people. But once in the showroom, exposed to 1080p playback… he couldn’t help himself. It was HD DVD all the way.

He won’t be around any more. He died… of a broken heart.

Until next week: Share your ideas. Give us your precious, precious feedback… Take a look through Cambrian House Bazaar and Forums for projects to assist in…

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

Congratulations to DrV, who’s winning idea “ThinkTank” took the lead in this week’s IdeaWarz tournament! Similar to mind mapping tools, ThinkTank will add tagging, searching and grouping capabilities via a Flash interface.

The more connections to a bubble, the bigger it gets. Users can also rate the relevance of the thought bubble to the overall idea, which will, in effect, change it’s size as well.

This will be both a stand-alone application and web application. With increased support for Flash on mobile devices, it should see use as a cell phone application as well.

Revenue Streams:

1. Stand-alone adds (every so many times of opening the desktop version a video advertisement will be displayed)
2. Web ads
3. Widget ads (will interchange with quotes)
4. Cell ads (certain number of seconds after splash screen)

DrV is a Flash developer, but is looking for extra Flash muscle, in addition to someone to help build the back-end. If you’re interested in helping out, give DrV a shout.

Laura and Bob: CH2 Developers

When Todd left for a 2 month vacation in Thailand, Cambrian House was presented with a choice: we could panic and run screaming into the streets knowing that it was just a matter of time before a technical glitch drove all our websites into the ground. Or… we could hire new talent.

In addition to supporting CH2, Bob is doing general I.T. support for our websites. So if everything goes smoothly, he’s kinda ignored. But if anything goes wrong, we just yell out “Bob!” and make whiny noises. If we’re lucky, our very own mistakes can sometimes be blamed on him… Bob, glad to have you on the team!

Laura is fixing CH2 bugs, and will be helping implement a new idea intake process next week.

She works extremely fast, and I find myself needing to occasionally impede her progress. By say, inviting her to participate in this week’s IdeaWarz video… lest her impressive skills turn her to “the dark side” (join the CH3 team). Welcome Laura, and… would you mind signing this CH2-exclusivity contract?

Hey, here’s a joke for you!

How many CH3 developers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

“You can’t blog the answer to that.”

Jerks.

Gord Complains about 1 Line Idea Submissions

For the most part, Blue looks on calmly while I complain about ideas which were submitted with no research whatsoever. Oh sure Blue, I’m the bad cop.

Some guy drops a 1 line idea pitch into our pipeline, and all you can say is “its pretty clear to me“.

What are all those text boxes for on our idea submission page? Pretty decoration!?!

Until next week: Share your ideas. Give us your precious, precious feedback… Take a look through Cambrian House Bazaar and Forums for projects to assist in…

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!