There are certain things out there… on the internet. Things you do not want to see… ever.

And any one of them could be waiting for you at the other end of a hyperlink! Its a wonder people still have the guts to click any more… but a solution has been proposed by Interviewables!

We have Digg, we have Reddit, we have Stumbleupon, etc. All of these sites and extensions were created to bring the good and relevant sites to the top. But what is also needed is a way to tag the bad sites and bury (or Berry) them.

Create an extension for Firefox and IE that will allow a user to tag a site or page as bad. They would be voting to have the site buried (or Berried). Of course it would be up to the site owner to remove it or not.

Interviewables imagines groups of like-minded people tagging objectionable sites. By installing the toolbar, and trusting such a group, a user can be alerted visually when any link on their page leads to objectionable content.

Google wants relevant data that people actually want to see. That’s why pages from Digg and Stumbleupon rank so well. Our data will offer the same only in reverse. Between Digg, Stumble, and Berryit, the web might actually begin to resemble something worthwhile.

BerryIt is imminently do-able (compared to telco infrastructure plays and Ann Coulter). Open source libraries already exist for constructing browser plug-ins, and sites such as del.icio.us have already collected reams of tagging data. This means the browser plug-in can rely on Del.icio.us tagging data for now (via their API). A functional prototype could be constructed by focusing on the browser the plug-in.

Yay for immediate gratification of front-end user-experience coding!

If you’d like to work with Interviewables on this project, join his team or drop him a line.

Favorite Ideas - IScenic.tv and something by threeg5

• IScenic.tv by Vancouverbluz
  

  take life casting and to turn it into scenic explorer tv. A crew will go hiking into the Grand Canyons many trails while putting everything on video.

  Blue thinks there might be some compelling opportunities for interactivity in the final product, depending on the technology used to perform the video capture. I believe there’s no barrier to entry when shooting travel footage, so consider videotaping your next trek.

• TV Game Show Type Reality by threeg5
  

  You are hunted by “X” number of people. A helper has the “eyes” of the hunters (because they have cameras on them) and can aid you in navigation. There are boundaries and a big prize at the end. If people want to see the hunted they watch on TV and if they want to see each individual hunter/helpers view they can do so via the web.

  Blue never got to speak as once I started talking about it I just wouldn’t shut up. She might have liked it too, who can tell?

These ideas and more are discussed, while to struggle to be…

Keeping it Real

Just ask Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Todd Courtnage or Brad Pitt: It’s not easy keeping your ego in check when you’re idolized by millions!

Recently I got a chance to ask Sarah Blue how, despite all her fans and wealth, she manages to stay so grounded. Her response?

“No autographs.”

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

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

Hot on the heels of Cambrian House community member EpiPenner’s “BeeGone” (the beehive mismanagement software suite) comes Scoobie’s proposal for yet another beekeeping app. But the goal of this software is to keep the bees healthy.

Crazy?
 
I thought so too, until I discovered a whole subculture of “beekeepers”. Instead of screaming and running at the sight of a honeybee, these fools actually allow bees to form “colonies” in hives. Why? Well it is their belief that under the proper conditions, bees will produce the golden substance which we all know as honey.

Well you and I both know honey comes from a supermarket, not a magical “beehive”. But before you completely shut the door on this madness, consider these facts:

• Hobbyist beekeeping is becoming more and more popular. By the year 2037, it is predicted to have more practicing members than Scientology!
   
• Beekeepers must keep their hive healthy, or the hive will attack in anger! In the worst case, the queen itself will emerge from the hive and battle the beekeeper to the death.
   
• The cost of supporting software sold to a stung-to-death beekeeper is zero dollars.

Scoobie says the existing beekeeping software doesn’t meet his expectations. Existing software is either too expensive, out of date, or no longer supported. This is an opportunity created by Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a recent phenomenon where bee colonies suddenly disappear.

Unpollenated crops and unmet demand for honey are the immediate impact of CCD. Because beehives (on average) operate less efficiently due to CCD, there is a need for more hives and so more beekeepers.

Tom Cruise, take note!

If you’re interested in helping identify or prioritize features, assist writing a design document or get your hands dirty doing good old software development, then offer to join Scoobie’s Beekeeping Software project!

Scoobie Skypes In

Scoobie was extremely helpful in the creation of this week’s IdeaWarz video, going so far as to shoot footage of his hives!

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

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

Did you know paper receipts are responsible for more rain forest destruction and CO2 emissions than the entire coffee and mining industries combined? It is truly staggering!

“I had no idea!” you say.

“That’s a lot of destruction…” you ponder.

“Is that even true?” you ask.

No, it isn’t true. But it sounds plausible. Especially if you read it really quickly and move on.

Beyond that, paper receipts are filling our nations wallets with space that could be occupied by cold, hard, cash! And then… when you finally need to expense those receipts you’ve been carrying around… they’re vanished! The Receipt Fairy’s expense account knows no bounds.

Rather than hunting down and exterminating The Receipt Fairy, Interviewables proposes bypassing paper receipts entirely. A central database would be populated via updates from enhanced POS terminals. Certainly once the receipt line items were centralized, all manner of mutually beneficial services could be provided to both customers and marketers.

Inverviewables sees creation of the receipt line item tracking service as the first step towards adoption.

A merchant isn’t going to want this on his own. There will need to be a need from the consumer to push this.

Identifying the chicken-and-egg challenges, and mapping out incentives for each party will be key to upgrading such a significant chunk of infrastructure. Certainly if there is a compelling reason for customers, merchants and POS vendors to participate before the system is widely adopted, eventually the system will be widely adopted.

To help Interviewables build the tracking service, implement a 3rd party POS module, or even help map out how each party in a sales transaction can be encouraged to participate, head on over to No More Paper Receipts and chime in!

Blue and Gord Like Stuff

Rock Band, front row seats, cute little kittens… and good ideas! (Also, Blue likes cheese. But for the purpose of this blog entry, we’ll focus on ideas.)

• Caraoke by dotcomcowboy
  

  An easy to install, aftermarket car audio system that includes either an integrated LCD or AV Outputs that would allow you to connect it to an in-vehicle LCD display.

  Blue believes this is intended for car passengers, as it would be unsafe to drive while reading lyrics. Gord believes so long as an air-guitar is not incorporated into game play, the game would have acceptable survival rates.

• Crowd Sourced Magazine by zer0
  

  With all the bloggers, photographers and design artists available on the web something truly amazing could be created, something to rival traditional magazines. A real paper magazine. Something I could show to people and say I had a part in this, instead of some cryptic web address they probably wont ever visit.

  While reading up on this, Gord compared it to Checoslovaco’s idea Wiki Word Networks which is a plan to pull together infrastructure to enable endeavors such as Crowd Sourced Magazine possible.

Lockdown, Construction and Tow Trucks

Think only homeless people and prostitutes stand around on sidewalks? Not true! Video bloggers are often known to “hang out” on sidewalks when a conference call occupies their orange couch.

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

And… May the Best Idea… WIN!

While eBay and other auction sites can help one locate items of obvious value such as a DVD box set of Miami Vice Season 1, what about an finding an item which is only valuable to yourself? Let us use… Miami Vice Season 5 as an example.

No one else perceives Season 5 as valuable, so they’re not going to try auction it off on eBay. You can create a want-it-now post on eBay, but what are the odds someone stuck with MVS5 will even think anyone else might want to watch it?

FindersNet introduces human search agents into this equation: While eBay consists of people is buying and selling roles, FindersNet adds a finder role, so that 3rd parties can help facilitate transactions!

Friend-of-a-friend possibilities broaden the range of finding MVS5 buyers or sellers. And it could work for so much more than just Miami Vice season 5! There’s season 4… and even non-Miami Vice related products to consider.

TideWater states:

FindersNet will be open to the entire world and cover every possible wanted product or services that does not break the law.

Congrats TideWater, on winning this week’s IdeaWarz! TideWater is currently working on a data model for this project, but you can help brainstorm and offer up any assistance by heading over to FindersNet by TideWater or messaging TideWater directly!

Blue and Gord’s Ideas of Interest

• FilmNotion by Kairaspo
  

  FilmNotion will allow users to sign up and post any movie ideas they had as well attach a promo video much like the Cambrian House website except the ideas would be for movie pitches.

  Blue maintains Kairaspo maintains the idea is too similar to FilmRiot and Kairaspo would make the most progress collaborating with Don and Andy.

• theInternet.fm by Chrischen
  

  Youtube powered Internet streaming radio site. Use Youtube as the source of free music to broadcast. We’ll provide internet radio (with video), without incurring costs of a traditional radio or streaming music sites.

  I (Gord) think this is a fantastic way to bypass net radio regulations, and it looks like the site is well underway. Our only concern was… other sites are using a similar work-around. Competition… ah the magic of capitalism!

First you get the power, then you get the money…

You would think that Cubans would totally get Scarface references, but they don’t. Do they hate Al Pacino? Prefer G-Rated fare? Well until recently, Cubans were denied most consumer electronics, computers and movies which travelers would have liked to have brought into the country.

And tragically, like a baby denied crucial omega-3 fatty acids, Cubans may never recover from their lack of pop-cultural references during key developmental stages. These poor people don’t even understand the cultural significance of Chuck Norris. Yet despite this, all Cubans have access to free health care! Growing up without pop-cultural references… they’re gonna need it.

Such deep insights, commentary on Cambrian House community’s ideas, and non-stop action can be found in our latest IdeaWarz video!

A nice man named Will Pate may also be glimpsed.

Want a video subscription? We have   and  feeds!

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!

Publishing houses are starting to take advantage of the exposure authors can gain by allowing free access to books online. Neil Gaiman, Brad Meltzer, Vernor Vinge and egomaniac Stephen Wolfram have all released free copies of their books online.

Even Douglas Adams experimented with distributing 3000 free copies of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy via Rolling Stone Magazine in 1979. Think that was a mistake? Oh… now you’re arguing with a dead man. Now that’s just sad.

Dbiln suggests free exposure to the first chapter of a book might not just expand an aspiring author’s fan base, but fund the creation of an entire novel!

My idea is to create a website that has up and coming WRITERS sharing their novel ideas with the public. The WRITERS would share the summary of their idea plus the completed first chapter of ther idea. The READERS, if they are interested in this author would endorse the author a certain amount of dollars ($10 or up) to have them complete their novel.

A great deal of debate over this idea centers around the significant difference between donations and investments. As a crowdsourcing company investigating the implications of crowdfunding… let me tell you, that’s a big difference.

If you’d like to offer insight, or lend a hand in this book crowdfunding endeavor, give Dbiln a shout.

Favorite Idea - Port of Call Amazing Race

Laura isn’t in Mexico, and neither is Gord. Its this not-in-Mexico quality that makes us especially qualified to cite our favorite idea this week!

• Port of Call Amazing Race by JamieA
  

  Provide an Amazing Race type game at the port of call for cruise ships instead of the touristy excursions. People start at the port and given a clue start this scavenger hunt. Explore the city while playing a game!

MJ on the Couch

This week, MJ shares his thoughts on the winning idea! Laura! Gord! MJ! Sunshine! Beaches! Beer! Must! Return! To! Reality!

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!

Does your body language communicate confusion and fear?

Do you slouch in your chair? Have a nervous twitch? Mumble “Umm” “well” and “like?” In short, do you come off like a jonesin’ valley girl during interviews?

Oh, you don’t think you do… but until you’ve have someone critique your interview skills… you don’t know for sure.

Allows college students to upload videos of themselves answering job interview questions and then have the community critique them in order to help them improve.

Interviewables is this week’s second highest scoring idea, and also the winner! Give Interviewables (the confusingly named community member, not the idea) a shout if you’d like to help out.

The Second Highest Scoring Idea?

So what was the highest scoring idea?

Activity is an integer which can range from 1 to infinity. 1 is bad.

Also, a “Jerrymander” alias is lame. Even if your first name is really Jerry. Mr. and Mrs. Mander should have thought ahead when they named you.

Anthony’s Conference Call

Last week’s footage of Anthony brainstorming with CH2 team on how we can better manage and market our website is featured in this week’s video. If you want to offer feedback specific to this conference call, please do so in this forum thread.

Want a video subscription? We have   and  feeds!

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!

How many “good causes” are truly unique? You gots the environment… that’s good. Cancer… that’s bad. Maybe human rights are good. Poverty, less so. Child literacy… that one’s still up in the air.

Basically if there’s a cause you’re fighting for, someone has already come up with an ad campaign for it. Either you’re taking your message door to door, or your busy learning Gimp to create a half-ass looking flyer you’ll be too embarrassed to thrust in someone’s face!

Frunze wants to facilitating the recycling of campaign materials with Campaign-Canvas, a campaign portal with media repository. Artists can promote their socially conscious media creations. Activists can leverage social networking tools, and know all the campaign materials on the site can be easily licensed for their use.

If you’d like to help Frunze out, leave a comment on his idea submission, or give him a shout directly.

Blue and Gord Agree with CH Community

Blue got to break this week’s tie, so Gord is claiming the 2nd place idea as his favorite!

• Media Source Trackback by Dejan
  

  You enter a url for a news article. The service extracts published date and the essence of the content. With this information it will find out whether or not this is a firsthand piece of information. It will trackback to the “source” of the scoop by comparing published time.

  This idea could still use some brainstorming, as I don’t think we’ve clearly identified all the mechanisms by which this reverse search could be performed. Certainly a Google Search API could be leveraged. Perhaps a test article could be identified, and searched for in Google manually to identify the most effective approach to finding the original story. Then the manual steps could be reviewed to see how they could be possibly automated and run against the Google API.

Calling it in…

“Calling it in” is an expression meaning not really giving it your 100%. If Gord and Blue were to “call it in”, the resulting IdeaWarz video might lack a certain energy. Maybe Gord didn’t feel like moving all the way over to the couch. Outside seemed a bit chilly. And more footage shot means more footage to edit. Maybe another coffee would have helped…

On that happy note!

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!

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!