Simultaneous exchange booth

It has always troubled me slightly that for exchange transactions one might person might hand over the goods, then the recipient refuse to hand over the money. So I thought about how you might enforce transfer.

The diagram below is a top down view of what I have referred to as a simultaneous exchange booth. There are two boxes set in a wall. The boxes have a perspex hatch (in brown) that allows the trade partners to see what is being exchanged. The hatch can only be opened if both doors are shut, and both parties simultaneously depress the levers.

This mechanism also allows blind exchange: all you can see is what is being exchanged, not the person.

Identifying opportunity via the web

If people are looking for things and can't find them, that suggests an opportunity exists. Search engines and searchable product websites should be able to mine their search history data to look for common searches that had a poor quality or low volume of matches. Such searches are opportunities for new products, new services, new websites, etc.

It's all about

Managing expectations

Recommended reading for life

What is the recommended reading for life? Are there some books that provide such an insight to the human condition that they are essential reading for all human beings?

Class A cherries

Today's thought for the day is a brand/image for an alternative clothing line: Class A cherries. The clothing would feature images of rebellious anthropomorphic cherries in a variety of styles (e.g. cherries in leather jackets, cherries skateboarding, cherries bungee jumping, etc). For subtlety, the clothing line name would be restricted to the inner label.

Diet guidelines from shopping habits

Supermarkets must be awash with great data on peoples shopping habits from their store cards. I hypothesize that it would be possible to accurately determine someones diet from their supermarket shopping habits (although I realise that people still buy a lot of their snack food, takeaways, etc outside of supermarkets). If such a hypothesis proved to be true, the data would allow identification of the most dietary "at risk" people, who could be referred for medical help. Alternatively, the supermarket could take it upon themselves to make suggestions to help people, although I doubt this would go down well with customers.

My theory on my headaches

My theory on my observation of my headaches (without the aid of rigorous science) is that they relate to blood pressure, perhaps with the pain resulting from the pressure of blood on nerves. There is increased blood flow to areas that are working hard, e.g. the head muscles that tense when we concentrate or are stressed. This increased blood flow increases the pressure.