Price comparison for online grocery / supermarket delivery

Is a price comparison service for online grocery / supermarket delivery likely to happen?

The advantage to the consumer is obvious: they input their grocery requirements into a single website, with the order being fulfilled by the cheapest retailer.

The advantages for the retailer are more complicated. For those that compete purely on price, there is an opportunity to steal business away from higher-priced rivals. For those that compete on product range, there is an opportunity to steal business away from rivals that lack the necessary product range to fulfil an order. Others may just loose business.

There is a typical chicken and egg situation to establishing such a service: the retailers will not want to join unless there is customer volume on the service; consumers will not use the service unless there are sufficient retailers to choose from (and hence they feel like they're getting the best deal).

Probably the biggest problem is distribution. Unlike non-perishable products delivery of groceries requires very localised distribution infrastructure, which limits the number of possible competitors to a particular geographic market. Whilst price comparison services for non-perishable products and for financial products have allowed start-ups and small players to gain visibility and compete, there will necessary be fewer such competitors in the grocery market due to the delivery challenges. And without these small players willing to kick-start the service, it may not be possible to break the chicken/egg deadlock.

It may be possible to layer price comparison over the top of existing web services using web scraping technology. But such an approach is high risk, as supermarkets can quickly change their page structure, resulting in loss of access to information.

For any company aspiring to a global price comparison service for grocery delivery, there are very geographically fragmented markets to contend with (each country / region has different grocery providers). This adds considerably to the complexity of growth.

Another challenge is data interchange: consumers will not want to re-key their order on the selected vendor's own page.

Insulation through turbulence

I wonder whether it would be possible to add structures to the outside of buildings that create more turbulence when the wind blows such as to reduce the rate of heat loss from the building. The idea being that turbulent air moves past the building less quickly, and hence removes heat less quickly.

Risk of loss

I feel as though it is necessary to loose everything, and to experience the worst possible experiences in order to achieve enlightenment. Only then can you have confidence in your own strength to deal with such loss or experience.

Crowd life audit

Online service where individuals submit details about their lives:

• Their daily routines
• Their finances
• The likes and dislikes
• The state of their relationships
• Hopes/Dreams
• Fears/worries
• etc

The online community review this information (on a voluntary basis) and provides recommendations for action.

Why would people make all this information about themselves available? Because many people are looking for help.

Why would people spend their time reviewing details of other people's lives? Because people like helping people (and are nosy).

It would be possible to keep the information relatively anonymous, depending on what the user submitted.

It would also be interesting to implement a similar crowd life audit concept face-to-face in the community (obviously with no anonymity).

How many possible psychoactive substances are there?

How many possible psychoactive substances are there?

What I want from a music discovery service

I think it's rare to fall in love with a piece of music on first listen. Sure there are track that are that good. But some really good track take a few listens to really appreciate. I hypothesise that between 3 and 10 listens are required to get to know a piece of music to be able to assess whether you like it (the repetition number). I also hypothesise that that 3 to 10 listens must occur over a relatively short period of time, such as a month (exposure window).

So, I want a music discovery service that deliberately repeats tracks to get the exposure necessary to allow assessment. The service would need to record, and hence predict, the number of hours of music each listener listens to on average each day in order to hit the repetition number within the exposure window.

This service would be open to all artists from major labels to indie self-publishers, although the users would be able to select a popularity focus (for example if they're interested in discovering the undiscovered). Artist would be able to upload their tracks, applying tags to give a rough genre description (genres are boxes if you're put in only one, but they're a tool for discovery if you're put in many).

First-time users would be required to sign-up, and select genres of interest, and then begin listening. When they find a track that they like, they star it (and share it), which moves it out of the exposure playlist and into a liked list. The parameters for selecting music for the users exposure playlist would be updated to take account of their preferences, matched against the preferences of other users.

Users would also be able to listen to a playlist of the liked music, starring from these moves the track to a really liked category.

Users would also be able to force a track to be dropped from their exposure playlist or could hit a keep this in for a while button to ensure they get a few more listens before it ends its tenure in the exposure playlist.

The service would store a record all tracks that had previously been in the exposure playlist were not liked, hence ensuring that these are not added back to the exposure playlist. However, this catalogue would be searchable, by date listened to, time, artist, etc to allow users to find music that they only realised they liked a while after. Alternatively, users could choose to listen to a playlist generated from all their previously listened to exposure tracks that they didn't like.

Controls the user could be given over their exposure playlist:

• Popularity of the track (max / min sales, likes or listens)
• Popularity of the artist (max / min sales, likes or listens)
• Genre tags (must have / mustn't have)
• Year
• Repetition number
• Exposure window

Willpower

Willpower is one of those rare things that, the more you spend, the more you have. So, spend today's willpower today and worry about tomorrow's willpower tomorrow.