When you can't find what you're looking for in a shop, you'll ask the clerk. But what if the same thing happens to you at a fleamarket? The solution: special fleamarket guides who help you find what you're looking for. There could be specially trained people who are in charge of a certain stretch of the fleamarket and can tell you what's going on. If it's too much to remember (possibly!), the stands could also enter their stuff into a database, so everybody would know that e.g. stand...

Yahoo has a service / website called "Launch." Launch will play videos & music for you, and you can tell the system if you liked the selection or not. With that information (and comparing it to other users' music taste), Launch will figure out your preferences, and ideally only play pieces that you like, including new ones you have never heard before. It would be cool if a similar system could be used in shopping centers. In most of them, the choice of music is really horrible, and I'm...

There have been a lot of discussions in the last couple of years about "ego shooters" and their bad influence on kids, especially in the context of real-life shootings in various schools. Why not develop a similar line of games that is just as exciting but less violent? For example, when we were kids we used to try to get into various pop concerts for free - it was very exciting and involved skills like swimming, hiding, jumping, runnig... and of course the ability to analyse a certain...

I have a new idea for a restaurant promotion game. The chef/restaurant owner chooses a certain combination from the menu - e.g. spinach soup + small Pepsi + fruit cake. You win the game by ordering exact this combination from the menu - the only problem is that you don't know what it is. The winner of the game takes the jackpot, which will be increased by a certain amount every day, until someone finally places the winning order (of course, the prize money has to be spent at the...

Like most men, I love drinking beer, but there are times when I'd rather not. On those rare occasions, I find myself scanning the menu (or searching the local supermarket) for alternatives. The problem is that if you don't want to give yourself a sugar overdose (=soft drinks), your choice is pretty limited. Non-alcoholic beer usually tastes awful, and apart from that there seems to be no beverage that's neither sweet nor contains alcohol. Fruit juices are sweet as well, spending the...

If you have sisters and brothers, you will, as you get older, sometimes discuss the old times. Pretty often, you'll come across things your parents did that were just awesome (e.g. when you had to go for a vaccination and were brave instead of wailing around and terrorizing everybody else, you would get a matchbox car - what a great idea!) On the other hand, you'll come across a lot of stuff you virtually hated (e.g. you were forced to play a violin - and yuck, you still can't listen to...

What I hate most about modern email times is that more and more people believe that emails can be simply ignored. While this is partly understandable and probably due to the rising wave of spam that is sent by machines anyway, I find it incredibly annoying when you really have a request or problem and are longing for an answer. Two ideas: 1. An "I definitely want an answer" setting. Your email program will monitor if you received a reply to a particular message, and if you didn't,...

Don't know about other people, but I find it particulary rewarding to try out new jobs now and then. I'm not talking about switching companies, but testing my abilities in an entirely DIFFERENT field. After all, everyone has different talents, and no single job or profession satisfies all of them. One thing I find disturbing is that conservatively thinking employers (the vast majority) make this task unnecessarily difficult. Even if they have a position available, most of them refuse...

This idea has been inspired by the Eminem discussion on on these boards. In my home country there's a juice company called "Yo." Yo man! Why not have them funky rappers make advertising for Yo! They wouldn't even have to change the wording - just have 'em rap along and insert a "Yo" logo. If Eminem is too expensive, I'm sure some cheap native rapper can do the trick.

As far as I know, there is no reason why street curbs are as hard as concrete. In former days, people probably didn't have different materials, but today? Hard curbs only ruin your car tires, and if there's a street festival and you end up sitting on the curb for a while, your behind will start aching in no time at all. So why not make street curbs from a material that's softer, yet durable and easy to clean?