The title says it all - serving wanna-be's everywhere!

A portable hand-held device that incorporates a digital bar-code reader, memory for data storage, and usb port could be used with appropriate programming to monitor nutritional intake with real-time convenience. The reader would allow a user to scan the product's bar code for identificantion of the food, and then search its database for "nutrition-fact" data for the product to give a running total of nutritional intake over a day or other time increment. This would require a digital...

Scholarships for college awarded to high school students usually come from colleges themselves or philanthropic sources. One important stakeholder in having a well-educated workforce is corporate America. Companies should sponsor prestigous college scholarships for promising students as they are graduating from high school for a commitment to work for the company for a certain period of time. The military does this effectively through the academies and ROTC. Corporations need to contribute...

Recovery of otherwise-wasted energy is becoming more important. The hybrid cars now on the market and an idea about placing windmills next to highways to be turned by the constant wind suggest looking into other sources. The constant water flow from municiple water systems and water towers could be used to drive turbines just as a hydroelectric dam, but to generate electricity on a smaller scale.

With airport layovers and delays really common, why not have airport multi-plexes? They would have to be traveller-friendly with places for luggage, a variety of movie lengths with clearly stated ending times, comfortable seating and silent alert buzzers for travellers who might doze off.

A reatailer that could combine the advantages of internet shopping (or even large discount stores), namely selection and prices, with the low cost of many local distribution points would meet a lot of shopper's needs, and save time and transportation costs. Using computer-based warehouse information systems, the company could take orders for goods through a website, then ship to local outlets for customer pick-up. An extra charge for delivery service could even be a part of the scheme....

Purchases made in person in stores have a disadvantage for customers in that there is no electronic record of the purchase available for the customer, only a paper receipt. Since receipts are often needed for returns, proof-of-purchase, rebates, etc., there is motivation to mimic internet sales with electronic receipts. If the customer was willing to give their email address to the store clerk, these could be sent by email (along with advertising). If the customer wanted to remain...

Our founding fathers were exceptionally wise to ensure a separation of church and state. Now that enormous power lies in the business and financial world, we now see the results of too close relationships between large corporations and our own US government. The American people should demand Separation of Business and State.

Take advantage of excess electrical production capacity during night-time hours by equipping homes and businesses with large battery systems. This approach has been suggested for electrical cars where the disadvantage is the size of the battery system, but this would be much less of an issue for homes and businesses. Power companies would need to provide a cost incentive to encourage the use of these and the energy storage mode would be best controlled remotely by centralized operation at...

Streaming radios of different varieties of background noise to be used in the office, home, or busines to create different moods. Rather than using CD's a much richer variety of sounds could be offered through a website. Some examples: natural sounds (beach, forest, wind in trees, rain); Urban sounds (traffic, sidewalk, restaurant, bar), Animals (birds, barnyard, wolves, insects), White noise (different frequencies), mechanical (bicycle, motor, water-wheel, fountain). Ads would be visual...