Having recently spent a bunch of time in some of the world's hottest deserts, I wonder why no one has marketed a portable solar umbrella hooked up to a drinks cooler, or small cooling fan, or one of them electric cooling collar contraptions. Googling for 'solar umbrella' points to large unwieldy umbrellas good for patios and backyards - hardly convenient for hauling around. Making these should be a no-brainer. You'd have to fix flexible solar panels on top of a folding umbrella, and...

Basically, each room in the house would be equipped with an IR motion sensor. These sensors would then be linked to a hub somewhere in the house via bluetooth, X-10 or whatever which in turn can communicate with a carer. The sensors can trigger an alarm if no motion is monitored, meaning the client may have fallen or worse. This idea seems fairly straight forward and I'd be surprised if people haven't thought of it already but I can't seem to find any company online that actually markets...

My uncle who is addicted to sniffing snuff feels embarassed while taking the snuff out of the snuff box (however fancy the snuff box may look) before inhaling the same through nostrils. Also it causes irritation to others nearby making them sneeze. Idea: How about a snuff inhaler? (Of course it can have the caption: Sniffing snuff is injurious to health as in cigarette packs.)

A recyclable cardboard, collapsible bowl shaped like a steamer insert for a saucepan ~ for use in cinemas. You know how peole love to eat potato chips etc in the movies, but the crackling of the bag is so annoying to those around you? Cheap to produce, the candy bar can supply the bowl with purchase of packet of chips; moviegoers can then open packet and pour into opened bowl, and dispose of packet in bin before entering cinema. Luxury, and no more waiting for noisy parts of the movie to...

Gallon cans of paint are partially used and then recapped - without long term success. When you want to touch up a previously painted room, the paint has dried and cannot be remixed. My idea would include a small (say one ounce) container of the original paint that would be purchased with each gallon. A small container would be good for touchups and would have a long shelf life if easy to properly seal.

I have always hated rickety roller coasters, but have still loved them. The MAGLEV (magnetic transportation) trains in Japan not only go extremely fast, but are also very steady. Now if someone invented a MAGLEV roller coaster, it would be extremely smooth, but you could still feel the wind in your hair. Any more ideas, email me (mailto:nwmoe@hbci.com).

Some forms of corrosion are known to be caused by bacteria (the rusting of the Titanic, for example.) What if *ALL* metallic corrosion turns out to be biological rather than from simple chemistry? In that case, tailored antibacterials could at long last "cure" all unwanted rust (cured in the medical sense). Probably a cocktail of drugs would be needed for the various iron-eating flora, and different drugs would go after the aluminum-eaters, etc.

Problem: 1- not everyone has a credit card 2- many people are afraid of 'rip off' activity on the internet. Solution: Market an internet 'top up' scratch card, exactly like they do for pre pay mobile phones, these can for simplicity be in various denominations to match the intended purchase. a- the rip off risk is limited to the amount of the voucher b- people will have full confidence in the transaction c- no need for high levels of encryption d- the vendor has security of...

Why not replace ordinary shipping containers with collapsible ones? Collapsible containers can be folded when empty, saving space as well as the fuel required to ship the empty boxes. The containers can be folded vertically, reducing their width down to 1/5 of the original dimensions. Being able to reduce the size of the empty containers will drastically cut down on the amount of backhaul ocean voyages each year, which will reduce emissions.

The fruit grader/selector can measure a fruit's weight as well as its sugar content and acidity, all at the same time. The unit uses optical sensors to measure sugar content and costs significantly less than current large-scale sugar content meters. Using just one unit with two fruit selectors, one person can process about 2000 tomatoes per hour. The unit is modular and easy to expand upon, including replacing the touch pad with a PC, and the team plants to add more sorting...