A specific frequency in FM band is allocated to a radio station. Suppose, a radio station is broadcasting at 100 Mhz. That radio station can offer a paid service to subscribers, that will require authentication too, and allows them to play their selected songs.

Take this example: The user registers for account and using the web-based control panel, he creates a playlist of his favorite songs. When he’s driving, he can tune to that particular broadcaster using a special digital audio tuner (or a radio). He gets connected to the broadcaster’s server and he can then play his selected songs, shuffle them or select songs from his created playlist to be played in his car.

Why is it needed

Just like we have Video-on-demand through mediums of cable, fibre optics or satellite, I think there must be a way to offer Audio-on-demand on FM frequency. We can compare it with VOD offers by a DTH service. Satellite signal in DTH will be replaces by FM frequency and the digital receiver/decoder will be replaced by the digital tuner/radio.

When we are limited to our music selection on a few CD’s or IPod when traveling on car, using this idea we will have access to even tens of thousands of songs. The good things is that all the songs will be on server and only play lists will be saved in each user account. So, no extra storage for each user will be needed except to save the play list.

It will be just like a virtual IPod connected in car with no storage limit.

Where is the money

About the revenue, it will be from two of the sources:

1. Subscribers, who will be paying to avail this service.

2. Advertisers, whose ads can be inserted automatically in the playlist of the users).

The attractive thing for the advertisers is that the users can be targeted according to their demographics (just like web surfers or cell phone users).

It’s about popular Blogging Platform Wordpress, and What i love to do is Replying to comments on Blog but going to front and leaving control panel is very difficult and unpleasant for me. So What i was thinking of developing such a plugin for wordpress that allows users to Post reply to Visitors comments without leaving CP.

Why is it needed

For better blogging. Building a connection and building a community is first step toward better blogging and this can be done by replying and communicating with your visitors…Although you can post comments but having such a plugin can increase blogger communication with there community and we can build a better Relationship with our readers.

Where is the money

Money is not a problem here, it only requires a programming skill and Passion to contribute some thing to wordpress and blogger community. As wordpress is opensource, plugin should be build open source.

Is there any way one can unite writers (from across our country) at one place, let’s say a blog like this, one that is official and almost every one gets a chance to have their work published? I know there are a thousand personal blogs, but that doesn’t really do much good (explained in the answer to the next question).

Why is it needed

Independent blogs don’t actually guarantee that you will improve what you already are. Practice and continuous writing may bring forth a smooth flow in words, but that the basic plot isn’t to write a lot, rather to create imagination within the unreal and finally pen it down (or should I say type it out).

Where is the money

I had plans of finding folks with similar interests and accumulating works of writers (new) into some magazine sort of thing, or a book. I for one had no finances to budget out such a task and failed to find people who would be interested in it.

Book publishing, magazine printing may cost a LOT, but I, like many others discovered that these blogs offer one a cheapest, fastest and a far better dimension in marketing and collaborating with readers/writers worldwide. it’s just an initial expense followed by yearly spending that, I am sure if worked about with a team may divide down to almost nothing.

A micro chip fitted to both ends of every seat belt in your automobile that sends a signal to your vehicles starter or ignition. Your car will not start unless the seatbelt of the driver is fastened. Each seat will also be fitted with a pressure sensor underneath the seat, if there is a certain amount of poundage in that particular seat then that seatbelt has to be fastened as well or the vehichle will not start. (The details and kinks can be ironed out)

Why is it needed

Thousands of people die every year in car accidents due not improper use or no use of their Saftey Belts. This is a way to ensure that everyone in the vehicle has a seatbelt on.

Where is the money

Car manufactureres will want this product to ensure that their cars receive the highest possible saftey ratings. Once it is federally mandated that every car has this devise, every car company in America (Maybe the world) will have to have this in every one of their vehicles (Cha-Ching).

Got to read this interesting piece of news on CNN’s website here.

Further details can be grabbed on the Project 10^100 website.

As I am a big StumbleUpon fan with over 20,000 stumbles. And now I am also going addicted with twitter…So is there a way with which we can integrate both like when we review something in SU, It comes automatically on twitter as a status for example “Nasir has reviewed ‘this abc thing’ on StumbleUpon. Go check it out!” or something like this..Hope you got the idea :)

Why is it needed

Because Integration in different web services is the future. See ping.fm, blip.fm and many more…

Where is the money

Not in my pocket at least :P

Why is it needed

I think it will help an average resident of Pakistan. Ideally, it should be a project by LESCO, IESCO, KESC, etc. If they can’t manage (I am almost certain they can’t), a community driven website can be created. A little effort will be required to mobilize people to contribute about their home regions.

Wayne Dyer from the PhilosophersNote on The Power of Intention

PhilosophersNote is a nice website where you can get mini-notes that contain the synopses from different personal development books.

]]> http://ideashut.com/idea/the-power-of-intention/feed/ http://ideashut.com/idea/the-power-of-intention/ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasHut/~3/337273009/ http://ideashut.com/idea/hidden-gems/#comments Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:49:46 +0000 Tehseen Baweja http://ideashut.com/?p=24 Here is one more idea that is not so hard to implement. However, it is not a business idea and won’t make anybody any money. Rather, it would just allow us to help each other.

Problem: We love to eat. Not only in the Rs. 1000 per person fancy restaurants but also in the filthy-looking-yet-serving-very-delicious-food dhabas and the thousands of other food mongers spread in the whereabouts of our cities and towns. One day you might be wondering who serves best palla machli in karachi but you will never know that it is the thele wala just by the entrance of Kemari. Unlike a developed country, small proprietors in Pakistan do not have a registered entity or an online presence or most of the times even a display sign.

Solution: Let’s put together a blog type website (or a wiki) where people can submit information about these hidden gems. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, a platform like ideashut would suffice. I think it is very simple to put together (I would have done it myself if I were the web developer kind..) but I am willing to contribute to buy the domain and hosting, if needed, and also to help maintain the non-technical aspects . If somebody is up to help in creating and maintaining the technical side..holla.

It’ll be pretty viral I think.

Where is the Money

When we have significant number of hits we can create money through google ads and may be some local tour operators may also be intersted in advertizing at the site

We had our first formal board meeting around a month ago in which we discussed lots of new features for Ideas Hut and they all became part of the road map. Since it was a FORMAL meeting (yeah….very much like the ones held in Fortune 500 companies :P) so, it got followed by proper MMs as well that contained the action items list. We kept adding items to that list keeping in view the feedback that we got from the Ideas Hut visitors.

Lately, while I was surrounded by indolence, Sohail got showered with creativity and decided to implement some of the action items. So, here’s the update about the new additions to Ideas Hut:

1. The grey and black theme looked too gloomy so, it has now been replaced by nice and sunny theme.
2. Many of our visitors did not like the blog look of Ideas Hut primarily because old ideas tend to get hidden by the new ones even before they get discussed thoroughly. So, we decided to change the format of Ideas Hut to increase the visibility of the submitted ideas.
In an attempt to do so, Sohail came up with the ‘Idea Browser’ and ‘Featured Ideas’ section. The Idea Browser helps one navigate through the Most Popular (determined by the ranking), the Most Discussed(determined by the number of comments) and the Latest (determined by the posting date) ideas. The ‘Featured Ideas’ section shows the editors’ picks.
3. The third section that got modified is that of the ‘Recent Discussions’ which now shows the recent comments on different ideas.
4. We have launched a Facebook group as well not just to reach the people who will be interested in contributing ideas on Ideas Hut but also (perhaps more importantly) the people who will be passionate about executing any of the ideas being discussed too. That is because we believe that ideas and plans benefit only when properly implemented.
5. To make all the avid bloggers and blog readers stay updated on what’s happening on Ideas Huts, we have come up with a space in blogosphere where I am writing this post right now. :)
6. For all those who could not get time out to read about the latest features on Ideas Hut blog or facebook group, a ‘News Section’ has been added- a quick way of getting all the updates.
7. Now you can share any idea being discussed on Ideas Hut with your friends, through an email, by using the “Email to a Friend” link in front of every idea.

Now as the journey continues, we look forward to your suggestions, comments and criticism because that is what will help us shape our baby venture into something that could help the entire community.

Patients (and their attendants) should be able to submit rating and (optionally) detailed feedback about a practitioner. This feedback should be publicly visible.

The trickiest thing will be to acquire and enter doctors’ data. If a pharmaceutical company can sponsor such a project, they would already have doctors’ data in great detail, most likely in a digital format.

For doctors: This will increase their visibility to an unprecedented extent. Keep in mind the exponentially increasing number of Pakistani Internet users.

For patients: This will be a treasure of information (especially the rating part) The only way to find a good doctor today is by word of mouth.

For sponsors: This can offer targeted marketing. Private hospitals or clinics, Pharmacies, can be easily convinced to place their advertisements on this website. Sponsorship will be important to make the project bear its own operational cost.

What do you think?

I am sure this is not a unique idea. Most of us have already thought about it. My suggestion here is to form a group of volunteers (I will gladly be the first one to volunteer) who can do whatever it takes to have an accurate street level map of Lahore.

At present, I am not sure who is allowed to do that. I tried to look it up but found no method/tool/website where general public can make its contribution to the map definition. So the relevant google guys may require a certain level of persuasion. Who to contact and how to reach them? that can be the first task for this volunteer group.

So those who are willing to be a part of this exercise, please reply here. After that, we can pick a fearless leader from amongst us who can take up the planning from there on.

Pakistan needs you!

EDITOR UPDATE: Teeth Maestro has written an interesting post about the same topic.

There should be something , a portal/network/group to allow these people to mentor others. They have such good knowledge and resources but there is no platform to pass them on to the new comers.

TiE and OPEN kind of do that but the physical presence requirement is restricting. An online platform should be much better.

Thoughts?

Build products on their research, and launch them commercially while making the research team incharge of the technical operations for the particular product, which is the result of their research.

Small vendors, exporters, freelancers really don’t need huge offices but only a decent place where they can have a desk, good internet connection, steady electricity, and a nice clean environment close to the business centers in the city.

There can be several reasons why somebody might need a place like that.

1) I need to have a decent front-end to show my clients.
2) Need to get out of the house to be more productive
3) Running a part time business along with a day time job and need some place to work after hours.
3) Can’t afford a full fledged office space with my current business.

Now what if you provided these people an On-Demand office space that they can access any time, without any contracts, without any major expenses? I’ve seen places here in the US where you pay a low monthly fee to guarantee that you’ll have a space to work at 20 hours a week. Whenever you need an office, just walk in and sit down at one of the small offices that they have. You have your own official mailing address, a phone number that a common operator answers and forwards your calls to your cell phone if you’re out etc.

Now, I’ve been out of Pakistan for quite some time and don’t know if somebody else is already doing this or if this is even a financially viable business. But the demographics seems to be just perfect. Highly populated areas like Karachi have high real estate costs along with really high costs of living due to inflation. There’s a booming IT industry thats giving birth to a rising entrepreneurial mindset.
What do u guys think ?

It would be very beneficiary, for instance, if I can order my burger from KFC by just sending an SMS, or if I pay my DSL bill through credit card (Very limited number of broadband companies offer online credit card based billing), or how about paying my taxi fare by sending an SMS?

I feel that we greatly lack in this segment, either our companies are not patched with latest solutions or our users are not that much aware…but my point lies in the fact that we, as a nation, had never thought of using cellular phones few years back, but now the scenario is different. Similarly, we never had though that the world would become a village before internet based networked world and Bill Gate’s windows based operating system.

Theory is that you offer the luxury, and if it makes some sense, soon it will become a necessity…leave the awareness part to the consumer. They will learn it themselves if your service has the potential.

We have examples around us, such as, Q-Cash in Abu Dhabi, a service through which users will be able to pay their taxi fare by sending an SMS, a system introduced by a famous taxi system working there. And there is no innovation involved in this, a very simple (but centralized) procedure is adopted. The said taxi company will introduce “Q-Cash Card”, with some credit in it (like we used to have in our calling cards), and you can send an SMS to a designated number to get your fare deducted from the card. This way, you can pay your fare without carrying cash and without worrying the change that you normally give away to taxi drivers.

Similarly, in coming days, operators can offer some extra out of our simple SMS services, such as, auto response, auto forward SMS…GSM packet based longer text messages and so on…We are already discussing mobile banking options, but now these projects are supposed to be taken to the ground…so we may get benefited of these.

Hope that cellular companies will think forward to bring in some innovations, rather than just shouting the number of customers or the dancing averts.

[Via ProPakistani]

Right now, the only option I have to post my project on rentacoder type websites and that takes quite a while.

i have been waiting for it to happen for the last 6 years or so. why not just set up a wiki for it immediately. so grab a domain, host, install wiki, advertise!

Information of all IT Shops: shop info, executives, location, work-areas, major projects, pros that work in shop (linked to the below section)

Information of all IT Pros: some bio data, the shop he/she works in (linked to the above section), job title, expertise, technologies

Freelance Job Board: Anyone can post work for IT Pros to do from home (after day-job?)

Start your IT Shop / Startup: All-in-one guideline describing each step in opening one’s own IT Shop or Startup

Angel Investment / Venture Capital Oppurtunities: Information about possible / available angel investments or venture capital it-shops/startups can avail.