Business Intelligence between Friends

It will be called: bizin (BIz INtelligence)

As stated by Terry McGraw, CEO of McGraw Hill Publishing, on CEO Exchange, it’s critical to stay in touch with the events happening around the world. All of us are traveling down different paths and accordingly, we are exposed to many things the rest of us may or may not see or hear. At the same time, many of us also read, watch and hear some similar news as well from publications we all read which may overlap. Nevertheless, I was thinking we may as well take advantage of a free technology where we can share these tidbits of wisdom and keep one another in touch with the things happening around us as we get older.

So, I am creating this group called “bizin” and we will all keep each other up to date with what we know…our goal will be to submit 5 things a month that are different than one another. It’s a goal…not a requirement. There’s no financial or other incentive, but only our desire to contribute and gain from each others’ vast knowledge. If there is parasitic activity in the group, I will manage it. Otherwise, please join if you think you can share some ideas and news about things that may be helpful to one another & gain X times as much as you will be sharing.

What do you think?

Sumptin’ Betta or Just Too Much dot coms

So, I’m sure these are available, but someone may need to create sumptinbetta.com or justtoomuch.com  Both would have similar themes for the websites.  Basically, there are new ideas and websites coming out as fast as we are drinking Starbucks lattes everyday.  However, the key for each of them, in my opinion is not duplicating what’s already out there or making sure they stick around.  People are just overwhelmed with all the applications that help us keep in touch with one another.  However, there is definitely a need for all the new applications, but how does one handle them?  Anyway, both websites potentially would help educate people on the benefits of what each new application/website can do for people AND may at some point just identify how much excess there is whenever something gets hot.

Top Web Site Lists…

One of my blogs here which I’ve failed to support due to the lack of time really needs to be created: top10lists.wordpress.com  Unfortunately, there’s no real alternative to Alexa when it comes to top websites…nobody finds it profitable yet to constantly give us an idea of trends on websites.  Of course there are all the social websites out there that aggregate links and keep track of them, but unfortunately, they are all different because of the different populations.  I wish someone would aggregate them and provide a list of new and interesting websites…then again, maybe they serve that function as well. 

A website that focuses on the lineage of people with the last name “Gates”

Well, we already know the most famous of “Gates” in the world who’s been dethrowned as the richest man on the planet: William Gates.  I’m sure most parents would love to have their kids be his protege.  I’m sure they’re curious what Bill Gates Sr. and his past wife did to raise such a genius of capitalism. 

“Back to the drawing board…” Volume I

Basically, I was thinking about the “Verification Systems” that most companies use when signing up for new accounts or making posts on Wiki or another publicly available CMS or other public collaboration. Well, I was wondering why they couldn’t just display a color and then have the user type in the color of the image. So, if it was red, obviously, you type in “red.” However, you don’t spell red in German “r-e-d” — I believe it’s “rot” or something similar. So, the color or image thing actually is defeated by globalization. At least with the jumbled up characters, people know in almost any language you’re just writing that into the verification box. The only caveat I would say is that sometimes the directions are in English for a foreigner. However, I think it’s becoming a standard for people that don’t even speak or read it can probably understand what they have to do. It’s become uniform.

So, back to the drawing board with this idea. Rather, some might just say “duhhhhhh”…some may not & that’s why I’m going to put it in the category of “back to the drawing board instead for learnings. I think we need to learn why some things are implemented and others are not. Some people say I have a knack for explaining it — thus, the posts. Happy surfing!

Cell Phone Vibrator or Beeper

Prefacing this, I didn’t want to actually write this.  I honestly think this is a $10 million dollar idea I’m giving away for free.  If you understand this, I really think someone could leverage this.  However, I don’t have the right contacts right now to produce this.  So, I’m giving it up. 

—— 

Let’s face it, but the cell phone will never be small enough where we can slip it on our collar or on our watch or otherwise where we don’t realize it’s there.  So, we place our cell phones to the side and many times have no idea that an important message has come in.  However, we are creating devices small enough to clip on our collars, our shirts, our watches, etc.  which could vibrate or beep when we do get those important messages.

 Cell phones could be reduced down to the size of these devices, but we wouldn’t use them…we couldn’t input the phone number and we would look idiotic and feel uncomfortble talking into small things the size of a pen or an eraser.  So, this little device instead helps us with both the urgency of the messages & calls, but also lets us easily hide the small warning device when needed.  Think of it as a beeper for our cell phone.  Probably wouldn’t cost much producing these things in China or elsewhere. 

If you do end up leveraging this idea into a great business, I definitely want to pre-congratulate you!  If you would be nice enough though to return at least credit or a little bit of the profits, I would be so appreciative…or my twin boys would be & hopefully their college education funds would too.  🙂  ^^

TheDayInTheLife.com

OK, this may not be one of the most positive contributions to society, but it may piggy back on the idea that people like to watch random videos of people doing stupid stuff.

The business concept is basically giving out relatively inexpensive “covert glasses” people wear around in their public lives.  Video can be taken of all the events that happen in their life.  We all see some crazy stuff & for everything they see that may be “interesting,” they can edit it & upload it to the site.  Some people may even consider putting the whole day on the video or maybe just their work day?  Maybe some will upload videos of a hillarious or crazy experience at the bank or with a loan officer.  Some may have some crazy experiences at the supermarket or maybe at work with their boss?

Anyway, I’m sure there will be things they will capture we’ll find interesting.  I could do this, but I have way too much going on right now to pursue this or the other ideas here.  I may pursue them, but the whole reason behind blogging these or sharing them with you all is because it’s not the idea that matters…it’s the execution of the idea and the constant upkeep of the business that matters.  You also need to constantly adapt to consumer needs and societal standards  So, it’s not just the idea, but they aren’t a bad place to start. 

p.s. If you or anyone decides to make a site or business around this, please recognize you’ll have to deal with all the privacy concerns and issues that may arise from this.  I don’t think Moore or Cohen had too much of a problem…so maybe this wouldn’t be bad either.  I think they may people sign release forms though…kind of hard making people sign release forms when they don’t know you’re watching them.  However, are public events in the private domain?  Something to ponder….

A couple wikis that wouldn’t be bad to have implemented (if not done already)

So, I think we’re going to have many of these.  However, I was thinking that a couple that would be nice to have out there are:

•  a book wiki — Amazon screwed up on this — getting information in an objective way on the internet…even Bezos admitted it in a recent article describing Wiki’s and the founder of the application.  Also, this wiki could replace basically all those “cliff notes” type of sites out there.
• resumes wiki — how about putting Monster.com out of business?  What if we decided to just have a place where everyone placed their resumes for recruiters to look for & people to just do their best to publicize their own.  Then again, don’t we call this LinkedIn.com?  Maybe something less corporate would put LinkedIn.com out of business too?

The perfect blog

Well, I’m definitely a big fan of WordPress.com.  It’s great in getting your blogs in search engines & a lot of traffic.  It has great tools — much better than anything out there.  However, one thing that is a bit annoying that Google (blogger.com) has an advantage over WordPress is affiliates and profiting from the blogs.  Come on, but people use the blogging webpages & build “for profit” blogs on their own domains.  There’s got to be a way to include that into the business model here — maybe a text ad or a requirement for some part of the site to be integrated with ways WordPress can make money.  There’s simply got to be a way…

A personal storage website keeping all your private info/passwords/etc.

Eventually, there has to be implementation of this idea is about keeping all the private information you have like ids and passwords or your bank accounts or credit card accounts so whereever you go, the information is all there.  It’s too hard in this day of having to sign up for everything to get access to it.  The “giving away things for free” business model is applied to almost every website these days and so you have to register in order to get the freebie.  Nevertheless, having one id and password is probably an insecure way of keeping track of them.  Thus, having one is probably a huge need. 

One site is already doing something similar, but I think this could be refined: www.webasyst.net

Things you may want to protect or have in this website or application are:

• ids/passwords for websites
• account information for all accounts held (bank, credit cards, etc.)
• facts & info that you might find handy
• personal contacts (plaxo.com, ACT)
• past work information
• resume
• journals
• ideas for businesses, scientific ideas, predictions
• stock recommendations
• websites you like (like del.icio.us)

Ideal Laptop

How many times do you start working on your laptop and think “Wouldn’t it be more comfortable or convenient if my laptop had XYZ?”  Laptops or notebook computers are great in that they are smaller and portable, but there are many things that allow us to be more productive and faster on a desktop — bigger monitor, bigger keyboard, better set up with the mouse…  If you want a bigger screen, you have to have a bigger monitor, if you want a better mouse, you can try one of about 10,000 solutions which haven’t got it perfect yet and if you want a better keyboard…well, you had better just suck it up. 

Laptops are also getting more feature driven or more handy like the tablet PC’s which are turning laptops into a modern day “true notebook” you can scribble on.  However, it’s still much heavier than a true paper notebook and so not many of us carry them around to scribble. 

Well, the thought here is to create a company that focuses ONLY on laptops and make them truly ideal.  Toshiba does make some great laptops and Dell is getting better it as well along with IBM consistently getting high marks (who knows how much this is influenced by the dollar, sign — side note), but no one really focuses on making it so convenient that we would rather do our work on our laptop vs. our desktop.  Honestly, it would ideally be better to work on the laptop for our shoulders or backs in the long run or our butts…so we can do it in bed or on the plane or whereever.  However, no one is truly focusing on this issue…perhaps I will? 

I would also like it to be customized to fit different people.  Some people have bigger hands, some people can’t type, some people hate the mouse and some absolutely can’t do anything without it, some need larger screens/monitors and others prefer many other things.  Well, there would be a division that focuses on the “customizeable” laptop which retains quality, but just makes it easier to use.  There would also be 3 to who knows how many sizes that would come with each version.  Remember, this company would focus on the long term and truly be the “Ideal latop company” and so it would have to sacrifice a little on margin by making so many versions of each laptop & would have to become a master of inventory management or being able to build them quicklly after having them customized — Dell did it to a significant extent, why can’t we? 

I also had thoughts of integrating all the modern devices of the world to snap into this laptop so it truly is a super machine.  The cell phone, the PDA, a form of a tablet that snaps off, a pen or two, your glasses, your keys, and multiple other things that reside in your laptop bag.  Have the laptop either be indestructable or have a very convenient case around it — have it (& maybe the case) be the only things you carry around to be productive & able to open the door to your home or  your car.  🙂 

Real Estate Investments from 3rd World Countries into Highly Sought after Property in the U.S.

This one is pretty obvious, but there are lots of Koreans, Indians and Eastern Bloc country residents and citizens in addition to I’m sure many other International citizens beyond America & Canada’s borders who would LOVE a piece of American or Canadian soil.  I’m sure all the Keller Williams Realty, Coldwell Banker and other Real Estate company agents would love to connect with them.   

So, there just needs to be a single consortium out of each country which helps refer the traffic over, along with educate the international citizens about the laws and the other things the consumers in the other countries need to know. 

 I was approached by a big time Kangnam agent earlier this year who asked me to do this for her.  However, I just didn’t have the time to do it … and I still don’t, but if someone does, I’m sure they would reap the rewards from it. 

Very obvious idea: MCF Consultants

Making computers faster (MCF) consultants — lots of computers slow down over time. There need to be computer consultants who know what causes the slowdown in PC’s. From viruses, to spyware to other things just eating away at the memory in our computers … help!!!!

Too much information…

There’s so much I want to read. I just clicked on a Google Adsense link/advertisement to a story about how Asia is linked tightly with the Middle East. While perusing through the article, on the side of the article in Businessweek, there was a list of “Top emailed stories”. Well, that caught my eye & I started to click on articles. Of course, I surfed away from the original article and also I don’t have much time before I have my next meeting. So, I just thought, there’s gotta be a way to manage the information we want to read for later. I mean Since it’s from a magazine…chances are I may never see it again without wasting time looking for it again.

So we need:

Something to manage a list of things we want to read. It could list the title, source, places where I can get it later, date, date found, and a bibliography of the sources in the article (to help us gauge the quality of the article). I was reading something recently (I believe from the book “The Secret”) that we have 60,000 thoughts a day. 59,999 of these are getting thrown away because we don’t have something that can literally keep up with us. ^^

O2

A pretty simple idea, but in many polluted cities, people suck in Carbon Monoxide and other unhealthy gases.  What they need is what hospitals give people who have been stuck in smokey conditions over an extended period of time: oxygen.  We live for oxygen.  Just like water, we need oxygen to survive.

Well,  before we had bottled water, people were probably saying the same thing about bottled water.  People were probably also saying it was a stupid idea to bottle up something we could access so easily from our own pipes.  Well, we know over time, that the pollutants and chemicals in our water supply encourage us now to drink more bottled water and motivate us to also filter the water that comes from the tap.

Currently, it’s expensive to bottle up and sell oxygen, but someone needs to economize it & eventually produce a common man’s (person’s) sized bottle of fresh air. We could probably get recyclable canisters. As popular “natural food stores” become more popular like “Whole Foods”, we will have bigger distribution points to sell these products. People will pay almost anything to stay and become more healthy. Our planet will only become more unhealthy & so the demand and need for this will only grow.

My wonderful girlfriend said that Tokyo has already done something like this, but I know that Seoul has not & I also know that Seoul is incredibly polluted. I can guarantee this would do well up there if marketed well.