Steal this idea: Off-hold notification

Woke up this morning I was all alone

Saw your picture by the telephone

I was missing you oh so bad

Wish I had you here to hold

All I've got is this touch-tone phone

So I guess I'll give you a call

-- Telephone Song (Stevie Ray Vaughan)

Here's another app idea for smart phone software developers. When I'm put on hold and I don't have a headset, I'd like to put the phone down until I am taken off of hold. I'd like it so that when the phone "hears" a loud signal over the line (it may need to do some noise cancellation in case there is noise on my end) the phone will vibrate or (optionally) switch to speakerphone.

This would mostly be for talking to people but a harder problem is handling customer service centers. (Ideally, customer service telephone systems would take your phone number and have an agent give you a call when they're free rather than wasting time on phone calls, but few companies do this currently) In these cases, it might be able to use a voice/music detector and check for repeated messages. Many of things you hear while you're on hold alternate between music and voice, so this might end up notifying you too much. With luck, it could be trained that some pieces were recordings (by memorizing sound "fingerprints" or something like that like) for use in later phone calls.

Steal this idea: Google, optimize those links!

You know, those links at the top of Gmail and related services. Mine say:

Gmail Calendar Documents Photos Reader Sites Web more ▼

Yours do too? How strange. I would think these links should be personalized if not customizable. Google knows which ones I click on since I'm logged in all the time. Why not get rid of the ones I never click on (Sites, Photos, and Web -- if I need to do a web search, I'll use the address bar in my web browser) and show the ones that I always have to find in the ▼ like Scholar. Some people would probably object to a fluid UI (i.e. if Google adjusted these automatically) and I think the preferred methods these days are to have computers suggest changes but not perform them without user intervention. Maybe there's some plugin/extension/religion that lets you change these? (not that this is really a high priority...)

Steal this idea: Phone scammer/spammer warnings

Hear my phone ringin',
sound like a long distance call
-- Muddy Waters, "Long Distance Call"

Why telemarketing is an opt-out rather than opt-in process is beyond me. Nevertheless, if you do get a call from a number you don't recognize, you may want to run it by whocalled.us. I recently got a call from a telemarketer (see my report here*) and had an idea for a program to run on the phones of the future. When I say phones of the future, I mean roughly tomorrow since this idea is so simple it should be very easily doable on an iPhone, Android phone, or something else easily programmable. At least, I would hope this is easy to write (I haven't ever used these phones' APIs).

The idea is this: When I get a call from an unknown number, my phone should look it up on whocalled.us. Possibly there would be a reputation system and it could automatically report good calls to the site (though there are some potential privacy issues here which would need to be addressed) and give you the option to mark a previous call as a scam. Integration with donotcall.gov would be nice too.

* Incidentally, this phone number appears to be running multiple scams. The number is used to connect people with various scams so that the companies actually doing the scams are harder to trace. That's why the representative on the other line said that I had called her.

Steal this idea: Mobile public transportation planner

If I had an iPhone or Android-based phone instead my current piece of cellphone-shaped garbage, I would want this application: While walking someone, the user tells the application their intended destination ("I'm walking home now") and the application uses GPS information and a data connection to lookup public transportation alternatives to walking. It then suggests small detours or pauses in your journey (e.g. "Wait here, you're at a bus stop. When the #42 comes in ~2 minutes, get on.") which get you closer to your destination. As far as I know, this shouldn't be that hard to write and I'm surprised I haven't heard of it so far (of course, not owning a shiny phone, I don't follow all the apps written for them). It could also get more sophisticated by learning your pace or common routes and locations. In any event, this would be a useful tool and I think I'd take the bus more often if I had it.

Steal this idea: Musical intersections

Listening to you,
I get the music.
Gazing at you,
I get the heat.
Following you,
I climb the mountains.
I get excitement at your feet.
-- The Who, "We're Not Gonna Take It"

There are a couple times when two or more people want to listen to some form of streaming music (road/train trip, shared office space, etc.). Streaming radio sites like Pandora should have the option of combining multiple peoples' musical taste and come up with music that both people would like. Being able to generate a road trip playlist for portable music players would be nice too, though there are the obvious copyright issues.

I imagine coming up with good shared playlists is trickier than just taking the intersection of the songs/musical features. Ultimately, it would depend on the model of listeners tastes. Of course, in many cases, these intersections can be small (my freshman year college roommate and I both liked Stevie Wonder but had little else in common musically).

Steal this idea: Scratch paper printer

Somewhat counterintuitively, the Computer Science department at Brown produces a ton of paper (literally a ton if you choose the Right time scale...). A good portion of our printouts only use one side of the paper (though people are generally good about printing things duplex, 2-up, etc.). Much of this scratch paper is recycled immediately while some is put in a scratch paper pile. After trying to reduce our printouts, what we can do to lower our paper usage? Last year, I made a "notebook" out of scratch paper. a folder, and some clips which worked out very nicely for a course. While I like this method and would like to see it done on a large scale, it seems unlikely to reuse much of our scratch paper supply.

One idea that I'd like to investigate is a "scratch paper printer." This would be a printer stocked entirely with scratch paper. There are couple potential issues. The main issue is that I've been told that printers jam more frequently on scratch paper[1]. I want to find out if this is true for all or just some printers. Ideally, we can find a (potentially slower) printer which doesn't jam as much on scratch paper. A lesser issue is keeping the printer stocked since scratch paper doesn't come as easily as store-brought reams, but since this can be done on demand by users, I'm less concerned. Please contact me if you have any comments on this proposal, since I'll put pitching it to the department in the coming future.

[1] It might be interesting to try to design a printer which is more robust to paper jams (steal this idea, please) but beyond what I'm looking for at this point.