Thi$ i$ a Winner

Simple idea: make a browser add-on that allows you to click a button and override a set font on a page to a default sans-serif.

So that you don't have to be distracted from otherwise important content by the outdated or purposefully unfortunate font selections of its potentially well-informed but woefully design-impaired authors.

Attn: photo booth designers!

You know what we need when we're in the photo booth? Keywords!

We're in there, we're all, "What are we gonna do?" and the first 3 shots are just trying to figure it out until the last frame is just sloppy happy faces. Fun, don't get me wrong, but what'd be super handy is a randomly generated word of instruction for each frame.

Seasick! 3 - 2 - 1 - Flash!

Human Balloons! 3 - 2 - 1 - Flash!

Arctic Tundra! 3 - 2 - 1 - Flash!

Somebody, make it happen.

You've seen that person. And I'm willing to bet you've been that person.

Blocking the middle of a grocery aisle, freezer door wide open, puzzling over the ingredients list on the back of a package.

When you're trying out a new diet, or cooking a meal for a vegetarian friend, or have just learned about a food allergy, going to the grocery store can easily become a huge label-reading ordeal. Eventually, you just end up just sticking with what's most obviously labeled (VEGAN, KOSHER, GLUTEN-FREE), and often those labels mean that those things cost a whole lot more.

Here's when you need the What's In This? app! Select your filter (i.e., HFCS, LACTOSE, etc.), scan a product's barcode, and up comes the answer, in an easy to read, color-coded reply. 

It's snowing here today, so naturally, I'm thinking about warmer days.

Here's a summertime idea from guest contributor Stephanie Miller!

Are you a recreational rafter? Stephanie, her sister Sabrina, and I try to raft every summer, but it's only about one day each year, so we're not hard-core enough to invest in actual rafting gear, like dry bags and life vests & special river shoes. 

Instead, we rent all the gear from Rapid Pleasure, go out in our swimsuits & shorts, and bring snacks and our super cheap flip-flops.

Problem is: when you're busy snacking and sunbathing and aren't fully prepared to go over that sneaky class 3, you run the risk of losing your shoes.

All along the river, every year, you see rogue flip flops floating in the brush, caught up in the rocks, or waving goodbye as they float far, far away from your raft. 

They've already developed a device for saving your sunglasses, which often suffer the same fate. We saw them a lot in the '90s. Perhaps you remember these?

So Stephanie says: instead of purchasing water shoes you'll only wear once a year,  just latch a strap to your flip-flops!

It would look like an ankle bracelet (could easily be much prettier than traditional Croakies), and it would attach to (and detach from) any of your sandals.

A lot of my family friends are now approaching the ranks of elderly friends, and not a one of them wants to go to a retirement home. They are, I'm told: depressing, cramped, "filled with old people just waiting to die," and, in most cases, prohibitively expensive.

Plus, let's be honest: who really wants to go visit grandma in an old folks' home? So on top of all of that, they can be pretty lonely.

So what about a Retirement Farm?

It's a somewhat self-sustaining model, where the elderly can live in a beautiful setting, while remaining vital members of a society. Social Security and Medicare could help offset the some of larger expenses of assistants, utilities and access to medical care, but the retirees themselves would help reduce costs by participating in the upkeep of maintenance, services and production of food. 

Pooling their skill-sets and abilities, residents would contribute to the facility's upkeep and success. From gardeners and beauticians to marketers and musicians, every resident would have a way to pitch in. Maybe they could even have real livestock! It would be, to some extent, a working-man's farm, but they are retired, after all, so there'd be built in some limits to the amount of work each resident was expected to do.

And it'd be a great place for the family to visit. They could have resident-run (and revenue-generating), guest housing, like the opposite of a mother-in-law apartment, where the kids and grandkids could come to stay for a weekend in the country. Fun!

There used to be something kind of like it in early 1900s, as an outgrowth of the poorhouse.

Admittedly, the poorhouse didn't really work out.

Initially introduced as a part of a welfare prototype, the poorhouse was a publicly-funded program, in which the down-and-out were given room and board, and were ideally assigned jobs that would ideally keep the program self-sufficient.

Poorhouses got a bad name in a big hurry. Funding was minimal, people -- both in charge and in the system -- took advantage, and conditions weren't always ideal. Disagreements over who should qualify for public funds were hotly disputed. No one knew what to do with the children and the disabled. So, basically all of the same debates over welfare we see today.

After most of the poorhouses were disbanded and children and veterans were whisked away to their own respective programs, there yet remained, for a short time, a handful of poor farms that housed and employed the elderly.

Portlanders, you know Edgefield? It used to be a poor farm!

You're on a hike, or on vacation, or in your back yard. You're not a member of the Audubon Society or anything, but you can appreciate nature as much as the next guy.

Suddenly, there's a flutter and a flash of color. Before your eyes, something beautiful hovers, and then lands.

What IS it??

While there are LOTS of bird-identification databases out there, they're often pretty clunky and they all want you to answer like a MILLION questions, so you're agonizing over what head pattern it has, and whether or not the bird is brown or buff, and before you know it, that bird is GONE.

Here's where the Pretty Bird! App would come in reallllllly handy.

See a bird. Take a quick picture of the bird. The app will search, using GPS to determine your region and zone, and some kind of magic technology -- like the LeafSnap program or the facial recognition software being used all over the interwebs -- to match the colors and features, and... beep-boop-bop-boop-beep.... Pretty Bird! says: "You're looking at a male Western Tanager!" Ta-da!

You know how it seems like all of the asteroid movies come out at the same time? Or how all of a sudden everyone agrees that yellow is the new black?

Well, there’s a long scientific history of identical ideas (such as Galileo's falling bodies principle) that emerge around the same time from completely disparate sources. It’s called, among other things, multiple independent discovery, and happens all the time, as many shared Nobel Prize laureates can attest.

Although side effects may include the discovery maker(s) feeling as if they've been a little bit robbed, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a great idea having multiple origins... it just helps to prove that the experiment is repeatable, and the hypothesis is the real deal.

Guest contributor and fellow winning idea enthusiast Tuong Nguyen has hit upon one of these great concepts, and I think it’s worth noting.

In the middle of a bike ride this summer, Tuong had a hankering, as one does, for ice cream. This got his (ahem) wheels turning. If, he thought, he could somehow rig up his bicycle gears to churn the cream while he rode, he could be making a sweet treat that's ready to eat by the end of his ride!

As it so happens, a couple of other folks have been thinking the same thing, and have even gone to the trouble to put a couple of prototypes together, for the Specialized-sponsored Innovate or Die contest.

The construction and design would certainly benefit from some tweaking for real commercial distribution (by making it smaller, for instance, like the Play and Freeze), but as far as the actual concept goes, even Galileo will tell you, the Ice Cream-Making Bicycle is one sweet dish of solid genius!

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Whether you're the audience or the performer, sometimes you really just need to know: "No, really....HOW MUCH LONGER IS THIS SONG?" Enter the Progress Bar for karaoke videos. You're welcome.

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ALL MAKEOVERS. ALL. THE. TIME.

So you're watching an episode of, say, [Better Off Ted](http://www.amazon.com/Better-Off-Ted-Season-One/dp/B0025KVKBQ), and you're like, "WHERE did Veronica get that fanTASTic blouse, and how can I order one RIGHT NOW?!! And also, I really want a bagel."

Easy peasy. Just click a button, and it's all yours! That blouse and maybe the jacket, too, ordered with overnight delivery ([Zappos](http://www.zappos.com/)-style) -- and the bagel is bagged up and on its way NOW. Ding-dong! Delivered warm and ready-to-eat, maybe even before you're done watching the show! The components of this imaginary service have been in the works for years. In 1999, I fell in love with a little site called [Kozmo.com](http://www.businessweek.com/ebiz/9908/ec0831.htm). It delivered all kinds of goodies to my door within an hour, on scarcely more than a whim. I'd order movies, pizza and ice cream online from work, and all of them would be delivered mere moments after I got home. Sadly for Kozmo (and for me, too), the business never charged enough to cover its expenses, so the [service went away](http://www.forbes.com/2001/02/23/0223kozmo.html) in 2001. Yet still, I hold out hope. I'd gladly pay a subscription fee for a company that brought ice cream and Thai food and Advil and TheraFlu to my door within an hour on those days when I'm sick or, more honestly, just don't want to leave the house. But also: I really want to know where Veronica got all of her clothes! So when in 2004, Amazon.com released a [series of short films](http://www.behance.net/gallery/Amazon-Theater/178767) featuring links to purchase the products in the films right there in the credits, I got super excited... I wanted everything on every show I ever watched again to be catalogued this way! Like how in Fight Club? When they show Jack [walking through his IKEA apartment](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOx9uQ4cuJk)? Or how [everything on the Truman Show was for sale](http://www.hark.com/clips/yrfxmfcdxg-everything-on-the-show-is-for-sale)? Or pretty much everything about [The Price Is Right](http://youtu.be/rZkRWvZO8ag)? And I could only imagine how useful this might be for downloading recipes and ordering the ingredients featured on cooking shows!

It’s overcast and grey here in the Pacific Northwest, for – let’s be generous – about 7 months out of the year. But, for whatever the reason, we all still really feel attached to this place, and year after year, though we complain, we stay.

“Ah, but the summers!” we sigh. “The summers make it all worthwhile!”

So how do you keep that summer feeling all year long, without taking costly mid-winter trips to exotic/tropical/hot destinations?

Come to the Summer Cottage, where it’s summer all the time! Rent a room for yourself, or invite a few friends and have a beach party in the great indoors!

Domed sky ceilings, loads of full-spectrum light, climate-controlled “beaches” complete with heated sand, salty ocean breezes and temperatures as hot as you can handle them.

You can enjoy summery refreshments on a private sandy beach, read on a porch swing and enjoy the scenery, or soak in some rays and breathe deep with a friend or five on our deck chairs, all while a playlist of your choice rocks the soundtrack of your own private summer.

Note to developers: Perhaps the real invention here is an optional tanning room – not just a bed, but a whole bright sunshine-mimicking room where you can lounge about with friends, drink fruity refreshments, and come out with a little bit of a glow. Overall health concerns may prevent flooding an entire room with unprotected UV light, but there must be some room for discovery here.

Once you have that figured out, there’s plenty of room for expansion. You could franchise into a full spa and gym, with a pool, stationary bikes with video screens, and real boulders for climbing. Or you could go in another direction and build private residential beach rooms in basements and spare rooms. All you really need is heat, breeze, and light! The trick will be providing an artificial environment that doesn’t seem fake. But it’s possible! I believe in you!

When he first moved to Arizona, my stepdad heard rumors about a fantastic beach nearby. Not one to be bothered by pesky details like geography, he went on the hunt for the ocean, stopping and asking people for directions along the way. What he finally discovered was a water park named Big Surf, and in it the largest (at the time) man-made wave pool in North America.

It may not have been a real ocean, but for everyone who went there, the desire for local beach access, combined with a well-manufactured artifice made it easy to suspend belief, so as far as the people informing my stepdad were concerned, it was the ocean.

It's amazing, how many efficient and time-saving devices we humans have produced. We have shampoo and conditioner in one bottle! We have printers that can collate, staple AND fold! We have hats that are ALSO hair extensions!

Suggestion from @tristanr:

Massage NOW!

It's a real-time site or (even better) an iPhone app that lets you discover where you can get a massage near you right this minute. Because when you have that pain in your neck (or back, or shoulder, or whatever), the last thing you want to do is make an appointment and wait.

Who doesn't love puppies?

My current pet idea and, to me, the most obvious: a vegetarian drive-thru. Because vegetarians can be lazy, too.

And there are loads of vendors like Quorn and MorningStar Farms who already make what you need: pre-frozen chick'n nuggets, corn dogs, burgers of all varieties. You could have breakfast burritos and regular burritos. You could have fries and tater tots.

Ingredients don’t have to be expensive or even particularly healthy: just meat-free and so convenient you never have to get out of your car.

You don’t have to break the bank or reinvent the wheel… you just have to put the spokes on the thing and let it roll!