The Doggy Air Conditioner

I was watching last season's American Inventors on YouTube and came across this 14 year old kid, Kyle Myhra from Colorado, who invented an air-conditioner that is placed on the car window, which will suck in fresh air to keep the car cool (when the engine is turned off). I think it is a great idea and with USD 50k, it can definitely be developed and refined further (well not just for dogs but for human as well).



People living in Malaysia or any hot and humid climatic region will need something like this. Heck... not just for the dogs but for humans as well. Imagine when your car breakdown on the highway. So while you are waiting for help to arrive, you sit in the car with the air-conditioner turned on.

Kudos to Kyle!! Keep going man!!!

The Kampung Xprize?

I am sure you all have heard of Charles Lindbergh, the man who made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic.

What you may not know is that he won the $25000 Orteig_Prize for doing it. The prize was offered by a New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig to the first aviator to fly an aircraft directly across the Atlantic between New York and Paris. The aftermath of this flight was the "Lindbergh Boom" in aviation: aircraft industry stocks rose in value and interest in flying skyrocketed.

Ever heard of the Xprize Foundation. Well one of its first prize offered by the foundation was the Ansari Xprize, which was a race to promote personal spaceflight. The USD 10 million prize was won by SpaceShipOne - "Burt Rutan and financier Paul Allen led the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth's surface, twice within two weeks"

There are other competition such as the DARPA Grand Challenge, which is a prize competition for driverless cars sponsored by the US Department of Defense. DARPA is offering $2M for the fastest qualifying vehicle, and $1M and $500,000 for second and third place.

There are many more competitions similar to the above. One thing I find in common with all of them is that they all aim to break old barriers and promote innovations. Some of these barriers are psychological barriers, such as, "It can't be done! Man cannot fly. Etc."

I think Malaysia or other developing nations should have their own "Xprize" competition to spur, encourage and develop a "garage tinkerers and backyard inventors" mentality among the people. Call it "The Kampung Xprize" if you will... :-)

The objective of "The Kampung Xprize" should be to generate and cultivate a culture of home or village inventors (or innovators). I do believe that it is this "inventive" culture on the grassroots level that will form the basis for countries to grow and progress; and maybe one day to produce an Edison of their own.

In Malaysia, there are the millions of dollars allocated by the Government to fund research and development in the form of grants to spur technological growth and progress. But these grants are just too complicated and out of reach for almost all common Malaysians.

The Kampung Xprize is exactly what is needed. Maybe I will come up with a sample of how the Kampung Xprize' mechanics could be in my next post. See got mood or not... LOL.

An Idea - Paperless Receipts

Here's an idea that I thought of a couple of months back, a couple of months back in 2006 to be less than precise... :-)

To everyone who carries a wallet, have you ever notice that after every few weeks, your wallet seems to be growing in thickness and in size? When you opened it up to inspect, you find yourself sorting out the credit card receipts, car park receipts, and all sort of other shopping receipts.

If you are anal enough, you can probably sort the receipts out chronologically and neatly arranged in piles according to your personal categories such as car petrol receipts, dining receipts, parking receipts, gadgets receipts, repair receipts, etc.

So why do we keep receipts? Why are we slave to these little pieces of thermal papers that does nothing but add dead weight to our wallets?

The answer is simple. Security. Yes, we need the security it gives us.

Each time we put a credit card receipt in our wallet we are thinking, "Phew... I am safe from credit card fraud now." Or that gadget receipt, "Now I have complete warranty!"

Personally, I seem to be emotionally attached to credit card receipts. I would keep them in my wallet for months. Then when my wallet gets too thick, I would sort and go through them one at a time and then remark to myself, "Hey, did I have a drink here? Who was there with me? Oh yeah, it was with so and so for blah blah blah..."

AIIYAH!!! I am side tracking.... I seem to have gotten lost in what I wanted to write about... LOL.

Getting back to topic, won't it be nice to have a device that is able to capture receipts paperless-ly? Example, after you purchase a book, you hand a "receipt device" to the cashier, whom via a virtual connection, download the receipt into the device.

Each time you make a purchase at any shop, you will be storing receipts (only if and when you want) in the "receipt device". And if you so desire it, you will be able to print any of the stored receipts at your own leisure, whether for tax purposes or for some verification purposes.

Further imagine that this "receipt device" happens to be your smart mobile phone. Great! No more thick and bulky wallets.

Now all I need to do is to get the cash register manufacturer to incorporate virtual receipts beaming device in their machines. A piece of cake!