78 - Brainstorming III 🧠
Hey there, !
Previous brainstorms here, here, and here.
Today’s theme is: Businesses that take advantage of things you don’t use at home (A lot harder to work this one out - so it was a good challenge!):
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Tiny Bookstores - in Hong Kong, they have these stores which have a number of cubic shelves. Each of the shelves is hired out for people to sell from, and it’s a highly efficient way for small sellers to sell things. They pay a small fee which pays for the one shopkeeper to sit there and take in money for them. Maybe less relevant in a roaring time of the Internet, but I’m guessing this could a similar thing for books at home that you want to get rid of - rent out a cube and pop in the books you want to sell. Usually people buy the same types of books they like, so you might get a following!
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Takeaway box cleaning service - yeah, this needs to solve the human behaviour problem of just chucking away your takeaway boxes as waste, but some of them are pretty reusable - if only we could find a way to clean them and sanitise them adequately! I wonder if UberEats or Deliveroo is thinking about stuff like this - maybe a specific branded container that stores can use, and you keep them / wash them to be returned to the store when you order your next meal? Coffee places in the city used to let you borrow a mug and bring it back for your coffee…maybe we could do a similar lunchbox thing?
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Brick by Brick Advertising - how much would you sell advertising space on the bricks of your house for? If we can have billboards that sell advertising, why not in local areas? It would look pretty ugly, but I mean, you’d be adequately compensated. It wouldn’t have to be that big either - just something people could see from the road. Maybe it could help hyperlocal businesses gain more traction in their local areas? Biggest problem with this is obviously that it looks tacky and shit, but it’s a free market, right?
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Bedroom Art Galleries - use your wall space as digital art galleries - use a 360 degree camera that streams 24/7 and let people rent space on your walls to display their art. Doesn’t have to be a bedroom - could be any spare room you have in your house that has walls, but the important thing is that it can be ‘explored’ the same way an art gallery could be. With future advances in VR it could be even cooler to traverse these different bedroom art galleries which house all kinds of collections of art - especially if you’ve curated it yourself in a particular ‘exhibition’ like an art gallery would!
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Shop / Kitchen classes - wouldn’t it be great if the people next door to you could teach you stuff? There’s always certain things that just can’t be taught over YouTube. You’d learn more about what your neighbours can do, and though you have to pay them, you still get some great learning from someone that’s just right next door to you. I’m imagining learning how to build a table, or how to bake a cake, or how to use a 3d printer :eyes: - from the comfort of your neighbours house. Then again, we don’t really like our neighbours do we…
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Photography backdrop AirBNB - submit different backdrops or areas of your external / internal spaces curated at home that photographers could use for whatever purposes they need. A lot of people are proud of the interiors / exteriors they’ve designed, and what better way to showcase it than having photographers come and shoot in your place (or outside it)! I envision it to be like AirBnB but you can rent places by the hour for a lot cheaper, and for photography purposes only. Also how aesthetic would the site be! Like Pinterest meets AirBNB…
Man that was hard. You gotta any great ideas up your sleeve?
Chat soon :)
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✔️ Real Life Recommendations
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Lukumades - essentially, doughnut balls. But they’re delicious when they’re hot and jammy, or slathered with chocolate and nuts, or served with ice cream. A dessert of choice I can highly recommend! They have locations in Carlton and Windsor (that I know of) - and they aren’t too exxy for a yum dessert :D
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Shark Tank - an entrepreneur pitches to 5 investors on television, asking for money and trying to sell how good their product is. It’s incredibly fun if you think you have taste and love judging things (are you serious? 1mil for 20% of THAT SHIT? that’s a paddlin’). There are tons of clips and episodes on YouTube - check it out!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Program that replaces police with mental health professionals for non-violent, troubled people succeeds in Denver - some good news for the world, a civilian team of mental health professionals handling low-level incidents regarding mental health incidents is successful. Reduces burden on police, and lets them focus on more harmful crime:
“I want the police department to focus on police issues,” Pazen said. “We have more than enough work with regards to violent crime, property crime and traffic safety, and if something like STAR or any other support system can lighten the load on mental health calls for service, substance abuse calls for service, and low-level issues, that frees up law enforcement to address crime issues.”
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DALL-E - no, not WALL-E’s robot friend, but close to it. It’s a GPT-3 based system that can make pictures out of words. That sounds weird, but look:
How crazy is this?? Imagine writing a whole children’s book, and then asking an AI to illustrate it for you instantly! Or if you need to visualise something fantastical and out of this world for a DnD campaign? Jump into the article to see more examples of what DALL-E can make!
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Reverse Engineering a North Korean Sim City Game - tl;dr it’s a bad reskinning of a Chinese developed Android game. A very technical breakdown, but if you skim through it you can see some of the features they’ve implemented - like microtransactions!