I feel a person wants to use a car for a few months, need not buy one. He can Borrow on Lease or Rent for a few months and Return it to the Car Circulating Library.

A Car Library will have many cars of all makes and colors, electric, hybrid and oil. It can be in all Major Towns. People can just walk in and Hire an Insured Car and use it for a Month and return it with a Nominal Fee to cover the rent, wear and tear.

This way they need not own any car, and many will start using it when they want. The Car Libraries can create a demand for New Cars. Many want to buy a new car, some replace their old jalopy, some want a big car for some event. The usage of cars may increase, when customer need is satisfied with limited expenditure. The consumer base for cars improve but not by ownership.

Slowly all cars are made Electric, so this does not create new pollution problems. Libraries can sell old cars at lower prices when they earn back their investment. This way, New cars will keep the library very popular.

At least keep making cars during these times. Electric Ones Too.

 - An old Stumbleupon Post of mine related to the car crisis in us.

2012

This can apply to the Housing Crisis also. People who have funds can buy the bonds of the Car-Pool or Home-Pool, they will be given a Home or Car Card. Then they can use the Car or Home in any city in the US for any period of time, no rent. They can give the card to a friend or relative if they want for some time.

Some ideas i had written online around 2002 on cars.

Cars can have multiple skins like Winamp

If you use organic flexible LEDs, encapsulated in transparent poly-sulphone or some silicones. And the RGB triad matrix of LEDs are driven by a computer system to make it work like a flexible LCD screen. It can be used to form a skin for a car. Only there will be no high resolution, but it will do.

This flexible layer is fixed on the car like a permanent cap. Now with the onboard graphics synthesis embedded car computer you can choose any jpg, png or gif textured tile or make your own. Then output the tile or wallpaper to the car exterior LED matrix skin. Now the Car has become skinnable. Not just colors but fine textures are possible.

Now with a Bluetooth enabled Human Mood Monitor plugin you can make the car exterior to reflect the mood of the life-forms inside. This will make a road alive and traffic jams very colorful.
Simple Automobile Safety Radar

There must be a very affordable automobile radar with just a 10-20 feet radius around the vehicle. This should display as a graphic on the dashboard as some of the very old 2D car games. This radar must be based on sonar or infra red to avoid additional EMI-RFI pollution and confusion. The display should show all objects which include people, small animals, kerb and wall.

The sensor has to be a multiple sensor, static belt one near wheels and one at the roof of automobile. The display device on car should be TCP-IP so that you can monitor your vehicle with your cellphone, PDA or any browser.

I heard that iridium satellites may be brought down. It must be fun putting it up on the first place and then bringing it down, electronic stuff will on their own stop after some time, so why bring it down, and when it is still up there in the sky why not use it for some other purpose than intended, that way you can save the cost of bringing it down !

The www is always hungry for more, the present infrastructure of iridium could be used to enhance performance of www, it may not make profits but it will sure help in the maintenance and coordination of servers and speed up the web which may benefit all in general.

It can help in coordinating the databases of domains for look up, as this is growing every day it will help if the broadcasts for IP Address search is separate so as to free the servers for other tasks, broadcasts can be a separate mega thread thru iridium.

It can help in networking large servers separately to ensure coordination on and sharing of critical information, instant updates, tables, databases of web, virus alerts, breakdowns, it can help reduce the chaos, as the net is at the knee of its growth.

The iridium will also be useful in distributing traffic based on priorities, the downloading of an mp3 file may prevent a small text file warning of natural disaster or war (for which the early web was intended), the iridium network could assign priorities to paths and data as they originate.

In short it means you can make iridium the spiderman of the world wide web, that way iridium can link only the huge servers and nodes to monitor, regulate, and maintain traffic in a synchronous and systematic manner.

Lastly remember a big web should have a big spider.

(jotted-1999, online-1999, now published with original fallacies and misconceptions of mine intact)

This is a Crude Costing Formulae based on my Ideas which is called "Gut-Feel Thumb-Rule Methodology." Even Though i am probably the only follower of this popular System, I am sure it is worth a casual Look.

Sales Qty per/month	Type	Costing
1 - 4	Custom Design	RM * 4.8 = SP
5 - 15	Pilot Production	RM * 3.2 = SP
16 - 100	Slow Moving	RM * 2.2 = SP
101 - 1000	Manufacturing	RM * 1.6 = SP

Raw Material Cost	45
Production Cost	15
Servicing Cost	10
Marketing Cost	10
Research	10
Reserves	05
Employee Fund	05
Grand Total	100

RM - Raw Material Cost
SP - Selling Price to Distributor

Reserves are for Dry days, Employee Fund is to reduce Attrition and Layoff.

One

An app to interface with Sonar, Micro-Camera-Matrix or Micro-Radar Walking Sticks for the aged or people having an impairment. This app can communicate with another user's app, so that a family member or friend can keep a track of him.

It could be just a walk in the park, Another can sit on the bench and keep him alerted of any tricky negotiations. It also can be computed by a webapp which can Voice-Guide him to safety. Like "A Bull is rushing your way, wave the Red Hand-Kerchief"

Two 

The Desktop Computer also called IBM Compatible PC and the Later Laptop/Notebook as SMD and CMOS technology developed. These both computer configurations formed as computing evolved with electronics manufacturing technologies. Networking and Web came a bit later.

Computers developed more for data processing. Then came the Internet, with it came a new purpose for the computer.

Now a new age, low energy age. All Electronics has to be frugal in resource usage. Hardware very light, Software must be Network Friendly, Client server type. Solutions cost-effective, consumer friendly.

This alone is sustainable. This applies to data processing too. If the cost of a solution is more than just living with a problem; That solution is unnecessary. We have to find a better way.

A Computer has to be Built for the Web and the Web has to be Built for this Computer. This is needed for Communications, Education, Books, Knowledge, Shopping and Business.

Most Important Specs. - Low Power, Wireless, Portable, Secure, Simple. The Browser is the Most and Only Important part of this Computer.

It has to be Maintenance Free Computing (client side). This applies to two main branches -

1. Enterprise Computing or Data Processing or Office Computing
2. Consumer Computing or Home Computing or Multimedia-Games-Entertainment

The clients and servers of both have to be designed in different ways. It has to be Web or Network Centric, Energy Conscious, Cost Effective, serviceable, maintainable and sustainable.

There is only one Green computing, That is HandHeld Client Terminal on a Remote Web-OS. Web Applications, Netbooks, Tablets are moving towards that Direction. Here are some snippets of mine in various blog posts from 2002 to now. to emphasize what is in my mind.
Nearly a decade ago, i had not much work to do, just reading and writing online and offline. Around the same period, i heard about grid computing, it was something more about what was happening in the US after broadband boom. There was also something like, Intel contribution to cancer research using this too. Vague Memories-o-Mine, many Home-Office desktop and server computers had spare capacity and when idle, could network with other computers to form a distributed super computer. That was good, but too much Ungreen.

Later i saw that many computers in organization were turned on most of the time, and hardly being used actively for more than 3-4 hours a day. Some times it was just a visual console. In another place, something i saw which got me worried, many computers were on, some were sending Yahoo Greetings, some were using email or chat and others were just on the Net. no desktop computing. (now we have those socials too).

So much energy, watts, cpu power, and harddisk space for Internet/Intranet only activity. This was not green, reliable, portable or sustainable. If you were to use a cad or graphics package, dtp or multimedia authoring, gaming, then i agree you need a desktop computer, with all the Juice, the entire gamut of Bells, Whistles and Nixies. Not for intranet clients and internet use.

Enterprise computing too, with intranet cloud coupled with the internet cloud need to go green. Desktop computers should not be used for business data/information management. Pre-Configured clients like tablets, even for form filling and report view. In fact after all this business automation, form filling still remains, later entered into the system. A tablet has to be the form, the form has to be scribbled on the Tablet Screen or the mailed Forms scanned and OCR'ed.

Computer manufacturers will still have a good trade for Intranet and Web clouds. Developers, Gamers, Programmers and Graphic Designers will still love the desktop. But with the Desktop Computer Reforms. 

Web Applications on Dumb Terminals

Office Workflow Visualization, Creating Live Dashboards or Visual Office Terminals; Simple Front end for Google Apps and Other Business Processing and Monitoring Software in the Background.I would like to say more in context of my science. It could be a Web Based LabView, but for Office and Business Apps.

Web Applications simplify office automation to a high degree, without adding more complexity in system admin and process maintenance that exist in legacy solutions. -

Netbooks  Tablets

There is a Better way, here it is. Make a switch. A Green, Mobile and Practical Device.

Mobile Virtual Office on Handheld Computer

• Flash based Meeting Rooms or Conference, Animated Avatars, Text Balloons like Comics.
• Virtual www office, Entry only with identity - Open-ID, Shows as Avatar in Meeting Room.
• Seven Inch Long, Golden Rectangle Size Device, Inch or Less Thick, Color LCD.
• Can store and read PDF-MP3-Midi-xml-jpeg and very popular file formats.
• Can easily show as a drive on all OS, emulating standard popular external drive.
• Open Hardware, Linux Gadget, Battery Operated, Wifi-USB Interfaces.
• Email and Text Messaging, Audio Video Messaging, Shared fies or folder.

SWF and FLV formats can make Interactive Books. The e of a eReader could be the Interactive Elements in a book or call it iReader after integrating Multi-Media. Tutorials and Stories come with sound too. Hence SWF and FLV can be a evolutionary step from Cellulose Based Info-Media. HTML5 !! tooo.

Wireless Computer and Device Networking

Wi-Fi OR xG OR WiMax - 2008

It has to be good for people who travel around the globe, practical and sensible usage of internet, for information or  data communications over Handheld devices. The iPhone has demonstrated that web is usable in small devices for the first time. The greater need is jitter-glitch-free online experience on mobile devices including netbooks over a large user base.

Multidevice accessible, Online office webapps and communication-collaboration tools; need us to be online and capable wherever we are. An Untethered Web Office is possible only with a broadband wireless network. Home, office, travel or In-between, you can continue the productive, creative or research work.

More Reading -

Some Online Pages that are in empathy with this form of computing.

Software as a service SaaS, typically pronounced sæs is software that is deployed over the internet and/or is deployed to run behind a firewall in your local area network or personal computer. With SaaS, a provider licenses an application to customers as a service on demand, through a subscription or a "pay-as-you-go" model. Saas is also called "software on demand."

If you want to hear American Pronunciation for SaaS then the IPA Phonetic is - sæs.

Copy Paste sæs into the Acapela Text to Speech Demo, select a US voice and press "Say it" .Heard it right, What you did right now was use a SaaS !! 

(These are grouped related snippets from notes right from 2007 till now, some of them are from my SANGear.net)

I once worked in Tektronix (Hinditron) around 1999 for a very short period. I got to experience the 2235 and 2465 analog scopes and their controls. The 2465 was a 400 MHz Digitally Controlled Analog Scope. 

I also used the Plugin Scopes and Calibration systems that were Tek Culture and Tech contribution to the Instrumentation world, it probably evolved into VXI-PXI as uC systems took over.

I also had a chance to look at DSO/Logic Analyzers  and the just developed TDS Series. Then came the first Low Cost Scope from Tek China 2205GM. The older tek analog scopes made me understand about usability and panel layouts. Many controls are inevitable in a Analog Scope with Electromechanical Interface.

In a Digital World that can be largely changed using the Monitor and Trackballs. The older BlackBerry phones are also good study for usability before Touch Screens came.

Talking of Touch Screen, i had seen a HP Monitor in a Universal Pick-Place Assembly Machine. A Huge Pneumatic System, Not a SMT, there was no SMT then. This monitor had IR LED and Opto Transistor Array over the monitor. That sensed the finger Probably.

Capacitive Touch Screens and Accelerometers have given a new dimension to Ergonomics.  

Then came Euro controls for Consumer Electronics. Like remote controls. Look at the National Panasonic VCR Remote on the right. It could be in the 90's. It is so easy to operate the VCR, you do not need a manual. Flap a Lid and you have many things to do, including control any brand of TV in tandem with the VCR.

Software or hardware it is the same thing. The way the Common man sees a Gadget, like a Lamp Switch or a Water Tap. I tried Namesake and even Pinterest for usability recently. It is amazing to know that Ajax and sometimes flash enhances usability. The HTML5 thing also is in the same direction, which empowers Web Designers to make Usable Apps and Sites not just Flashy Mazes where one can get lost for eternity. Some of the sites i built are like that, Labyrinth of Docs which only the Search can Reveal.      

Then when Google gadgets came, i did some experiments ....

Alarm Clock Gadget A Web Gadget (Satirical) for iGoogle that i made to Demonstrate the importance of Ergonomics in Small Devices like Remote Control and Telephone.	See Time and Date, Set upto Five Alarms, Reminds of Tasks, Wild Nature Sounds. This clock is the recent one with flash. Get Alarm Clock Gadget
Audio Music Jukebox This Gadget demonstrates the use of css-js-dhtml for maximum controls within a small footprint, without menus.	Music Player Gadget, Plays small midi, mp3 and real media tunes, Three Skins, Stores 99 Tracks URL and Title, PSV PodCast, PSV Playlist. Get Audio Music Player.

Conclusions -

1. Reduce the number of operations a user would do at achieve a purpose. Auto, Intuitive, Context Gui.
2. When a Customer comes to buy Trousers, Take him to the Trouser Corner. Do not show Tuxedo option.
3. The colors have good contrast and the text clearly visible. A HighLighted reaction to user action. Tactile.
4. Dynamic GUI, see in Gadgets above. GUI Elements appear only for that sequence of actions. No clutter.
5. Menus if used, should not get stuck. Should not be fidgety, should not be menus at all if possible.
   

This is an idea of a costly way of protecting your software IP, We now have Flash USB thumb drives going upto 100Mb, You now need to make an ASIC for a thumb drive which manages flash storage of 100Mb and also does some simple logic and maths, all this inside the thumb drive.

Now put the software you make within the custom thumb drive and make it into an partial java based application server. So even copying or reading RAM will not expose the program binaries on PC. Now you have a custom thumb drive with embedded application software to sell just like objects, and cannot be copied. This thumbware you sell will be bought by the user and all he needs to do is plug it in the USB port and a icon will come with a balloon in the notification area and start using the new thumbware you bought. Remove thumbware the application will close, take it wherever you want. The thumbware will not be copied as ASIC is custom and some computation is within the thumb and major computation is in the PC.

Then you can make it OS independent, as it will be a embedded java application, the xml database can be within the thumb itself and an encrypted copy on HDD.

Open Ideas - Jan-03, Revised again - 27 April 2008, Nature - Open Source

Suppose you want to have a simple means of communication with a known individual online without the need to a routine task to check or sort mail, there is, we know a solution. which is instant text messaging. Spam in this is very rare.

Now an alert comes by email, about some secure site, you have to first find if it is real or it is a phishing-spoof. You first go in your browser to your secure-site and verify. So communication of such kind has to be a combination of Instant-messaging and email. If the secure site sends a IM + eMail. Then you know it is real. As you have only known contacts on your IM.

Now one step further, if the secure site in which you have your account has a secure encrypted rss-xml feed of your account which can only be read with an user-id and password.

Now You have a feedreader for secure sites with provision for authentication. You place your accounts feed and setup the login. Now once a day or once a week it reads the encrypted private feed and you are updated about the status of your secure account. The Client feedreader also can be given access by secure site, which will note the programs serial number and vendor number and the NIC Number.

(Idea - Wednesday, December 27, 2006, Revised - 31 March 2007, Nature - Open Source)