Ideas within topic services: (click suns to rate or comment on ideas)

1		IPO auctions: companies lose money when their stock prices rise just after their initial public offerings. Companies should auction their shares to the highest bidders instead of the current practice of fixing a price and choosing buyers by lottery.	E-mail
2		Air inside city buses can be more polluted than outside. Buses should completely flush their air when at clean portions of their routes, or should store clean air in a tank to release it gradually into the interior during the day.	E-mail
3		Website wish list: Website emergency kit. A site which allows me to rapidly construct a website for lost child, natural disaster, explosion, etc. Information on site contents, who to contact, how to get info to public, etc.	E-mail
4		Hand Me Downs: a service pairing rich families with poor families so that instead of discarding used stuff, the rich can give it to the poor, like many extended families and close friends do with their old cell phones, toys, clothes, etc.	E-mail
5		Divert carbon dioxide from power plants or other sources to greenhouses or fields to increase crop yields. Legumes may benefit most.	E-mail
6		Office cleaner's duties could extend to turning off non-critical electrical appliances (computer monitors, lights), thereby reducing that office's green footprint.	E-mail
7		Simple classroom app for smart phones and computers. Teachers are given an application that allows them to quickly access, edit, and scramble the roll of their class. Also allows for automated emails to be sent on command to principals & parents.	E-mail
8		To protect against loss of power to a nuclear power plant, use a water tower. Gravity can force cool water through the reactor until power is restored.	E-mail
9		Develop a sport using an atlatl (spear-throwing lever) to throw a ball. The distances achieved would be impressive.	E-mail
10		Stores should have a small strip of one-way mirrors around the inside, where an armed guard could hide, even if a robber knew he was there, somewhere. A thief couldn't take hostages since he wouldn't know where the guard was (he might be behind him).	E-mail
11		Put soluble orange dye in the alcohol hand gel used in hospitals by staff and visitors. Then anyone not using it would be identified. It would wash off easily on leaving hospital.	E-mail
12		Pet rental: service to rent dogs, cats, and other pets to people for an hour, a day, a week, or longer. This would let people decide whether they like and can handle pet care and would reduce abandonment.	E-mail
13		Send tsunami and other disaster warnings by SMS (short message service) so that people who don't happen to be watching TV or listening to radio at the moment can be alerted and can evacuate. (tornado, typhoon, cyclone, hurricane)	E-mail
14		Nanophone: a microphone to hear sounds at a microscopic scale, including cells moving and organelles moving. Maybe it could detect things that microscopes can't see.	E-mail
15		Vending machine manufacturers should program their vending machine dispensers to rotate past 360 degrees, like 380 degrees, then go back 20 degrees to a neutral position so that your chips or candy will fall down every time.	E-mail
16		Concert promotion: book rock bands for unamplified performances in concert halls. Acoustics are much better than arenas; halls sit empty most of the time; not blasting the music will sound much better and more comfortable; there’s an existing audience.	E-mail
17		Olds: a service to report news on old events. News often ignores items after a crisis ends. But people may still wonder what happened weeks, months, years, or decades later. Olds would follow up items that were in the news but now are ignored.	E-mail
18		Hunger Helper. Alerts to avoid foods in shortage. When a crisis (drought or war) spikes the price of a food like rice that poor people need, issue alert to avoid that food. Volunteers avoiding that food reduce demand and price, helping poor avoid hunger.	E-mail
19		Internet dating sites tend toward either many people but no help in selecting compatibility, or the opposite. Solve the problem with a hybrid, letting users change between few, some, or many criteria to either widen or focus their search.	E-mail
20		A device on your television that, when you are watching a television program and you channel surf during the commercial break, will alert you once the commercial break is over so that you can go back to your show without missing any of it.	E-mail
21		Shared Business: Since restaurants pay rent all day yet may only fill up at lunch, open a restaurant only during lunch and use the space for another business the rest of the day to share the rent. Would work best where rent is high and a major cost.	E-mail
22		Establish an institution that is a combination of old people's home, destitute women's home, and orphanage. This will create an institution with three generations of people requiring help or support under one roof, and these people can help each other.	E-mail
23		In countries like India, income tax & sales tax are difficult to collect. To track all transactions, government could give debit cards to all people and card readers to all shops. No more need to print money, also saving government expense.	E-mail
24		For children to wash their hands, one sink in every public restroom should be placed low, with the faucet closer to the front edge. Now I always need to pick up my child awkwardly, as if giving him an "airplane ride", to let him wash his hands.	E-mail
25		To increase lending, better guarantees are needed. Personal guarantees can be dictated as videoclips, perhaps notarised. Personal guarantees address the problem of no title books. In traditional societies, guarantors' assets are well known.	E-mail
26		Just as group violence is reported in the news, a place on the front page of the newspaper should be for news of young people who are making a positive difference. Maybe more people would do things to get in this article than those doing violent things.	E-mail
27		Use more retired and elderly people in daycare centers. Background checks could be used if necessary. A lot like the adopt-a-grandparent program a few years ago.	E-mail
28		'Porta Potties' should contain wall mounted vending machine for dispensing handi wipes (wet naps).	E-mail
29		As part of their professional development, doctors could spend one week each year in a free medical clinic in a poor part of their country or in a third world country. Imagine how much better a person each doctor would be from that experience.	E-mail
30		Credit card companies should stop printing card and personal info on receipts / bills. This info can be gathered and used fraudulently. All that is needed on receipts is a unique transaction number linked in the company's database to your details.	E-mail
31		A website where people can type in their zip code and find out the location of the nearest recycling facility for metal, glass, paper, plastic, etc.	E-mail
32		In big cranes, a series of telescopic, concentric, cylindrical buckets filled with water or sand from site can compensate for 20% - 40% of the counter weights. Thus the purchase & transportation cost of the big cranes can be reduced.	E-mail
33		Many tolled highways are avoided because of the cost. Instead, promote carpooling by exempting cars filled with three or more occupants. Prevents traffic jams and pollution.	E-mail
34		What about a computer program that uses voice recognition to control the mouse pointer, perform common computer functions, and surf the web, for people who cannot use their hands or have carpal tunnel syndrome?	E-mail
35		Fast food automated drive thru station that allows you to touch keys to place your order. When order is placed, it is sent directly to the food prep person, and gives you an order #. Cashier matches order numbers and gives the customer proper order.	E-mail
36		Make a website with list of charities that now have matching donation programs, enabling you to give to a worthy cause and have your gift doubled by another donor, increasing the effect of your money.	E-mail
37		To make text files smaller, file compression utilities could include a pre-stored database of English words mapped to two-byte codes. Therefore, every word in this sentence could be swapped with a two-character code like "&@". Much smaller!	E-mail
38		Browsing channels in TV using thumbnails. If we can have a channel devoted to capturing thumbnails of what is happening in other channels it will help us in avoiding browsing all the channels.	E-mail
39		Put a missing persons picture on the welcome page to the internet. A different one every few days. Please let me know if you try this on your own website.	E-mail
40		Why are school buildings reminiscent of Gothic, Medieval, and Prison architecture? If you want kids to be bright and creative, let them learn and develop in unique and colorful buildings that combine technology with nature. Hire some new architects.	E-mail
41		To help stop or prevent abuse in nursing homes, hidden cameras should be placed in each room with the manager monitoring the activity daily.	E-mail
42		Yahoo and similar public e-mail systems should provide a way to detach the file attachments and keep the mails. It can have the filename and path of where the file has been stored. This will be useful to conserve storage space and mail history.	E-mail
43		A chain of drive-thru healthy food restaurants that provide a menu including nutritional info and compatibility with popular diets (Atkins, Weight Watchers, etc.). Also serves bagged lunches.	E-mail
44		Since Chinese restaurants keep fishtanks to let diners select live fish for their meal, why not keep a garden next to a restaurant where diners could select their own live vegetables, fruits, and herbs? You couldn't get more fresh.	E-mail
45		A World Phone Directory Site: A website where every person & company can register own phone & mobile no.& addresses (res., off. & email) free of cost. There can be a categorised business section with chargeable entry (like yellow pages). Free accessing.	E-mail
46		Make public transit more convenient: replace coins with cash card accepted on buses and subways by swiping near a machine. Refill card at machines in subway stations. Hong Kong uses one.	E-mail
47		In most cities, there are many trash bins, but almost no recycling bins. To decrease the amount of waste, have recycling bins right beside garbage bins.	E-mail
48		To advertise a small business, give a free t-shirt with a big purchase. It will display the business slogan and location. To encourage customers to wear it in your area, give a 5% discount each time they wear it during a purchase. Tell me if you try it.	E-mail
49		Harvest CD4/CD8 stem cells from HIV patient's marrow, then modify CD receptor gene so that its protein can't bind HIV (cf the HIV immune people in NYC), then autotransplant these stem cells to give partial new HIV resistant immune system.	E-mail
50		Car headlights should automatically turn off with the engine. This would prevent the driver forgetting to turn them off and draining the battery. To use headlights when the engine is off, they could be turned on again manually. Toyota Camry does this.	E-mail