Romantic desitination vacation comparison and Travel Agents in one.

Couples rate romantic holidays they have been on and leave comments about the places they have been. However, the site its self then allows other couples book that exact holiday to the same destination through the website.

Website can act like a package tour operator, and take a small booking fee per holiday.

The romantic side has been emphasised in this idea because I reckon thats where the money is: How many times have you wanted to take your significant other away to a romantic destination but not really known where to start? Or got there and thought “well this is crud, not romatic at all!”

Crowd Insurance online: a cross between an insurance companies products and prosper.

Prospective insuree’s request an insurance amount, category and cover statement (what it covers, where, how much cover etc) and the amount they can afford to pay for that insurance cover. Whoever has some spare cash donates this into a “fund” which covers the insuree for that period of time (say a year). The insuree then pays a premium for the insurance (a percentage of the total fund, plus interest) directly to the insurers. There could be pre-set “policies” for different types of insurance with different clauses, if a personally set insurance policy is too complicated.

If the insurance period of time expires, the policy expires and can either be renewed by the insuree or is refunded to the insurers.

IF whatever happens that is covered by the insurance happens, then the user receives an amount from the fund to cover the expensive of whatever requires insurance.

It works for loans, why not insurance?

Detailed example:

User A needs Medical Insurance, and can pay $300 a month for it. He can probably stretch to $350, and reckons he requires about $20,000 of insurance for the year. A ready reckoner can determine these values for him, based on his age, sex and a general health survey. He submits his request to the website after this brief screening, entering his details such as social security and address.

Users B, C, D, E, F and G have spare cash. User B has $7000, user C and D has $2000 and Users E and F and G each have $3,000 each. They put forward the funds into a “pot” which is reserved for the medical insurance of User A. User A now pays the $300 directly to users B … G each month, which is split between them like this:

• User B: 35%
• Users C and D: 10%
• Remaining users: 15%

Obviously some form of interest rate needs to be included on the rate of the borrowing. Lets say 4%? This is 4% of the money in the pot, and the $300 does not include this interest already. So user A is now being charged 300 + (4% of 20000 / 12) = $366.67 per month.

That means that each user is receiving:

User B: $128.33 per month

Users C and D: $36.67 per month

Remaining Users: $55.00 per month

If user A has an accident an amount of insurance is removed from the pot to pay for the medical expenses. If the policy is cancelled, users B .. G receive their money back from the pot (which is ace for them).

Obviously this is just a basic example, and various policies can be worked out for various scenarios. I am not in insurance and do not understand all the ins and outs so feel free to amend my models

Disk File Forest

An application that uses 3D populations of trees that represent the percentage of disk space used.

Its a visually pleasing way to see how much space you have left, and can also double as a disk management tool: forest management can help group more frequently used filegroups together. Forestation can be moved in clumps and groups and positioned closed or further away from other forests.

Defragmentation of the forest can give you a fun way to keep your filestore defragged. It could be a visual aid to how your files are stored, and a good way to help you keep your disk defragged and How Well it is Defragmented in a visual manner. (I and many others defragment their disks most of the time, but others do not. A well defragmented machine can mean a faster machine.)

This would be excellent on something like vista where a 3D version on the desktop can be managed in a “black and white” way.

But the idea doesn’t end there:

• Chop down forests to delete files: store them in the wood shed (recycling bin) or put them through the logmill to delete them.
• Move files in groups by grabbing clumps of trees into new areas (folders)
• Relate trees to other trees by different types of “wood” (hardwoods, soft woods etc) e.g mp3s can be softwoods, work files hardwoods.
• Old files loose their leaves: what files are really old.
• App files are stuck together and cannot be moved separately by location. Unused app files wither and die, looking like blackened and unused tree skeletons
• Document Tree Files that are used often florish and grow bigger and stronger.
• Rendered images of the forest can be used as background images
• In Vista the app can actually BE on the desktop?

I agree the visualisation of something like this is hard to imagine. I am working on a concept visualisation in my head as we speak but nothing makes sense yet. Any ideas are welcome.

The Marketing Place

The ideas for products and services need brandnames and marketing ideas. This would be a website where the marketing of products, brand identity and so on would be opened up to the power of the crowds.

Companies would submit their un-branded products to the website (or produce that needs RE-branding!), upon which the crowd would submit their ideas, story boards, brandnames, logos and copy on the marketing of the product/service. The best one, or the most popular idea as far as the community and the company are concerned wins, and get a slice of the revenue of the product/service.

Basically an example of this would be the popular sweet “Smarties”. Say smarties needed a new product image. They could tender out their requests on this site. Requirements and specifications for the marketing could be broken down for users, and be posted for users to fulfil on the site. Users would submit (with the use of tools) concept art, site design , story boards and graphic work. The crowd would vote on the best for each requirement (althought the company could have final say in the matter). The winner for each section gets the comission for the peice of work required/Royalties/payed for their contribution.

First off the blurb from my idea-explorer goes something like this:

Think Paypal, but funded and owned by YOU. Get users to deposit an amount their accounts which funds other activities such as loans, investments and mortgages. Users can own accounts in different currencies and invest in high or low risk schemes. I.E This works in a similar way to a normal bank – the only difference is that the Bank its self is actually owned and operated by the users. They say which quotdirectionquot the bank will go in, e.g which funds the bank invests in etc etc. and get the profits of the bank shared between them in addition to interest payments.

In other words, this is more than loans and more than paypal. The bank decides on investment opportunities as well as lending and borrowing products. Even morgages can be obtained here. Every product from ISA’s to Bonds can be offered, and the users reap the benefits of profits made by the bank. All you have to have is a bank account with them to share in the profits.

I want in on this idea, and I want it to happen. Help me make it by voting for my idea

The Online Toy Factory

Desktop Creatures (the inspiration behind GWABS)

An Online Lottery

CrowdSource TV

MakeMyLunch

Co-operatively Owned Online Bank