Inventors Wanted (Add To The Wishlist)

krugdm writes: "In his latest NYT column, David Pogue has a list of nine inventions that he'd like to see that are just awaiting inventors. The range from the silly MP3 Toothbrush to the potentially useful Microwave Plus+ that self programs. How much of this is possible?" Industrial designers, arise!

Tooth decay

[Anonymous Coward]

The range from the silly MP3 Toothbrush

Watch the cavity rate rise in America in a few years due to the toothbrush becoming illegal under the DMCA.

Half Bakery

[Jeremi]

If you want a daily dose of half-baked inventions, check out The Half-Bakery [halfbakery.com]. It's an excellent site for the inventive/whimsical mind.

Re:NYT Registration

[WhiteKnight07]

I wonder if bypassing the registration like this is a violation of the DMCA....

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The single most important invention to mankind

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

It has to be the sausage egg and chips machine that can churn out portions of our god-endorsed national diet every 5 seconds.

Imagine how this would revolutionise modern food process management as we see it today.

You walk into a food-store and say 'I'd like something thats convincingly healthly whilst still having the fat content of a small car' - they go sure

CLUNK CLUNK

Out pops the sausage egg and chip life saving meal.

Stupendous.

"Blinking twelve syndrome"

[No Such Agency]

This scheme would unfortunately destroy an important indicator of technical prowess, because NOBODY'S VCR would ever flash "12:00" again. How could you more easily discern whether aunt Mabel/uncle Frank is scared of anything more electronic than a toaster, except by a quick peek at the VCR?

Re:I want my MP3 toothbrush!

[BlindSpot]

I bet you could convince more kids to brush if, say, you had a toothbrush that played the Barney theme song while you were brushing.

This has been done, more-or-less. Not sure if it's an only-in-Canada thing, but Colgate makes a tube of toothpaste with Barney on it that chimes our a whiney electronic version of Yankee Doodle whenever the lid is opened. My mom runs a dayhome and one of the kids keeps one of these things here.

I do not expect this product to last long on the market. For one thing, you can't shut it off! If you open it by mistake or something you're forced to listen to 70 seconds of this thing. It drives you nuts fast.

Yes, the kids do like it, but they like it too much - all the other kids kept trying to fool with it. At least the music makes it easy to catch them. :-)

Here's the worst part:

One morning I go into the bathroom to get ready for classes, and I become aware of this very high-pitched ringing. After determining it wasn't my ears, I started listening around for it.

I figured it might be air in the plumbing, so I bent down to listen to the sink. As I honed in on the sound, to my horror I realized it wasn't a sustained ring but in fact a series of very short, distinct beeps. Then I saw the Barney toothpaste, and sure enough, the thing was malfunctioning and emitting these beeps non-stop.

It took a very hard *WHACK* against the counter to get it to shut up. The thing is tucked away in a drawer now. It even started beeping once again but another whack seems to have shut it up for good - I hope.

Be careful what you wish for...

Re:Non-techies just don't get it

[October_30th]

What about a "courage device" that gives a geek some balls to approach a woman?

Now that's a REALLY old invention.

It's called alcohol.