The RefrainersCreate a cover band that plays popular tunes, but only sings the chorus. Most people only know the chorus to pop songs, and you can never understand the other lyrics in the loud, bad acoustics of a bar.
The audience can sing along with the chorus, and the band can jam and solo in the rest of the song.
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How to tell a story I've been researching story structure and I think it would be fun to create a story structure book for kids.
It would focus on the three-act structure and go into the basics about each act, plot points, and how to create a satisfying story arc. A fun feature would be to take popular children's stories and movies(fairy tale, superhero, animated adventure, etc.) and show how they fit into the structure by creating color bands that weave through each page of the book. Each band would contain a complete story when read from front to back and each part of the story would be on each page where the story structure section is being introduced. Babel Fish: The universal translator for programmers I have written a lot of code in a lot of different programming languages (basic, lingo, vbscript, html, css, perl, php, sql, javascript, java, actionscript) for different projects, but if I had to write a piece of code today in any of those languages or a new one, I would have to google the syntax or reach for one of my books.
The thing about programming languages is that there hasn't been a new idea in 15 years. The building blocks of programming, things like variables, arrays, conditional statements, functions... all programming languages have them, C, C#, java, php, etc. Once you learn your second and third language, you know that you can program in any language... as long as you learn the syntax of the language. Unlike other programming books that teach you a programming language in a vacuum, Bable Fish devotes a chapter to each of the concepts of programming, and lists how you would write it in a dozen different languages. You see how to create an array in one language that you already know right next to the way you would write it in the language you are learning. It's using the French/English dictionary model for programming languages. Exercise Charity Concept: The are a lot of volunteer opportunities that include physical activity.
Warehouse work at food banks, Construction on habitat for humanity and green builder programs, community garden and park revival projects. The book/website would outline opportunities and focus on how the real world experience would translate into actual exercise and learning opportunities. This is not meant to replace your gym workout completely, but to augment it and break the routine, while contributing to the community. The book could be the primer and the website would be a place for organizations to list upcoming opportunities. exerciseCharity.com is available Learning a language through fiction The idea is to write a fictional story about a character in a foreign land who teaches himself to speak the language, and in the process the reader learns the language organically. It's immersion by proxy.
The story is of a 14 year old boy who wakes up on a train at a small town in the Spanish countryside. He finds a note from his troubled mother saying that she cannot take the stress of her life and she is leaving. The note instructs him to go to the authorities and have them contact his grandparents in the US who will arrange his way home. He decides not to follow the instructions and to instead search for his mother. He has little money, does not speak the language, and has no idea where he is. The story is told from his point of view, and through the course of the book, (out of sheer necessity) he teaches himself the language organically. We, the reader, are also learning the language with him. The story will have many twists and perils to keep the reader engaged and invested in the boy’s process of learning a new language and the fate of his mother. If successful, the book could be 'localized' in many different languages. The Silent Series Create a series of children’s books based on the classic silent comedy shorts of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle, etc.
They are visual storytelling with few words. They are in the public domain. They are iconic characters. They are action oriented. You could put the shorts on the sales page and sell dvd’s as ancillary products. Playground Rules!  Old school board game idea.
The board is a top-down drawing of a playground with a hex grid overlaid on it. player tokens represent kids. There are special areas on the board that create blocked sections so that it is not just an open playing field. The board is essentially an open slate and you provide rules for a dozen different schoolyard games that could be played on the board. Everything from Tag and Dodgeball to Zombie outbreak, with players rolling dice and either pursuing or evading other players. Rainy day fun! MouthWash 360  A product packaging idea, MouthWash 360 is spherical plastic package holding a few ounces of mouthwash.
The current packaging for mouthwash is great for home and travel use, but not for the office. After that liver and onions lunch, you need fresh breath, but there is no convenient, discreet way to use mouthwash at the office. So we reach out for breath mints or gum, which gives us unnecessary calories, sugar, and aspartame. These little spheres could go in a desk drawer and are simple to use. Pop one in your mouth, bite into it, and you are 60 seconds away from fresh breath. Machinema 2.0 All the game engines are going to a monthly subscription model. It was $300,000 to license the Unreal Engine in 1999 when we were looking at it for Jumpgate, today it is $19.99/month. The barrier to entry is so much lower now.
Even so, making a game is expensive, time consuming, and risky… so you don’t want to do that. … but if you made a machinima building platform, you could go to all the studios and gamemakers and say, drop all your game assets in this software that is built on the same platform as your games and develop scripted/interactive content based on your existing IP. It’s another revenue stream for them without have to start over. The interface would look like flash/aftereffects and would control object tweening and animations, sound cues, camera and lighting keyframing. Then on top of that, you build the netflix for machinima. real-time rendered & streaming content based on the exact assets of the game. Perfect for Hollywood movie game properties. First Draft A writing application that encourages finishing the first draft.
Zero interface. No formatting ability. Two preferences, an email address and a timer slider between 1min and 3min. The slider determines how long the text you are typing is available for edit. If you set the timer to 2 minutes, two minutes after you type a letter, it becomes grayed out and cannot be edited. 2000 characters after you type it, it disappears completely. The email is assigned to someone other than you. Only they can ‘unlock’ your first draft. Formatting and spell checking can be done in the rewrite, but you can’t get to the Final Draft until you finish the first. Learn 300 Spanish Words in 3 Minutes A Spanish vocabulary word book that is organized in a new way. A 1000 word vocabulary is all you need to be functional in a language. the first chapter (and the gimmick) is a list of all the words in Spanish that are spelled the exact same way in English (mosquito, idea, general, etc) with their Spanish pronunciation and a sample sentence. The second chapter contains all the words that only change a letter or two in their Spanish equivalent (momento/moment, problema/problem, posible/possible, etc), their pronunciation, and a sample sentence. The following chapters are more traditional word groupings and mnemonic devices to learn the remaining words. The key idea is to make the idea of learning vocabulary less daunting… i.e. “See how much you already know!”
Stickymmersion Chapter- The best way to learn a language is through immersion. This chapter groups nouns together by location in a house or office (kitchen, bedroom, supply closet, etc) and ask the reader to copy each one on a sticky note and stick it to the thing(door, night table, paperclips, etc). This works on several levels, the act of writing down words helps commit them to memory, posting them in conspicuous places ensures that you will interact with them regularly, and externalizing your learning helps bring others like family and friends into the process to encourage and assist you. Manhunt A half hour series about a female police detective looking for love.
The problem is that she has the worst luck picking men. Often drawn to not just bad boys, but unknowingly… criminals. When she forces herself to date against type, they end up being white collar criminals or con men. She even dates a cop... who turns out to be dirty. She’s a police detective, good at her job, but we almost never see her at work. The show focuses on her search for a man and her inevitable discovery that the man she is dating is going to be her next bust. The long arc of the season is that the police are searching for a serial killer (“The Food Truck Killer”), and in the season finale we find out that he is the cute guy that lives around the corner from her, that she flirts with all season. He stalks women at food trucks and kills them. Food trucks are more social with people standing around, and there are typically no surveillance cams or record if you pay in cash. I could see this as an 6 to 8 episode series. It would be hard to draw it out longer than that. A Secure Member Website with NO Password There are a lot of websites that we need to be a member of, but rarely need to go to. Passwords are a pain to remember for these sites.
So never collect a password. The log in process is always:
BONUS: The sign up process is 2 steps shorter and more likely to be completed, because everybody hates stopping what they are doing to figure out a password. Colony One Set Up: Set in a steampunk scifi universe, a scientist has developed a unique new propulsion method using sound waves and builds a ship to take a crew to colonize the nearest star. The distances are immense, but the propulsion system is cumulative and the every physical action the player takes increments their speed up a little. Gameplay consists of tapping rhythms on the keyboard. Over time, as they approach the speed of light, the time distortion between the ship and the earth grows allowing the ship to benefit from modern technology that is communicated through radio from earth. How long will it take them to reach the nearest star, and will there be anyone alive on the ship when it arrives.
Mechanic Idea: game with a logarithmic scale of scoring based on time spent in the game that would encourage playing for longer to get players to stay in game longer… and the longer they play in one stretch the more astronomical their score… you would have to create a scoring system to track the number and keep it from rolling over into scientific notation. Asteroid Command The scientists of Earth have been tracking Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and discovered two, larger than the ones that killed the dinosaurs, that will cross Earth's path. Initially there was no concern because they were not on a collision course with Earth, but it has been discovered that they will collide with each other. The specific outcome of this collision is unknown, but it will likely create a cloud of thousands of smaller asteroids with trajectories on a collision course with Earth.
Asteroid Command has been set up through an international consortium in a race to save the human race... They will not be able to destroy them all, people will die, cities will be wiped out... Can man escape the fate of the dinosaurs? gameplay A real-time strategy and arcade game paying homage to the classic coin op Missile Command, the player needs to identify and destroy or deflect any object large enough to create mass destruction. They will have a series of tools at their disposal, some of which (in development) will not come online until well into the game... -------------------------- Written intro... Then the game begins with the two asteroids impacting (the outcome different every time you play the game). The first phase is analysis. The computers identify all the pieces on a crash course for earth or the moon. The list is filtered for only those large enough to take out small cities. The second phase is planning, which resources to allot to which types of response. Also, resources must be allocated for civil defense (evacuation, sheltering in place, providing emergency infrastructure). This is a cost-effective mitigation measure for saving lives from the smallest NEO impact events and is a necessary part of mitigation for larger events. This phase plays like a resource management sim. The third phase is action, target and launch missiles with the goal of destroying or altering the course of the asteroid. This phase plays like a space flight sim. The final phase is final contact. Part of the defense is to launch laser satellites at key points in geosynchronous orbit over major continents to take out any remaining threats. This would be played arcade style shooting asteroids on their approach, as satellites become available with the rotation of the earth. Any missed asteroids would spawn animation of destruction and estimated body counts. Playtime would be roughly an hour. 5 mins for analysis, 10 mins for planning, 30 mins for action, and 15 mins for final contact. |
AuthorHello. I'm a creative sort of a fellow, and I'm always coming up with ideas. I have notebooks filled with them. I'll be posting them here from time to time. If you like one and wish to adopt it, feel free. Archives
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