Culture
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The Issue: People occasionally dye their hair a different color. This process is a bit time-consuming, and it’s not always immediately clear what the results will be. Although it’s possible for a person to edit a digital photo to preview a new hair color, this type of simulation lacks the immersive three-dimensional quality that would…
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Background: Learning a foreign language can be time-consuming, primarily due to the large number of words that need to be memorized. Some attempts have been made to make this process easier by making a “common” second language that everyone could learn (the most well-known of these is probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto). This would, in theory, fix the…
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Background: A “pill organizer” (Figure 1) is a container for vitamins, medications, or anything else that a person wants to remember to take on a recurring basis. The Issue: There are many other recurring tasks that could also benefit from a weekly organizer. For example, according to the lobbyists at Big Vegetable, everyone should eat…
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Background: Many modern nations lay claim to ancient treasures—some of which are in the hands of other countries! But sometimes it’s difficult to determine the “legitimate” owner of an artifact after hundreds of years. Example: Easter Island—which is owned by Chile—is the home of many famous stone statues (“moai”: 🗿). If a UFO relocated all…
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The Issue: The book-reading experience has not fundamentally changed in hundreds of years. What if we could “modernize” the experience by bringing the experience of reading articles on the web (Figure 1) to the physical-book form factor? Proposal: The solution is simple: a “normal” book can be enhanced with the normal bonus features of Internet…
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Background: Frequently, a person planning an event (e.g. a party) will have a hard time pinning down the guests as to whether or not they are definitely planning to arrive. This can be annoying for the host: it’s hard to plan an event without knowing how many people will show up! Additionally, most people have…
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Background: Many cities have restrictive zoning requirements that, perhaps justifiably, prevent certain types of construction (for example, building a pesticide manufacturing plant next to an elementary school). Some restrictions are a bit more arbitrary: many “homeowners associations” (HOAs) enforce extremely specific details about the exact shades of beige that a garage door can be painted,…
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The issue: The presence of windows in a house is a major factor in determining of whether a house is dark and cavern-like or bright and uplifting. Unfortunately, it is usually impractical or impossible to add windows to a home after its has been constructed. Additionally, windows generally have a negative effect on climate control:…
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The Issue: Sometimes, people go to new locations and feel a sense of unease (Figure 1), due to their lack of familiarity with the local surroundings. Proposal: Thankfully, the solution is easy! The tourist can simply tour while wearing a VR that has been calibrated to change the exotic foreign landscape into a familiar environment…
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Background: Every so often, a ridiculous story comes out about someone driving 400 miles to the wrong location because they went to the “right” address (“123 Snake Street”) in the wrong city. In the ancient “paper map” days, this type of mistake would be nearly impossible, but modern GPS systems make it possible for a…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 