On Temptation

Only around temptation does morality have any value.

Business Idea #34: Health Food Certifications For Vending Machines

Vending machines should be certified by some authority to be “healthy” for children/adults. Schools could only allow “certified” vending machines on premises. I walk by the most unhealth vending machines in school every day and want to pitch them out the window. What if we had machines dispensing fresh granola, or with a built-in apple slicer to dispense fresh-sliced apples? This is not a hippie dream- your fat kids are costing me big $$ in my health care costs!

Business Idea #33: Cell Phones with backlights to indicate ring style

If a phone is going to make a noise when you receive a call, its heads-up display should be either backlit or have a ring of light in red. Otherwise, it should have a ring of light in white. That way, whenever I pick up my phone I will know what its ring style is and have a better chance of silencing it in appropriate situations.

Business Idea #32: Variety Fruit Bags

Supermarkets sell produce in packages far too large. Though buying in bulk saves money theoretically, I end up wasting so much food that the savings aren’t passed on whatsoever - throwing away bags of banannas, fruit, lettuce, etc. What if there was a supermarket that catered to small serving sizes for perishable food. Perhaps this would simply be a redesign of the perishable food section of an existing store, but consider a fruit bag that was one of several fruits instead of large bunches of one fruit? A strawberry/blueberry mix?

Business Idea #31: Boy Scout Earthquake Kit Sales

Instead of magazine subscriptions or cookies, boy/girl scouts could sell earthquake preparation kits. Everyone in California ought to have one but very few do. Kits contain water, tarps, simple medicine, dollar bills, flashlights, wind-up radios, and the like, and could be manually assembled by the boy scout troops themselves. It also fits into their motto of “be prepared,” and would do far more good for the community than subscriptions to People Magazine…

Business Idea #30: Wiki for land rights in developing nations

One of the fundamental premises of Hernando DeSoto’s The Mystery of Capital is that property rights are not legally defined in many emerging countries, but still implicitly known. Perhaps if there was some kind of wiki model of land rights, where people could not only enter their own claims but “vote” for the claims of others, this problem could be better addressed. Obviously in third-world areas computers and the internet are far less common, but even one internet cafe could possibly be enough…

Business Idea #29: AdWords for public transit

Those ads on public transit vehicles, like the T, should be auctioned off, live, every day. I’m sure that some ads will do better than others (should you have education ads on the red line where everyone already is in school, or on the green line that goes into more suburban areas?) Time also probably matters - the travelers during rush hour have a different demo than those in off-peak. The city could better monetize their subway in such a fashion. Extend this to outdoor advertising, billboards, etc, etc.

Business Idea #28: Personalizable Locks

Walked into the MIT gym today and realized that every single lock was just like mine - a black faced masterlock. Why is this? We ought to have all kinds of personalizable faces, with colors, pictures, or places where you can slip in your own picture. Then you’d never forget where you put your lock.

Business Idea #27: Scrapbooking Stores within Staples

I see these scrapbooking stores and wonder how they can possibly survive the dual onslaught of category killers like Staples & Office Depot, and the online picture sharing revolution that makes scrapbooks much less practical than they once were. What if you take a scrapbook store, or build a scrapbook brand, and make a mini-store inside of Staples. Think the way Apple does with Best Buy, or fashion brands do inside of Nordstrom or Macy’s. Replicate the mini-stores across the country……..Profit!

Business Idea #26: Furniture specifically design to fit within a compact car

Consider this: a bed with instructions on how to deconstruct it such that it will fit in a prius, element, or whatever the small car in vogue is at the time. Don’t just have it compactable at the time you buy it (who saves the boxes?), but compactable month(s) later when you move. Maybe even have a whole bedroom set that can be fit. Ikea furniture these days is designed to be cheap and disposable, but I’m sure you could get a premium by showing people how easy it was to bring with…