This might sound very egotistical, but I have a lot of ideas.. and if I say a lot.. I mean A LOT.. all the time.. for anything I come in contact with. This is a curse most of the time as I will never be able to follow up on 99% of these and most of time these ideas are so far outside of my field of expertise that I won’t even know where to start.

As a result I decided to post some of the ones I find most interesting on here in the hope that someone might see it. The odds are they won’t be seen, but a boy can dream..

The idea I want to share today involves car alarms and it came from life in an apartment block, like so many of us do these days. When a car alarm go off in the middle of the night four thoughts tend go through my brain:

1. There are 50+ cars in the parking garage, I wonder if it’s mine.
2. I’m sure it’s not mine, I mean, what are the odds.
3. My blanket is nice and warm, I’m not getting up now.
4. Man, I really hope it’s not mine.

Up until now I’ve been lucky in the fact that my car has been there in the morning, with all the windows in tact, but as someone who has had a car stolen before I can tell you that it’s really not a nice thing to deal with.

So what is this “great” idea you might say? Well, It’s really simple, I think that we need to standardize, on an international level, the alarm sound cars of a certain manufacturer would make in the case of it going off. For example: Car brand A can make a sound like “bee bee boo boo bee bee boo boo…” while car brand B can sound something like “bee bee bee bee…”

This way when you sit at the doctor or in a meeting or at your apartment and the alarm in the street or parking garage goes off, it will narrow it down to manufacturer meaning that you will be able to make a call immediately whether you should go check or not.

Tell me what you think, I would love the have feedback on these ideas. Drop a comment below if you have any thoughts on this

I’m not sure if this was the initial intention of Google when they launched their Google+ service, but by having all their key engineers involved and end-user facing, they managed to get to a point where they take feedback from the users and implement it as they see fit. Beside the feedback tool in the bottom right-hand corner of the site, their engineers also monitor key people’s updates and subsequent comments and give immediate feedback where they can. Google+ is now essentially a crowd-sourced social network and considering the alternative, this makes a lot of sense.

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I love reddit.com. They are a great community of people from all around the world, and when I saw this post today and then the subsequent comment I felt that more people should see it.

It started with a question from a 14 year old that red: “I was wondering if some of the older or wiser members of reddit would care to lend some advice. It could be about anything really. Just some tips or advice you’ve learned over the years. Thanks!”

The following comment, by Warlizard, just inspired me and I felt that I just had to post it here:

1. Make decisions based on what YOU want to do, not on what other people want. Following the crowd is easier, no doubt, but you won’t be happy.
2. Don’t ever close any doors through laziness. Sure, school is a pain, but you don’t want to limit your options by screwing around. Be excellent, try your best, and if you choose to go to college or not, know that it’s YOUR choice, not one foisted on you by poor decisions.
3. Try everything. You’re at a point in your life where the world is open to you. Just because you haven’t done something doesn’t mean you won’t like it and it can’t provide you with a lifetime of satisfaction.
4. Be kind to everyone. It’s easy to get approval by picking on those weaker than you. Avoid that temptation. Everyone deserves your regard.
5. Forgive your friends when they wrong you. They will. It’s part of life.
6. Don’t do drugs until you’re old enough to do it responsibly. The consequences of getting caught aren’t worth the momentary pleasure.
7. Wear a condom. Dear god, wear a condom.
8. Be kind to your parents. Odds are they love you and want what’s best for you. Alienating them will hurt them and those scars will last for decades (personal experience here).
9. If someone asks you out on a date, go. You never know.
10. Read. Everything. Get a list of the top 100 books and slog through it. Yeah, everything won’t make sense but you’ll understand the world so much better. Everywhere in our culture people allude to things that you just won’t understand if you haven’t forced yourself to become well-read.
11. Take every opportunity to travel. Seriously. The world is huge and you want to lose your provincial view as early as possible.
12. Get involved in politics. You may as well get disillusioned early.
13. Masturbation is fun and free.
14. Go easy on porn. You don’t want your expectations to be that your girlfriend is going to go ass-to-mouth and then let you blow a load all over her mom’s face.
15. Stay in shape. It’s so easy now and it will last your life.
16. Don’t smoke.
17. Learn a foreign language.
18. Don’t be contemptuous of those who know less than you.
19. Take every opportunity to tell your family you love them.
20. Learn to cook. This will get you laid.
21. Save your money for things that are important, not things that give you momentary satisfaction.

“Hope this helps.”

You can see the original post here: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/isezb/advice_for_a_14_year_old/

The short answer is yes, I think Google+ has the potential to steal a lot of Facebook’s dedicated users, provided it gets adopted on a massive scale.

In case you’re not aware, Google announced the Google+ project earlier today and after looking at the promotional videos and accompanying blog post I must say that I think it’s a giant leap forward for Google. This can fundamentally change the way we use the internet. Think Facebook, but without the “walled garden” approach, that’s been my biggest problem with Facebook since day one.

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