Automate.me

Posted on September 28, 2018 by gemmell

So this is a premium service where a couple of guys follow you around for a few days and see exactly what you do. They have a backend dev team that works to build systems to automate parts of your day. For example, you’re a high powered lawyer, you cannot get across 100 emails a minute, we would get across the problem, and build a tailored solution for you. Cost is $100k per month for us to slowly automate all the automatable parts of your life so that you have more time to live.

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Good Times 4 Bad Times Phone/Photo App

Posted on September 11, 2018 by gemmell

One thing about depression is that you can’t see anything good. Good Times 4 Bad Times is an application that runs on your phone (plugs in to Google photo’s?) that asks you some really specific questions about your mood and then asks you to pick something from recently recorded videos & photos that shows some specific value you bring to the world. For example, I am a good father to my children – photo of the kids smiling at the camera.

Then there is a big red button “HELP”, which essentially puts it into a mode where it proves to you that you have value.

You are a good father: video of you playing with your child from last month.
You are well loved: photo of your partner smiling from last week.
…

Basically the whole premise is about recording some things like “I am well loved”, “I am a good person” with photos and video evidence. Essentially your good-times-self proving to your bad-times-self that you have intrinsic value. It is easy to see how you have a positive impact on the world when you’re not “in the hole”, and it’s impossible when you are down in the dumps. So this app is simply you proving to yourself that you have intrinsic value, and that you should soldier through.

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Chat Grease

Posted on September 11, 2018 by gemmell

The problem: Text is devoid of emotion. Emoticons do a great job of lightening things up a bit. However us geeks aren’t exactly known for being socially aware. I find that I can read text, and depending on my frame of mind, read it with whatever tone suits my feelings at that point. Plus geeks are notoriously rude and condescending, which can affect team performance and cohesion.

Chat Grease reduces the friction that occurs in text based conversations.

Chat Grease is a service that can take text, and
A) annotate it with emoticons to make it “lighter”; or
B) change the text slightly to be friendlier;
C) Give you a warning that particular passages are in danger of upsetting other people.

The idea is that people don’t get upset when there is no reason to, and that the tone of conversations stays light. This service takes text and can do any of the aforementioned 3 services, which means that you can create plugins for email clients, slack etc.

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Subscription Fungi

Posted on September 10, 2018 by gemmell

Grown in coffee grounds, we grow the mycelium network, and a box is delivered to your house just as the first mushrooms are pushing through. You watch it grow, harvesting boutique mushrooms over the next 3 to 4 weeks, and then your next box comes. Your existing box can be thrown in the compost (box and all) – mushroom compost is a soil conditioner and fertaliser.

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Actually. A bot that helps you record the things you appreciate.

Posted on September 10, 2018 by gemmell

One of the many tools in the toolbelt of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is to train your brain by reinforcing good things. A mechanism to do this is to write down 3 things that you appreciate each day. However, I believe the effectiveness of this tends to dim, as you have a couple of things which you lean on by default and the magic wears off.

So the idea here is that this would be a bot that asks you for the things you appreciate, and can really poke and prod and get you to think instead of taking the easy answers. Of course by doing so it is aiding you by helping you find the things that you appreciate. How? I dunno, magic.

Posted in Mental Health, Software, Technology | 1 Comment

Build Your Own Chill Sauce

Posted on August 21, 2018 by gemmell

Similar to the shoe shops doing the same, this is a website that would allow you to mix & match all the various chillis, vinegars, sweeteners etc to create your own perfect chilli sauce. Chilli sauce is a funny thing, people are very “partial” to a particular brand. And I wonder if having your own custom chilli sauce made just so would have a lasting customer base. I believe at the very least it would be a great birthday treat to get custom chilli sauce. Can have the logo & name printed on the bottle.

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A bot that convinces you of your intrinsic value/self worth

Posted on August 16, 2018 by gemmell

This is a bot for psychological good. It is a chat bot, and it’s whole aim is to help you see your self worth (your intrinsic value). The idea is that it doesn’t pander to you, but it holds a mirror up to show you the parts of what you’re telling it which make you intrinsically valuable, just being alive and being you. This is a bit of CBT, but it should be something that is doable as a bot because really it doesn’t need any smarts. It’s taking what you’re saying and showing you the positive side of it, the positive effects you have on the world, or how you engage with the world. Like CBT, it’s better if it has material to work with to remind those who are struggling of who they are and what they mean to others. For example, over the course of a chat with it, it could remind you of some of the positive experiences that you’ve had with your children, and that you mean something to them.

Posted in Big Issues Discussion, Kids, Software, Technology | Leave a comment

VR game to help people exercise

Posted on August 14, 2018 by gemmell

So one of the big barriers to an overweight or inactive person going out and doing a bunch of exercise is that they suck at it and would be in the public eye. So imagine there’s a VR game where in the headset you are at the starting line of a race in a packed stadium. You can hear a crowd, they’re cheering your name, and no matter if you walk or run, you win this race. And they get addicted to the support and screaming fans and they keep coming back for more. The one place they can be a sporting hero.

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Weight loss pill

Posted on August 14, 2018 by gemmell

It’s a pill, guaranteed to make you lose weight, and strengthen your abdominals and pelvic floor. How? It’s a non virulent strain of gastroenteritis. Lasts about 48 hours, you can’t eat anything, so it has to come with something you can drink to keep you alive, but essentially it’s enforced weight loss via a horrible virus.

JE’s extension is to use particular tape worms and have a “start diet” and “end diet” pill which essentially seeds it, then kills it.

Can’t see how either of these could possibly go wrong…

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Queer Eye for the PowerPoint Slide

Posted on August 11, 2018 by gemmell

Your slides are boring, or look amateurish. You need someone with an eye for this stuff. You need Queer Eye for the PowerPoint Slide.

Essentially you submit your powerpoint slide to a site, and it comes back all bedazzled/professional/whatever. It’s styled the content, laid it out nicely and consistently, and added transitions. Could entirely be done initially using people, and transition to a ML system.

If the name makes no sense, it is a take on Queer Eye

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