The impact of problem gambling on families can be devastating and we see it first hand in the financial counseling that we do. (Disclosure: I'm the founder of MoneyStack and we run GamFin.org)
A lockbox for real estate agents that has a built-in video camera and microphone+speaker.
I mean something like Ring (1) plus MasterLock 5400D (2) plus embedded 4G mobile connectivity. It must not be a permanent installation (like Ring) and it should not require visitors to be pre-registered (like Supra Keys (3)) in order to access the property (for example contractors, repair staff, delivery personnel, etc)
If something like this already exists, please let me know.
Could you just attach a smartphone to a door, and have open one of those Supra lockboxes over Bluetooth? I guess the issue there is battery life.
I make prototypes of stuff like this as a hobby. You could use a fairly inexpensive SoC that has Wifi/Bluetooth built in ($6), attach a module for 4G connection (~$50), and give it a huge battery so that it can lasts a few weeks. It would be asleep most of the time, and wake up every 2 minutes or so to check for updates. Meaning you'd have to stand there at the door for a couple minutes before it'd give you access.
The cell phone + supra lockbox approach could work. One would need to be a realtor though. Supra only sells through realtor associations.
Thanks for the info regarding the components.
I wonder if there'd actually be a market for this kind of thing.. i.e. One person unlocking access to physical keys in a lockbox at a remote location so that another person can gain access to something. It would be used in a temporary installation, not like ring.com installed at a front door of a house or remote access tech built into cars these days.
Another case of technology in search of a problem... :-(
We actually built something like this but for bikes. http://lockandgo.bike/index_en.html, it has data connection for remote lock/unlock and even gps to get the position. There was no market. We could pivot to this easily...
I can't remember exactly what inspired me to become an engineer 20 years ago. I find this "advertisement" (found on the New York Times homepage) to be quite well done. Effective? Who knows? I wonder what else students are seeing or hearing about these days to inform and perhaps inspire them to consider careers in Science, Engineering and Technology?
I like the idea. I am trying to buy a chart for my wedding date in Pittsburgh, but the download after preview fails to happen. I using Chrome on a Mac. Maybe I am using it wrong. I don't know.
Anyway, here are my feature requests:
1) See what a chart looks like immediately. Can be pre-generated. (Someone already said this in a previous comment)
2) Would like to annotate my chart with notes or custom title, subtitle, etc
3) Share chart on various social media sites as an interactive widget or simply a photo. (Someone already said this in a previous comment)
4) Print to a T-shirt or mug on zazzle.com or other T-shirt site (you can probably make money here as an affiliate).
5) This is a little crazy, but maybe overlay my wedding gift registry items on top of the star chart so that people can buy our wedding registry items in a cool and interactive way instead of navigating through multiple totally crappy wedding registry sites. (again you can probably make money as an affiliate here)... it's just an idea...
I worked for a huge company in their IT dept. We tried to convince our management to upgrade all the development machines using some of the arguments already mentioned in this thread. They did not want to believe that a hardware refresh would actually improve productivity ("show us the ROI"). A couple of us decided to build a tool to gather some metrics on how long it took to build and deploy our app on localhost (if you're interested see http://lopb.org). We then compared results before and after a simple RAM upgrade on a few machines. We were able to show hard numbers to support the claim that better, faster hardware would save time waiting for build & deploy to complete.
Although building in less time did lead to happier developers, it did not lead to more features getting built in the given time frame. We did eventually all get RAM upgrades at least, but the development process and technology stack we were using were the real time sucks that we could not fix with better hardware.
Since many of you have commented about regulation, check out the SAFE Bet Act https://tonko.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...
Also, the GRIT Act may bring much needed federal funding into the prevention and treatment system across the US. https://www.ncpgambling.org/advocacy/grit-act/