The Seattle Think Tank is a society of technology enthusiast and innovators. Its purpose is to create systems and inventions for fun and profit. This group was established so that ideas could be vetted by constructive criticism. We meet regularly to discuss ideas and to plan out projects.

Archive for the ‘ideas’ Category

10 Food Delivery Ideas

I’m sure you are aware of Amazon Fresh.  It’s a food delivery service from Amazon.  If you live in Seattle I’m sure you have seen the trucks and totes associated with it somewhere.  With all this amazing tech and people moving food around you have to wonder what services you could build if an API was available to build on top of. Last week the Seattle Think Tank brainstormed on the question “What can you do with an API for food delivery?“ and came up with the following ideas. If you are curious, this explains more of where all these ideas came from.  Also, a disclaimer, I don’t know of any such API from Amazon or any other food delivery service.  But, if and when this is publicly available, all of these ideas become possible.
  1. 5×5x5 Bachelor Recipes :  A 5 star meal for under 5 dollars in 5 minutes.  Recipes that would compete with fast food places.  The user would just need to select them, the food would be ordered via Amazon Fresh and sent to their door with instructions.
  2. Habit Builder : Build up a record of your eating habit from what you are ordering. Use this to improve your diet
  3. Corn Syrup Tracker : Track how much high fructose corn syrup your using based on what you are ordering.
  4. Scripted Elimination Diet :  You put in your preferences, and all the ingredients you need are sent to you in a planned out schedule so you can do this
  5. Allergy Alert : A 3rd party service you order your groceries through.  It checks against a database of products and ingredients to alert you if you ordered something with an allergy in it.  For instance if you have have a child allergic to peanuts.
  6. DIY Expensive Dinner :  Take a picture of a meal from a restaurant.  Send the picture to Amazon Remembers.  Find out what it is, go to Big Oven and get the recipe, have all the ingredients put on your Amazon Fresh order for next week.
  7. One Click Recipes : Publish recipes on Amazon as a PDF to the Kindle.  If someone wants to make the recipe they simply click and the ingredients are added to their Amazon Fresh shopping cart.
  8. Home Quartermaster : Amazon does do more than food.  Blue tooth devices in your house tell an Amazon Fresh agent program when you are running low on something; paper towels, kitty litter, etc.  That in turn adds more supplies to your shopping list automatically.  No more running out of coffee filters.
  9. “Rot or Not” : Assuming you could build a “Smart Fridge” that knows what food is in it.  It would know when something has gone bad, for instance the milk.  Then order you more.
  10. Grocery Guardian : Auto tracking of foods considered dangerous.  For instance, if spinach is being recalled, it warns you not to purchase it.
To conclude, I don’t know of an API for ordering food.  But, it is entirely possible that it exist or might just show up next week.  When it does, maybe this list of ideas can spark a new start-up or two.
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Posted by paulin to ideas on June 13, 2011 at 6:22 am

Best Ideas from the June 1st Idea Sprint

On June 1st we had our most recent idea sprint.  These idea sprints are something like group party games with the purpose of practicing ideation.  It was a lot of fun and the details of it are here http://bit.ly/Idea_Night_June_1 .   If you are interested in participating, I always send the sign up sheet out through the mailing list and the twitter feed, two weeks in advance.

I picked out 10 ideas that came up.  I’m not claiming that these haven’t been done before or that they are fantastic ideas.  But, we had fun coming up with them and they could provide a starting point for your next big idea.

  1. Energy Bill Map :  You can see your neighbors power consumption on a google map.  They can see yours as well.
  2. Appliance Blue Tooth Energy Report : Appliances could have this blue tooth standard. Using a blue tooth device they can tell you their power consumption easily
  3. Instant Conversation Subject : It a mobile app that gives you some conversation starters. This is to help people talk about something different from what they usually think about.
  4. Green Screen Adspace : Use a green screen at events so the ad can be swapped in later.
  5. Real time Micro Sponsorship : Micro sponsorship/advertising in real-time, such as on video games, in live recorded broadcast video.  Possible ad placement could be auctioned off as the event unfolds.
  6. Community Power Efficiency Competition :  Designate city wide neighborhood boundaries. Then track the power for the community. Make this information obvious. (in the news?)  Whichever community improves their power consumption the best gets a prize. i.e. free power for a while
  7. Celsius Day! : One day of the year we only use Celsius. Weathermen, news papers, and teachers. Think “talk like a pirate day”, but for promoting the metric system.
  8. Blue tooth bike security : A device for your bike that records when its being tampered with.  You can use your phone to view its log.
  9. QR Code discounts : QR Codes in public places.  If you scan them, they could have a secret coupon.  On the flip side the advertiser knows how effective the public sign is.
  10. 3rd Eye QR Reader : A QR reader that constantly looks for QR codes and stores that information via bluetooth to my phone
Hope these ideas get you thinking in a different direction.  Perhaps we will see you at the next idea sprint.
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Posted by paulin to Idea Sprints, Seattle 2.0, ideas on June 6, 2011 at 6:18 am