So there is a market for personal receipt and document scanners of the quick(er), feed in variety.  Neat Receipts is an awesome product that combines a small (non-flatbed) scanner with character recognition software and quickly turns your documents into spreadsheet data and retains a PDF backup.  Lately, I have done a lot of scanning and faxing right off of my smart phone.  With the right lighting and decent enhancements, text can be quickly taken off of the page and the finished result at the email or fax machine of the recipient is more than satisfactory.

So here I sit at the edge of my bed, looking to my desk.  Under the desk is a large amount of paperwork, and frankly I haven’t had the time to sit and scan everything into the scanner.  It is fast, but not that fast.  It’s hours of loading, and I’m just a small scale contractor currently.

The solution, as I envision it, is to place my cell phone on a small stand.  A very thin universal, clamp type holder that basically just holds the phone still, facing and about 12 inches from the surface of any desk.  It would be an arm, and some manner of a base, like a long necked version of one of those desk lamps with the flexible neck, but instead of a lamp at the top, there would be a cell phone clamp.  (If you can’t tell yet, I am writing this as the details come to me)  Why get rid of the lamp, lol.  Let’s put an LED lamp on each side of where the cell phone will reside (I’ll put a drawing up soon).  That way you could create a better environment of proper lighting for the “scanning.”

Now, the character recognition is rather demanding, and will slow down the process, so I think it should be done in stages.  You will want to be in capturing mode, and only do the OCR (optical character recognition) mode after you stop taking pictures.  The software could be set up to automatically just jump in and begin the conversion whenever you pause taking shots or it could wait for your go ahead.  So you would set the cell phone into the holder, position a pre-printed calibration sheet on the desk and allow the phone to calibrate itself for the light and focus.

As soon as the phone is ready you could begin.  The thing to understand is that the camera in your cell phone can be zoomed way outside the edges of the document and still have more than enough detail to fully recognize the text of even the smallest text on a sheet of paper.  This means that the document you are scanning does not have to be oriented or aligned in any particular way, as long as it is within the field of view of the camera.  This means speed.  A speed currently unrealized.

Using a finger anywhere on the page, all you would need to do is pass the paper through the field of view.  The camera would be set in focus and would automatically looking for geometric shapes to come into the field of view.  Upon recognition of the shape, and as it passed a particular threshold of the camera’s view, the camera would snap a single shot, quickly saving it to the camera’s memory.  Literally faster than a page a second, (limited only by what the camera could do) this process could be repeated through a stack of papers.

Upon completion of a group of documents, the second phase of the process would kick in, and the software would one at a time, take each picture and highlight the geometric shape (document) within it.  It would then crop out everything except the geometric shape, and lastly it would recognize the finger used to slide the paper across the field of view, and it would white it out from the image.  These images would be saved as PDF.

The third phase would kick in, and the OCR process would take all the data from the documents.  If it determines it is a receipt, it will save the data in an excel sheet.  If it determines it is a page from a book, then a rich text file will be generated.  So now you have a original source document PDF, and you also have a file with the data derived from the source.

Doing the process in batches and phases as I describe, would allow you to process a large group of files quickly.  It causes my mind to take it to the next step, which would be, camera permitting, a rapid version of the above.  Perhaps, a book reader, or movie speed (many frames per second)  Make no mistake, everything mentioned above is individually available right now.  I’m just suggesting we tie it all together.

This idea has been pulled and will be pitched at the upcoming Syracuse Startup Weekend.  It has been saved and will be published after the event.  🙂

Before I even begin, I will make very clear I am wildly proud and happy with my teenage son.  Slacking is something that I’m sure every father notices at some point in their children and feels an obvious obligation to reduce.  Yelling directly in one’s face or beating with a stick may not be the only way to adequately get the point across to a teenager, as natural as it may feel.  I think the issue with any slacking is the relationship of current video games or television with a future of reduced wages and low standard of living.  Obviously they are thinking about their future, just not for than 5-10 minutes from the present.  Coincidentally, they are easily prone to distraction in many forms.  One of those forms commonly being an app on their ipod or phone.

The idea for today is a simple app that would paint a future picture of the young person and give them a no nonsense, immediately engaging understanding of what their current behavior will more than likely bring them, down the road.  10 year increments could be used, going all the way to expected retirement.   It would be an educational tool disguised as a game.  Upon starting the app, the user, er – slacker, would be guided through a quick process of entering their name and location, and taking a quick picture of themselves, which would be added to the app for effect, and a thumbnail of their face would be used throughout the process.  They would be asked some basic but important questions, like “what would your choice of automobile be, if you could pick between the following 5 choices – truck, motorcycle, vintage car, sports car, foreign sedan”  These type of questions would form a solid connection to the teen as they use the app and it caters the result to them, (more on this below).   Some of the most important questions would be, “What kinds of grades do you have?”
“What college do you intend to go to and for what occupation?”
“Do you intend to get married?”
“How many children do you see yourself having?”

The app would then allow them to advance 10, 20, 30 years into the future, and would accurately give their expected standard of living in terms a teen could appreciate.  Like 3 most likely cars they are driving (based on the initial input of their taste), where they are eating when they go out to dinner, or perhaps the quantity of times they can expect doing extra things they love, like going to a pro football game or stadium concert. Aging software would modify their face, on their thumbnail, just making the result more real for them.  The key with the app is that it could do all the math in the background.  Telling a teen they will make 14 dollars an hour means nothing to them.  Telling a teen they will more than likely be driving a used economy car, or be living in a one bedroom apartment in a crummy area of town and actually using real locations that they know, that will have a much bigger effect.  You could even throw in options asking if they plan using recreational drugs, or any other question that could engage their current thinking and apply it to their future selves. The statistics are out there.  The math can be applied.  The app is not giving an exact bottom line, it is just showing the difference between this path and the other.  Will it cause a mass exodus of teens from the video games to the public library, not likely, but if enough kids load it up on their device and talk about it, the consciousness WILL increase and that means that lives WILL be changed.

I will contribute 500.00 towards making this a reality.

Warning – This is going to be a bit on the techy side, but as always I will try to simplify.  That being said, the method/solution I’m going to describe today is far reaching and doesn’t just apply to search engines. 

Search engines, like Google, use a system of values / algorithms to arrive at their site ranking.  This varies from search engine to search engine, but they all are similar.  They prioritize certain criteria, such as links to a site, or links from a site to another site, or any other readily available information about that site.  Where they differ is their prioritizing of one of those criteria over the other.  Now, that system is designed to go out to an internet that is just functioning as it should be, and gather up information so that the calculations Bing or Google are making are as accurate as possible.  Unfortunately, what happens is that certain folks out there are more concerned with their ranking on the search engines than they are with providing valuable content, and they study the system, and simply modify their site to maximize the value of the site on the search engine’s criteria.  The result is that the folks that are just worrying about the best content possible are beaten out in ranking by others who are basically just cheating. 

Now the solution is fairly simple.  I will use the analogy of a teacher (the search engine) and some students (various websites needing to be graded on their quality)  If you were a teacher in a classroom of 10,000 students that you couldn’t really regulate (like the web), you would want to reduce cheating on your tests, so that you could accurately grade a students progress.   Obviously cheaters would have an easy time of it.  Answer keys would pop up and be easily passed around.  What you COULD do, is mix up the questions – to a degree that answers couldn’t be easily shared.  You may not eliminate cheating completely, but you would reduce it significantly, and that’s the point of the excercise. 

So what should a search engine do?  Or perhaps what should any online entity that runs a standardized test or study of a large community of users?   They should mix up the questions.  Google and Bing have multiple data streams coming in.  Much of it is related.  I suggest that while the result may not be exactly the same by using various methods and measures, there is enough of a definite relationship between the data sources and measurement methods as a whole, that a search engine could continuously switch what they were measuring at some regular interval, and greatly reduce the effect of cheating as a whole.  They wouldn’t have to switch up every measurement for every site, just some of the sites, enough to confuse the observer as to what the heck was going on.  Then, within the program at the core of the search engine, the data could be compared and related back to a standard scale similar to what they were using in the first place, without switching things around.  For instance, for a football team to win against another team, there are more points scored by one team than the other.  There are a host of statistics included in that game.  If it’s a complete blowout, then all the stats will be in favor of one team.  If it’s close, ther may be some stats in favor of one or the other, but as a rule, the winning team will usually have the better stats overall.   You can’t say that the team with the most sacks wins, or that the team that had the least amount of interceptions won, but when you add those and other statistics together, and compare it with a history of the many games that came before, you could more than likely tell with great accuracy, who won the game, without needing to know what the score was. 

As I say, this applies to all online measurements of peoples response and opinion.  You design these things to be as simple as possible, and they usually would be very effective, if not for the folks that figure out how you are measuring, and cheat their way to the top. 

I wanted something a bit silly for today, and how timely with elections coming within the week.  It’s a simple idea, and before I even get into the ramifications of politics or decency, just know how my mind works.  If you would call me a name to mock me, I’m the kind of guy who would use that name myself and by doing so reduce the power it gives you.  That being said, this came to me literally whilst dipping a tea bag into a cup of hot water.  I was dropping the bag in and out of the water, and in only moments thought to myself, “man, if they had a little wind up device that you could attach the tea bag string to, and it would just go up and down slightly for a minute… it would be quite helpful.

Then it hit me.  A plastic man, smaller than a GI Joe doll, with some manner of slots in his feet so that he could be set firmly right on the ring of a mug or glass.  He would be squatting down, facing away from the beverage.  In his back would be an indentation just big enough that a tea bag string would be able to rest against,  His left and right hands would be molded together, near the right shoulder, with the hands open slightly and a little space between them  This would allow you to quickly fasten and unfasten a tea bag string in place over his shoulder.  You would set him on the rim of your glass, drop the tea bag in the water just behind him, bringing the string up his back and draw the excess over his shoulder, cinching it in place.  A few turns of the little wind up mechanism, and he suddenly comes to life, squatting down and raising up, down and up, down and up, raising the tea bag in and out of the water.

Now before anyone gets all crazy and offended.  There is nothing indecent about the bag or it’s action.  It is tea.  It is anatomically equivalent to a man putting a large sack over his back, holding the drawstrings and dipping the thing into a nearby pond.  If it upsets you, that’s not on me.  What is on me if anything is bringing some legitimacy to what is indeed a foul concept, that is now associated with a political group.  Now whether you agree or not with that group doesn’t really matter.  The Boston tea party was a tremendous moment in our history and it should be celebrated.

The genius of my idea is that it could truly be appreciated in all households.  The liberals will love it for the bashing of the “teabaggers!”  The conservatives will love it for the completely decent depiction of tea being spent, or perhaps the demonstration that they embrace the term “teabagger” in spite of the mockery.  I don’t care what side you’re on, just enjoy the benefit of the little soldier handling the business for you.

The problem with these damned machines we use, is that they don’t have basic common sense when it comes to self preservation.  Viruses can easily be written to tell a PC to simply harm itself in one way or another.  Any protection you write into the code, can be violated in some way.  The virus basically tells the operating system, “hey, I’m actually a valid process, and you are cool with this modification I’m making to this important system file.”  The operating system is truly incapable of saying, “hey wait a minute, i can’t let you do that!”  Sure virus protection works well when employed aggressively and updated religiously, but there are always exceptions where the program is fooled into some wrongdoing upon itself.  To put it in terms of something more physical, if you had a robot, it would be the equivalent of that robot pulling out a screwdriver with it’s right hand and stabbing itself in the eye socket.  Is the robot not capable of basic common sense?  “No matter what I do, I know that I should never stab myself in the eye with a screwdriver!”  That is a humorous visual, but it begs the question, “can this stupid computer not be programmed to just flat out not harm itself, no matter what command is input or line of code seems to demand.

I have spoken with a couple programmers and they all say the same thing.  Whatever you write in there for the program to do or not do, there could easily be a hack written to simply modify that rule or rules and have the program doing bad things to itself in no time.  The “rules” of the code are constantly subject to change. So I say BS.

One thing I have learned is that if a hacker or group of hackers wants to have there way with you, there is really nothing you can do, outside of government level protection, that can save you from harm.  Put it another way, if someone has to come into your home and pull your laptop out and throwing it into the river, you can never be 100% safe.  So what is the best advice.  Be the wolverine.  Be the honey badger.  These two animals are certainly not the biggest, not the strongest.  A bear could surely eat one if he wanted to badly enough, but the bear knows that the meal will be the most painful meal of it’s life.  Just not worth it.  So the answer with protecting yourself online, is put enough protection on your machines that it may be “possible” for your machine to be hacked or attacked, but it will just not be worth the trouble.

So how is this done?  The non-programmer proposes two things.  First, all processes carried out by the operating system, (the brain of what the computer is actually doing), will be broken into 2 tiers.  Tier one is the sacred system.  The “vital organs” of the operating system.  Files that if modified, will have significant harm on operations, for example. Tier two is the various programs or settings that the user and the programs used have access to, just like they do now in the operating systems of today.

Secondly, the operating system will enable a virtual regulator that will run an encrypted code sequence against any action to modify the “vital organs” of the operating system and it’s sacred operations and files.  This technology exists already in encrypted emails as your identity is verified as the sender and intended recipient, and also to prove that the message is intact down the line.  This method would just be used within the operating system with certain absolute functions that can’t simply be circumvented.  Updates from the operating system, could on a quarterly or annual basis, include new encrypted keys to ensure that there violation would again, not be necessarily impossible, but just extremely difficult, and just not worth the trouble.

Again, I am not a programmer.  I hire the programmer.  I envy and respect the programmer, but I am not one.  I just know it’s high time we get start keeping these machines from stabbing each other in the eye with the proverbial screwdrivers that are out there.

Currently Facebook offers “most recent” and “top stories” options for the news feed.  These are fine for now, but we need to get on to the next level.  Ideally that would be “by category.”  That’s right, certain keywords and phrases would cause linking within the news feed during a given period of time and users could see not just a dinner pic, a meme, a inspirational note, a hurricane update, one after the other.  Instead they could see the most recent 4-6 of each together.  Now, by putting them together, there would not be a need for each one taking up half of your news feed space.  4-6 dinner pictures could be placed in your news feed as a block, with the friends name and the first 5 words from the description under each one, or perhaps expanding out with a “mouse over” like what happens now when you hold the mouse over a commenter’s thumbnail.  The fact is, then you are browsing images, you very quickly can see what interests you and what doesn’t.  Memes, religious images, and political images are all examples of things you may or may not be in the mood for.  If images could be automatically categorized, which we now have the technology to do quickly and easily, the overall experience of the news feed browse would be quite possibly, a manageable event.  Currently many just don’t have the time to go through all the posts that were put up since the last time they visited.  That is a recipe for disconnection and apathy.  Categories – that’s the remedy.

If I haven’t sold you yet on the obvious value to this concept for every Facebook user, then just consider the obvious follow on thought.  With this categorization, the user will be able to just select a particular category and go through that specific portion of the news feed.  Oh yeah.  Still not sold?  Just consider the opposite.  Consider being able to prohibit that particular portion of the news feed;  like all political posts, all religious or all atheist posts (or both), or pics containing particular words.

What crazy nonsense is this?  A news feed catered just the way I want, with only information I want to see?  Who would be interested in that?

Be it YouTube, Facebook, Imgur or whatever site you can think of that has open commenting, there should be a daily top 10 comments listed somewhere on the page.  At it’s simplest it can be an automated product based on the likes or likes vs dislikes.  Now before you cry out that this is trivial and of no importance, please consider the possibility that commenting, in general, can be have a very positive effect on ones writing skills.   As we all know, grammar and spelling errors are corrected instantly by the technically accurate trolls who seem to lie in wait, but I would say without a doubt, regular commenters who actually take in the feedback of others, are improving both their brevity as well as the relevance of their writing.   A top 10 list of the days most favorably responded to comments from all the posts within any of the big sites would be at the least a valuable read.

On a technical note, privacy could be preserved.  YouTube, not an issue as it’s all open, but Facebook could prompt the user, “You have one of the top 10 comments in Facebook today.  Click “everyone” now, to share this comment, and the original post with the Facebook community.”  This could be done for the original post as well, if applicable.  If the person with the original picture or post is not interested in sharing, then the computer just goes down the list to the next top rated comment.  Again, it would be completely automated.  The website owner would be allowing the users to generate additional content for their benefit and enjoyment, and yet another thing to come back to.

Perhaps the simplest solution to explain yet.  Connections could and should be made by the content of the comments section.  This applies to all content, and could simply be used in the background with the existing “related content” algorithm or be listed transparently to the user – “based on the comments in this post, you may also be interested in the following posts.”  This is a connection I have not seen anyone pick up on yet, and I just came to mind today as I was driving along on Interstate 81.

The really cool stuff happens when you place these associations into the appropriate analysis.  For example, trends could be determined from groups of conversations without having to use polls, as well as other useful determinations.  (Some of this goes back to my post on English as Math as the computer is better able to understand a value in what is being said.)  Sorry, Facebook.  Instead of patting yourself on the back for the addition of “5 friends posted about President Obama,”  it would be much more impressive to see, “among your friends, 37 thought he won the debate, 38 thought Mitt Romney won, and 13 thought it was even.  among your friends of friends it was 284 / 274 / 69.  That determined in the comments of the following 45 threads.”  Or perhaps, “the current hot debate on last nights game, with currently 58 expletives and counting, is at this thread.”

Oh geez, what am I saying?  Facebook can’t even include a dislike button.  (Thumbs down)

Regardless of your political standing, if you appreciate getting the most recent news stories in one location, you must appreciate the Drudge Report model.  If you are unfamiliar then you should stop reading immediately and see for yourself.  If you hate all things conservative and it blocks your brain from being able to appreciate ingenuity there is always the Drudge Retort, but the concept of aggregating news using links that Matt Drudge started is revolutionary and has changed the face of news.  Period.  Today’s solution is simply the combination of yesterday’s post on automated blog “scoring” and the use of blog categorizing to create a instantaneous bloggers paradise.

Let’s just call it blogaggregate.com for the purpose of discussion.

You arrive there, and the hottest blog posts of the day are listed, some with included pics, all having been high scoring and all on various topics.  Now just type any word into the search bar.  The result is a page full of the top related blog posts.  Highly rated posts are elevated to the top of each category relating to the word.  You can additionally select search settings to further search for your blog.  Because it’s an aggregate setup, you only see the links and occasional pics, but remembering yesterdays post, you will see several scores alongside each link, showing what the top rating products “scored” each blog post.  You will also see a small thumbnail for the sites the blog comes from.

The real madness comes in when you realize that this provides the quickness of twitter searching on any topic with actual validated content, and you have a changing of the game.  I’m in on this one for 1000.00.