Inventor For Hire.

I remember, back in 2004, saying to the people at the company where I worked, "This would be right up our alley!  We already produce one of the best 3D GIS type applications, and the hardware to do what I'm thinking surely can't be too far away."

The lethargy and ennui was palpable, it was a bit like speaking to a bunch of fish heads at the local seafood shop.  Glazed eyes, mouths slack, and definitely no sign of interest.  What was I referring to?  That soon, mobile devices would have GPS built-in, that we already knew how to extract significant details out of an image file, and that more and more images were going online, of places of interest.

So if you know the GPS location of a PDA, and you have a picture taken by that device at that spot, you could quite quickly and easily extract salient features, and figure out what the picture was of, and send back information on that particular feature.  Add the image to your stock of images of the place if it showed any improved salient feature information.

Then - four years later, I see this.  They've added the ability to add social tags and info.  But in general, I can only say "f*ck you, my former employers, for being so reticent to try something new."

Wouldn't be so bad if it was a one off, but it's not.  It's one of a long string (probably close to several hundred if I stopped count, much as that would annoy me) of ideas and concepts I've had, and of which a few dozen then surfaced in real life, some with quite compelling success.

So if you're a person or company not averse to possibly developing the next Killer App or Killer Device, talk to me.  Tell me what you do, and I'll see if I can find you a new WorldCam.