From this...

Want to make a quick buck doing nothing but browsing around shops for stuff you really, really love browsing around shops for?

No, wait, this isn’t something shit!

(You are going to learn information that the FDA, the FBI, the BBC and Al Qaeda don’t want you to know!!)

I am going to teach you IN THREE EASY STEPS how to earn ANY RATE OF PAY YOU DESIRE!!

>>>>>>>>>WANT TO BE RICH??<<<<<<<<<<

Here’s what L Ray of Swansea had to say about this winning method:

“I couldn’t believe it. It worked exactly as he said. It’s so simple! I can’t believe more people aren’t using this method!!”

I’m now going to tell you information that could change your life.

Are you ready?

People who have perfected this technique can literally become an instant millionaire, several times over, in one or two hours of effortless BROWSING!

Here’s the process:

!REMEMBER! iF yOU dON’T pASS oN tHIS mESSAGE tO aT lEAST 100 pEOPLE yOUR wHOLE fAMILY wILL sUFFER tERRIBLE pAIN aND dISTRESS fOR 7 yEARS!

The process is as follows:

1. Saunter casually into your favourite shop with the air of a rich man. The kind of man who reads watch magazines. Perhaps even buy a watch magazine before you go in there. Have a haircut, have a shave. Sling your sweater over your shoulders and breeze into the shop. In theory it can be a shop selling anything, but while you’re practicing it’s better to go into the kind of shoddy goods shop you’re acquainted with. You won’t be spending much more time in there after you’ve perfected this technique.
2. Browse. Look around for the absolute bestest thing. The thing you feel you can’t do without, you have to buy it. You can buy it – you’re a tremendously rich man, the richest (soon to be)! Go on, ask to see it. Ask confidently. Pick it up, handle it. Ask lots of questions. Be casual, this is no big deal for you, you do this kind of thing every day. Let’s say the thing you’re looking at is some kind of executive toy, quite a posh one, for senior executives. Something to do with golf.


...to this...

Ask the price, casually like:

“How much is this office golfing device?”

“£75″

You think to yourself: “That’s quite reasonable. This is a pretty cool device – I could have some fun with this.”

Look the assistant in the eye. She’s young. Make her shy. Any other day.

But not today. Today you’re on business, you’re at work, you’re making a mint. Oh yes, yes you are, you started accumulating your new wealth at least 10 minutes ago.

“I’ll take it,” you smolder. Why not? You’re just about to close your first deal.

3. Absent-mindedly stroll over to the counter. Your purchase decision has been made, you’ve left the assistant in an agony of awe and desire, now your mind is on other things. Important things. Business matters.
4. Now the final step is where it all happens. Take out your wallet, act perfectly normally. At this point you are absolutely focused. You are a kestral, a hunted fox; you are a master of deception. Take out your money. Focus. Your mind is now a void. Forget everything you are and everything you were. Forget everything you wanted. Look at the golf device on the counter, the assistant’s vacant eyes. Now, without a word, go and put the golf device back on the shelf and walk out of the shop. And feel glorious.

Congratulations. You just made yourself £75 in less than 10 minutes. Not a bad rate of pay for your first day on the job, eh? Go out and treat yourself.

I call this technique the reverse purchase.

Next time, if you’re after the big money, go and out and reverse purchase something you’ve always dreamed of. You can get earn a lot on reverse credit these days…

...to this. Using only a small amount of brain power. Compare that to the horsepower you'll get from this beast and it's no comparison, so don't bother. Then consider: is one small part of brain worth more than a thousand horses?

When these two points coincide, you are on the verge of selling vuvuzelas.

Now is that time.

Commence!

I’m sure you’ve noticed the vuvuzela phenomenon – that annoying horn people are constantly blowing at the World Cup.

As you have feared, vuvuzelas are selling out faster than a bear twitches when being attacked by a swarm of bees. And, according to the Guardian, the trend is spreading worldwide:

Sainsbury’s sold 22,000 red vuvuzelas – or “Vu Vu horns” as it brands them – in 12 hours before England’s game – one every two seconds. The supermarket chain has ordered 25,000 extra horns but thinks it may run out before Friday’s game against Algeria

One extremely clever bloke already dubbed himself The Vuvuzela Man – most of his are sold out too. He was selling them for £10 each.

The handy thing is, you can buy them for about 10p from Chinese wholesalers via Alibaba. You’ll have to buy 5,000 minimum, but if you’ve got £500 to spare, it seems that you could multiply that by at least 50 once you sell them all online at BuyVuvuzelas.net (that’ll set you back another £10).

But if your inner moral code won’t let you face the prospect of being next football season’s most hated man, you could forget selling vuvuzelas, and concentrate on developing “The Vuvuzela Plug” – a simple device to be inserted into the largest orifice of your nearest vuvuzela user.

Firstly, apologies to my many fans for such a long break. I have been eating pizza at Bricco Cafe, Huaihai Lu, Shanghai. Join me. I will be there on Monday wearing an inside-out-watermelon-coloured jumper.

Secondly, have you ever considered your certain and impending death? I bet you have!

More specifically, have you ever considered what will happen to your digital assets when you die? I bet you haven’t!

What do I mean, digital assets? I mean all the emails you’ve poured your living heart into, all your hard-earned PayPal money, your soulful blog posts, your countless, pouting, one-armed profile pics, pictures of your one-armed dog, all those Google Docs overflowing with world-changing ideas…

Yes. All that.

What you need, my son (be you a man), is a digital will.

Yes, email providers might let relatives access your email if shown your death certificate (the Yahoo scandal where a dead Marine’s wife was refused access to his email probably helped put this policy on the agenda). But maybe you don’t want everyone to read your private emails when you’re dead? Maybe you’ve been a liar and a cheat?

What’s more, most of the online services with which you’re forging your digital self don’t have much of a death policy:

Facebook offers to memorialize a page by freezing it in time, but Flickr refuses all access to an account and Twitter does not even address death directly in its FAQ. (BBC)

Like I say, you need a digital will.

There are a few companies already offering something like this. Legacy Locker is a storage service for passwords to online accounts, so people you choose can have access to them when you depart the Twittering world. Swiss DNA Bank will let you store your files on their server and self-swab your DNA, both of which will be kept – forever – in a nuclear bunker under a mountain in the Swiss Alps. Sensitively-named Death Switch…

…prompts you for your password on a regular schedule to make sure you are still alive. When you do not enter your password for some period of time, the system prompts you again several times. With no reply, the computer deduces you are dead or critically disabled, and your pre-scripted messages are automatically emailed to those named by you.

"Well, I don't hear from anyone much anymore but it's nice to get those password checks."

These services are fine and dandy, but you’d be well advised to set up your own, for three reasons:

1. Over the next few decades, the digital corpses are going to pile up in ever-greater numbers, as we see the looming deaths of people who were not too old to learn about the internet in the 90s.
2. The existing services are not sophisticated. Maybe people want to divide up their digital assets within a service, e.g. leave different sets of photos to different people. You don’t want your grandchildren to see the drunken, semi-naked tomfoolery you got up to at their age, but you might want them to see your Iraq war videos.
3. There is nothing legally binding about the existing services. Ok, so Deathswitch sends an email. What if it misfires?  That’s your only chance at an encore, ruined! You want this digital will to be part of a legal structure, like a full-on Last Will and Testament don’t you? Pioneer it!

If all this talk of death has got you down, get up – there is hope: according to Ray Kurzweil (whose book The Singularity Is Near
I’m reading at the moment) et al, before we die we’ll be able to create our minds in digital form, and thus outlive the withering of our bodies.

I’m with him, but if you don’t buy into that, buy DigitalWill.net (it’s available) and become a legal executor on behalf of lost digital souls before the domain becomes occupied by the uploaded mind of someone called William.

Is that an arse on your head or are you just wearing a coat of leaves? Either way, I'm pleased to see you.

When I look at this picture of the mythical Chinese sovereign Fu Xi, I’m not sure which strikes me more: the arse shape of his head, or the fact that his coat is made of leaves. Despite straining my brains, I can’t come up with any ideas relevant to Fu Xi’s former facet, so this idea will be related to the latter: the leaf coat.

Idea #19: Bio fashion

The leaf coat is an under-explored item of outerwear, and you know it is. When was the last time you ever saw anyone wear a leaf coat? Was there even a first time? Fur coats left, right and centre, yet not one soul in this so-called age of eco recycled sustainable organic stuff have I, personally, EVER seen wearing a coat of leaves. I have not even seen leaves featured in a coat!

A 'Weedrobe' by Nicole Dextras

(See Inhabitat for more bio fashion.)

You can already see that the true human clothing cycle should be fur coats in the winter and leaf coats in the summer. Add in even mild ethical concerns and we’re just left with a unisex coat of eco recycled sustainable organic leaves, a perfect fit for the current climate-concern culture.

From a business point of view, too, does it not make total sense? Once you invest in a sewing machine (pedal powered – carbon footprint, exercise), your raw materials can be obtained gratis from the park. Yes, probably a fair few man hours needed until you get the hang of it, but what could be more relaxing than sewing a coat of leaves?

Then, will you not find it easy to spread the word about your new product? Through the worldwide network of optical fibres, will you not be able to find one solitary, quivering nutcase to buy your ridiculous creation for a premium? Of course you will!

Yet you can also see that a leaf coat will barely be a practical solution in the long-term. With a pang of injured pride, I can feel the first tears in the seams of this idea within a week, I can see the dry and withering mess it will become.

But there is a solution!

The key market for bio fashion lies in one-off garments. That means wedding dresses and designer dresses for things like celebrities.

And the great thing is this just means you can sell your bio fashion for an even more ridiculous price!

• Why do they get it from you? Because you’re the only person doing it, therefore your creations are renowned and you quickly become the expert and leader in your field.
• Why do they get it at all? Because in a world of mass produced artifacts, people who can be bothered are desperate to find unique, exclusive items. What could be more exclusive than something that can only last a few days and simultaneously displays their trendy at-oneness with nature?

As you become more comfortable with your new found abilities, you can turn your ambitions to bio fashion flower dresses. None of this is as ridiculous as it sounds. Here’s a creation from Bio Fashion Week, held a few months ago in Columbia:

Risk of anaphalactic shock

A girl told me to write this.

Update (18/2/10)

It seems that the Dutchman Mr. Marc Frencken was ahead of the times on this one. He sent in this photo of himself sporting a very respectable unisex garment of bio fashion:

A wedding portrait for the 21st century

Mr Frencken, how did you construct this bio garment?

This bio garment is constructed of the actually (and I know I am letting you down here) not-so-bio material called plastic. It is a more robust prototype of a future-to-build real leafy version.

Was there a special occasion?

The occasion was last year’s halloween. Dressing up in this ‘leaf suit’ I gave myself the simple name: Bush!

And the lady?

The lady, logically, is sexy Mrs. Bush!

Anyone interested in getting their hands on a pair of the shutter shades Mr. Frencken is sporting in tasteful combination with his bio garb, please contact him at marc [doot] frencken [aat] gmail [doot] com.

A few months ago, I tried to go blind for a day, although I had the idea at about six in the evening. Still, going blind for a few hours is difficult if you aren’t asleep. The lowlight of my particular experience was taking a nightmarish shower during which a rat jumped on my back disguised as the feeling of a loofah that usually hangs from a hook on the wall. After the shower, I spent most of my time reflecting on what it is like to keep your eyes closed for more than a few minutes, the chief feeling I noticed being just eyelid strain. A largely fruitless experience.

I’ll go blind again for a full day when I pluck up the courage to venture around Shanghai using only my weaker senses. Or perhaps I’ll wait until I’m in a country where the attitude to pneumatic drilling isn’t so…relaxed…  Still, it will be a largely masochistic endeavour – not the kind of thing that’ll make anybody feel any better, not me, nor blind people, nor you. It’s a far cry from the standard of social enterprise ideas that made this blog famous…

Perhaps wiser to spend more time on a social enterprise idea that legitimises stumbling around a field in a state of sensory confusion to the sounds of the Killers? How about the greatest social enterprise idea yet to grace these pages? How about…

Idea #18: Blind music festival

Organise a music festival in support of the blind.

Ah ha, but there’s more…

The key idea is that everyone must wear a blindfold – i.e. both those who can normally see, and those who can’t. Registered blind people get free tickets; everyone else has to pay. You could make a poster like this (but a nicer version, with genuine raised braille bits please!):

Why is this a great social enterprise idea? It would be

1. a tremendous show of solidarity between the sighted and blind communities.
2. a unique environment where blind people could cease to feel disabled for a while (they’d even have the upper hand, as they are used to being blind!)
3. an enlightening experience for those who can normally see, raising awareness and probably giving people a better (or at least different) experience of music. This is how dark restaurants get their appeal, right?
4. an easy way to raise money!
5. a barrel of hearty laughs

"Has anyone seen my shoe?"

There are loads of variations on the theme of a blind music festival, but the paper-thin attention span you sport and/or your growing irritation at the screenreader’s robot voice has forced me to reduce it all to a series of points:

Blindfold bands – Bands could also be required to wear blindfolds, giving them a chance to really show off their talent.

No peeking! – How are we going to make sure people don’t take a sly peek, thus ruining everything for everyone? Perhaps hold the festival in an indoor arena in the dark? Or just have loads of Peek Police patrolling and throwing people out? Have sirens attached to the blindfolds that blare painfully in the offender’s ear if they lift their blindfold? Or just trust people?

Security – To you and I it just sounds like a jolly good time, but enterprising scumbags see past this to an orgy of pickpocketing opportunities and rape. So let’s not make the security guards wear blindfolds, ok? I’m sure the blind people won’t object either.

Market – There are around 150,000 blind people in the UK. Get even 50,000 of them on board, plus another 50,000 of your regulars, and you’re bigger than the Reading festival. Use a lot of radio adverts.

If you’re interested in organising this, why not contact me and we’ll see if we can find some other people (Bono) to do the work.

Don’t feel ready to jump in to the sex-crazed world of music festival organising? Click here to donate to the RNIB (UK) or email volunteering@rnib.org.uk to volunteer for a few hours.

He's getting the idea...

“Ha!” I can hear you saying, “Sell out!” But hold your tongue a minute. You have sold out yourself and got NIENTE in return. Have a look at the logos crawling around inside your wardrobe. You’re already advertising for companies. Worse, you’ve paid them for the priviledge! It’s time the tables were turned.

Idea #17: The Walking Advert

So how do you become a walking advert? Actually, with this idea I have some personal experience to draw on. Last winter I was working at the Green Tortoise Hostel, San Francisco. A bit short of cash, I devised the devious plan of creating an Ad Jacket.

Here’s how to make one:

1. Stick a sign on the back of your favourite jacket that reads:
   

…thus creating the Ad Jacket BASIC.

2. Walk around your chosen highly frequented venue as if you are going about your normal business (although secretely you are waiting for an approach).
3. Strike deals with advertisers who approach you, placing their adverts on another part of the jacket while leaving the original sign in place so as to attract more advertisers. The result is the Ad Jacket MAX:


Modelled by a real French girl

4. Find out further details about whatever you are advertising so you can inform interested parties.
5. You are now a fully-fledged walking advertisement. Move around your chosen venue wearing the Ad Jacket MAX as if you are going about your normal business.
6. When people stop to read what it says on your back, or just laugh at you, take the opportunity to inform them further about what on earth you are doing, moving slyly into a sales pitch for products you’ll earn a commission off.
7. Reap the rewards.

I found my personal experience of being a walking advert entirely fulfilling. From the moment I donned the Ad Jacket BASIC people were shooting subtle glances, making polite inquiries. It wasn’t long before I made my first deal, a sign that read:

Ask me about weed

That was a sign put on there by a gardener, but so excited was I by having struck my first commission-based deal, I ran off before he got a chance to write ‘ing’. Still, as it was, the sign made me a significant profit, for a negligible amount of work. I’d recommend it to everyone.

Here is a run down of the other ads I can recall having on my back by the time the ad jacket developed into an Ad Jacket MAX, and how I profited:

• “Genuine Limited Edition San Francisco Space Brownies” – commission-based, $1 per brownie referral
• “Ask me about haircuts” – a free haircut
• “Ask me about a gourmet dinner by a top chef” – a free gourmet dinner by a top chef
• “Martin S Gardea is the Greatest Living Artist on the Face of the Earth” - $22 advance placement fee
• “I’ll comb your hair till it’s so very, very soft” - approx. $5 for a limited period
• “Ask me about cheap beer and vodka” - an endless stream of income

Now these may look like slim pickings, but do not for a moment take the potential of the ad jacket lightly. If you truly have no shame, you could make a really big deal out of making yourself into a walking advert. Why not create a full ensemble of wacky ad clothes? Better still, do it with tattoos! Spread the word to the media that you are selling your whole body as advertising space, pull a few publicity stunts (more about these in a later post) and before you know it, you are THE AD MAN! Thereafter, all you need to do is make public appearances and watch the sponsorship money roll in…

If you fear embarking on such a harebrained project would be one of the biggest mistakes you could possibly make, why not make a sensible business out of it, like the gentlemen who developed the Ad Walker:

(Thanks Cool Business Ideas for finding this.)

You know what I mean?

The rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and scholarship. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics. (Wikipedia)

Basically, the master of The Glass Bead Game – ‘Magister Ludi’ – is the ultimate and most revered bloke in all the land – i.e. the best person in the world. This Glass Bead Game idea got me thinking… Why is there not a game like that around now? I mean, everyone gets unreasonably excited about people singing bad songs on X Factor. But forget ‘best singer’ – what about a real competition, a competition that decides who is just the absolute, ultimate, no-further-questions best person in the world?

Idea #16: The Best Person in the World Competition

While The Glass Bead Game is a fantastic concept, I feel that the name is somewhat…shit. Let’s call our best person in the world competition X MAN.

X MAN is primarily just a competition to find out who is the best person in the world, because that’s something worth knowing. But since I know a lot of people read Ideas Exist for business ideas, let’s not pass up the opportunity for a little TV show too. Or should I say, the most successful TV show ever made. The best part about that is we will supplant the worst person in the world – Simon Cowell – from his current role as the bubonic plague of prime time TV. Our show will have a presenter much more worthy of the position. As I see it, there are several contenders:

1. The Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger
2. Wolverine
3. Stephen Hawking

I’m going for Stephen Hawking as I think he would bring the right degree of gravity to the show. He also nicely straddles the boundary between extraordinary human and robot – only someone like this can claim any authority over a gaggle of potential best person in the worlds.

But how do we decide who is the absolute best person in the world? Let’s do it in unashamedly X Factor style, since people seem to like that. X MAN begins with regional then national tournaments where competitors can earn themselves points in a diversity of events – these can also form their own national TV shows – then culminates in the international final, which ends up becoming the 21st century’s better version of the Olympics. Why’s it better? Because, a la Glass Bead Game, it’s combines scholarship, arts and sport – one challenge per episode:

1. Mixed martial arts cage fight
2. Chess
3. Make a short film
4. Ironman triathlon plus survival situation
5. A David Blaine-style unusual endurance feat e.g. standing on the top of a pole
6. Cooking
7. Soldiery
8. Music writing and performing
9. Mastermind
10. Kindness
11. Machine building
12. Orchestrate a bank heist
13. Speeches

That should do it. Whoever wins is the best person in the world.

A bit of clarification:

Make a short film – the candidates for best person in the world are just told, “Make a film.” They then have a week to do it, and viewers vote on which is the best. Same with the music writing and performing. If they are the best, they can do it.

Kindness – assessed using hidden cameras, e.g. a dirty old tramp approaches the contestants individually to ask for kindnesses of increasingly demanding nature, like “Please take me to your house for a bowl of soup”, then “Would you mind if I stay here for a week or so?” etc. The best person in the world can’t not be kind.

Machine building – like Scrap Heap Challenge but for individuals, contestants must build the required machines then race or battle with them. The best person in the world can’t not be able to build machines.

Speeches - in this round, would be best person in the world must show themself as the global leader they are about to become (the prize is presidency of Sudan), and make a rousing Obamaesque speech to the world setting out their vision.

The Final

X MAN will not be decided by a stupid vote. Rather, there will be a final round with especially loads of points to be won. What is the final challenge? Danny Thompson, in a submission to Ideas Exist, has revealed it:

Get the contestants to turn up at the track and tell them to run as fast as possible over 50 meters. Record the quickest time. Now tell them to run into a wall. If they can do it at at least 90% of their top speed, they win the prize! The wall should look very real, but doesn’t have to be

And the winner is the best person in the world. Official. (Anymore ideas for challenges to feature in X MAN? Leave a comment!)

Rule number one for a successful business start-up: Give people something they love.

Rule number two for a successful business start-up: Give people something they can’t get anywhere else.

(There are, of course, 386 other rules, but I don’t know what they are.)

Now before you dismiss me as an aimless pretender, have you ever heard this:

“Everyone loves surprises.”

?

Ah ha! Yes, you have! Now then, people love surprises do they..? Wait a minute – that fits the first rule for a successful business start-up!

Now, I wonder… How about the second rule? Can people get surprises anywhere else (other than the business I am obviously going to suggest you set up in a minute)?

“Of course,” you are saying, “I get surprises every Christmas from a fat, bearded, foreign burglar.” Yes, very good. And you have to wait all year. But in the meantime, where can you get surprises for yourself?

Nowhere.

Until now…

(Go to Intense Experiences and look at the ridiculous signs!)

Idea #15: Sell surprises

Set up a business that sells surprises. The idea is that people don’t find out exactly what they’re getting until they’ve bought it.

There are different ways to approach this. The Something Store is an online shop that sells you ’something’ for ten $10. I mean it could be anything… apart from these. (Great if it could be some of those though – imagine getting severed hand in the post! That would be a surprise!)

Sounds great for a novelty, but I think selling surprises can be practical as well. Personally, I get overwhelmed by the amount of choice available in every circumstance. While my mind has evolved to choose between hitting another ape with a stick, or hitting him with a rock (still actually a key decision in some Newcastle bars), I am more likely to be faced with the sandwich selection in Tesco Express. And break down in tears.

(Closer to the truth in Shanghai is that I’ll be faced with the choice of rice or noodles, pork or beef, and everything will be just fine.)

Nightmare

The Hipstery makes more practical sense. It’s an online T-shirt store that’ll sell you a T-shirt with a hip and mystery style – you just give them your size. It’s genuinely a good option for someone who just wants a cool T-shirt but can’t be bothered to shop.

The Hipstery

That’s spiritual peace. Leave the soul to worry about something other than BLT or Christmas Turkey Special. This is the kind of thing I have in mind for your surprise shop, but you’ll sell a lot more stuff:

Surprise Food

Ideal! Who wants to stand choosing between pasta salads for 35 minutes of a half hour lunch break? Not me. Supply me with a lunch bag please, and let me have that in-flight meal excitement every day of the working week.

Same in the evening. I am wasting my home time in Tesco Express! Put my dinner in a brown bag and let’s be done with it. Perhaps you could offer me a token of autonomy by labelling bags “Healthy”, “For Gluttons” or “An Indian”. And make them good, or I won’t trust you next time!

Surprise Clothes

Outfits. I want whole outfits. Whatever I’m not suited with in terms of style, will be more than made up for by the fact that I did not make this mess of myself – as fashion dictates that everyone do – plus the thrill of the surprise! I’d say some labels like ‘Gansta Outfit’, “Person With “Unique” Style’ or ‘Middle-aged Man On Mediterranean Holiday’, will ensure I get more or less what I’m looking for. What a terrible shame.

Of course, you could just do individual items like ‘T-shirt’ or ‘jacket’, but that would be a weak move.

Better

Surprise Music

We all know that music should be free, and largely is, but how about making monthly mix CDs of some random upcoming artists so people can give them as presents (e.g. ‘Rock’, ‘Hip hop’). The artists would be pleased to be featured and may not even want royalties.

Alternatively, providing these mixes as podcasts or for free download on your website would be a good way to draw traffic.

Surprise Experiences

Red Letter Day style. People who book it just turn up at your store and you take them away to do something for the day. Obvious things would be paintballing or racing cars. Less obvious would be blindfolding everyone and leaving them in a forest. (Easy way to make money though.) Horses for courses.

Surprise Holidays

The most extreme, and best, part of the business. You sell holidays with surprise destinations. Preferably charter a flight and get the airport to put the destination code as ‘SUR’.

I did this with some friends at university when Ryan Air started offering free flights. We scrolled down the list and bought tickets to the first place we hadn’t heard of. Ended up going to Klagenfurt. Great trip!

Not to say my mother hasn’t been trying. For the past three years she’s managed to keep me informed about every single wedding invitation I’ve received. It’s just that when something does eventually slip through the crack it could be a notice of hefty penalty charges to be debited from my bank account weekly, until my mother discovers it 10 weeks later. Thanks Barclays, my former employer. Thank you mother.

Another solution is needed here…

Idea #14: Remote mail service for digital nomads

What we need is somebody – actually, you – to set up a company that will receive the mail of vagabonds such as I, scan it, and email to us so we can receive it in exotic locations. Scotland, for instance.

Actually, while you’re on, you can receive parcels as well. Nomads can just use your address as their permanent mailing address so they don’t get tangled up with their multitude of online accounts every time they change to another beachside hut.

Listen, all you need is an address and a scanner to set up this business. You can receive payments through PayPal on your website, which you can build here in 5 minutes.

You should probably offer the service for a monthly subscription of $10-$20 per month for your standard model digital nomads.

(Why not also create a ‘premium’ branded service – basically the same thing but for rich people. You’ll probably have to call it something like ‘Mail Concierge’. Set it up on a different website so it’s not obvious that it’s the same thing.)

A bit more about the cheeky little digital nomads…

You may think that marketing to a disparate bunch of global wanderers might be difficult, but you’d be surprised. Digital nomads have already begun to converge in some dark corners of the web:

DigitalNomads.com – quick-fingered Dell have grabbed the prime URL.

Location Independent Professionals is an agency that helps set people up with a location independent lifestyle.

Exile Lifestyle is Colin Wright’s experiment in being a digital nomad.

At Free Pursuits, Corbett Barr blogs about alternative lifestyle design.

Chris Guillebeau is a pioneer of non-conformity.

Tim Ferriss is author of The 4-Hour Work Week, and seems to be a gentleman after my own heart, with more ambition and larger muscles.

Further to your advantage, this is an emerging niche consumer group that more and more people will be joining as employers realise it’s a good way to cut costs and workers realise that sitting in a storm-battered, wifi-enabled caravan in Scotland is actually a surprisingly pleasant environment in which to write, albeit aimlessly, about remote postal services for themselves.

UPDATE: Just saw the exact reverse of this idea! Read about it at Springwise: http://www.springwise.com/life_hacks/sendsocial/

alarms are admittedly fairly useful.

If you’re like me, you not only use them for getting you out of bed, you use them for reminding you to do stuff.

Fine. That’s fine. Yet another brain function replaced by technology. But I suppose the Neolithic days when the brain was invented weren’t filled with business meetings…

…I mean, that’s what everyone uses reminders for, right? Appointments, business meetings?

Err… No. I don’t. Normally, for me it’s more like this: “Right, I need to remember to pay that fine next time I’m in the library.” Or, “When I’m in town I have to pick up my suit from the dry cleaners.” (Actually, the last one’s a lie – I never do that – but that is what people do, right?)

Then I have to guess when I’ll be in the right place to do these things. Guess! I thought I wasn’t supposed to be using my brain here?!

iBrain

We all know that’s not how things should work.

Idea #13: GPS alarm

A location-based alarm will change all that.

It’ll be an smartphone app that lets you highlight an address or area on Google Maps, and set an alarm to go off when the GPS detects that you’re in that location.

I’d be surprised if someone hasn’t had this idea already, but I haven’t been able to find one in the App Store. (There are a few iPhone ‘car alarms‘, which set off an alarm if your phone is moved at all, so this could presumably be easily modified to create the infinitely more useful GPS alarm).

It’s also got me thinking about

Idea #13.5: Pre-call reminders:

You know when you’ve just hung up the phone and you think, “Shit, I forgot to tell him about that great idea I had”? What about an app that detects who’s calling you, which you can set to display relevant reminders on the screen before you pick up?

You could probably charge money for either of these apps and make yourself moderately rich. I would obviously expect the app for free as I gave you the idea – that, plus the knowledge that you have made your life plentiful and carefree, is all the reward I need.

What am I thinking?!