May 2009 Archives

Okay, so first I must admit, this is a "stolen idea". I overheard a colleague talking about it the other day and I thought I'd expand on the idea here.

Perhaps, you work in a "large office", perhaps you have a kitchen area. If you're like most places you either a) share in the kitchen work; stocking the fridge, doing the dishes,etc. or b) you have someone who is "dedicated" to doing it.

So the idea would be to become a "Kitchen Expert" offer your services to several businesses around the area to keep their fridges stocked (milk, butter, etc), keep the kitchen area clean. Etc.

This would not be a janitorial job; but more of an organizational job. You would be committed to "just in time" delivery of key items the businesses keep in their kitchen and replacing them before they run out.  With time and practice a person could probably become an expert at it, and make a lot of money doing it.

I sent this idea to a local tourist board once; but never received any reply, so maybe now someone else will find it a worthwhile business idea:

The Opportunity

In any city you live in, there will always be tourism, and "tourist traps". There will be people offering tours (the haunted one's we have here are pretty cool).

But what would the "Smart City" have for  tours?

Imagine you are visiting a city for the first time, and you wanted to learn more about it; it's culture, history etc.  First you head to your local tourist bureau, the one's with the "?".  They have maps, brochures, advertising of things to do / attractions. Lots of papers to pick up and later dump in a garbage or clutter up your car.

What if the tourist bureau offered PDA/GPS rentals equipment, or even better made up a "electronic tourist kit"

How it works

You would make up these kits (say 100 of them) and have an upfront purchase of GPS/PDA equipment (figure $200 per unit).  People would rent the kits for about $15/day (with a credit card deposit in case it gets lost or stolen)

Included in the kit would be electronics software, maps, and things to do. Several present plans that could be selected, or even customized by the user.

When the tourist chooses a particular adventure, they are directed (by GPS) to the location, while at the attraction, they can learn "behind the scenes" content from the PDA, audio/video etc that tells them more.  This could information would be a) automatically stored in the device or b) streamed to the device via bluetooth or WiFi when they reach the destination.

Discounts could even be offered "virtual coupons" from local business establishments.

As people grow even more tech savvy, eventually most of the kits would no longer require actual GPS units being replaced instead by people's cell phone/PDA's like blackberries or iPhones, but you could still rent the kits / software or even allow people to download content from the web and plan their tourist adventure.