Continuing the meme of getting out half-baked thoughts:

1. Connecting small devices to the internet. How do you hook up your toaster to the internet? There’s a bunch of ways to do this right now, the problem is finding the right way.

2. Emotional objects. Our studio amp likes its music loud. My home coffee pot seems to weep when it has to make coffee, letting off these little moans and cries. Would people buy a crying coffee pot? How much emotion is too much?

3. Decision-making. I’ve been reading a lot of neuroscience books: Proust Was a Neuroscientist, How We Decide, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, and Why We Make Mistakes. Applying what’s understood about the brain to products is something I’m mulling over.

4. Software agents. Seems like it’s time to start building them. But how would they work? I want something like JARVIS from the Iron Man movies, but boy is it a hard problem.

5. Different OS UIs. I’m pretty sick of the OSX and Windows paradigms and of the Web 2.0 aesthetic. I’m ready for the future. But what does that look like?