Camera Apps Should Distinguish the Chaff from the Wheat

I take a lot of “utility” photos on my phone. Screenshots, grocery lists, broken stuff I need to find a solution for at the hardware store, documents I might want to refer to the next day, pictures of serial numbers too small to read.

I don’t want these polluting my photo library. I want options to frictionlessly classify a photo as “junk” (disposable) at the time it is taken, and have it go directly to a special category within Google Photos (or, ideally, any other photo app supporting the standard tagging API for Android or iOS). Much like the way Social and Promotional categories work in Gmail.

I think there are a few, complementary ways this could be implemented:

1.      A different camera icon/widget on the home screen.

2.      2 different shutter buttons on the camera app itself.

3.      Classification buttons when viewing the image, via floating clickable labels.

All could be useful, to me, #2 seems by far the most valuable.

(Whether disposable photos are auto-deleted within a few days, or saved indefinitely, should be configurable. As, for that matter, should be whether it synchs to the cloud from the device’s camera roll.)

Tweak for Basketball 3-Pointers

I am pretty happy with the modern NBA. But I am sympathetic to the idea that 3-point madness has gone just a bit too far. I can think of a simple tweak--reduce the point value to something like 2.7.

The most obvious downside I can see is that this would drastically reduce the likelihood of ties. That problem can be solved: a team has to win by a certain amount. I'm not sure what the right number would be, maybe 0.5.

How Prince Worked His Magic On The Bangles' 'Manic Monday'

I always liked the song "Manic Monday" by the Bangles, but I never understood why. On the surface, it seemed like your typical late-1980s overplayed, one-hit-wonder pop pablum. But for whatever reason, it struck me as a perfect, fun, likable pop song (maybe it helped that its subject wasn't the done-to-death trio of Love, Loss and Longing).

I hadn't thought of it in years, but then I heard this NPR story, which explained that Prince wrote it for them. Made me feel much better about liking it.

Mobile Trashcan Washing and Tire Air Pressure

This mobile trash bin washing service s a business idea I had a while ago--a purpose-designed truck to come around and clean gross trash bins. Price is just a bit too high for my tastes, but hopefully either they will gain economies of scale, and/or attract competition. I think I would be happy to pay $15 for a one-time cleaning, or maybe $30 for 2x annual subscription. Their one-time price of $44 is way too much, and their minimum is $60 for quarterly--twice my threshold.

A bonus idea I have is to combine this with other household chores that are pretty easy for a professional, but tedious for the homeowner. The best example that comes to mind is tire air pressure. The challenge there is that it would require the car to be available in the driveway on the trash day--doesn't work for most people.