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generate random

innovative ideas.

About
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What It Does: It generates random combinations of words from lists of idea categories such as "Web 2.0," "Panaceas," "Conveniences" and various metaphors.

How to Use It: Click the words in the center of the big round dial. Click almost anything else on the main window to discover features.

Features

Background

There might not be a Farnsworth Television Company anymore (you do know he was the inventor of television, right?) but that doesn't mean there aren't any innovations coming out of Wyndmoor, PA USA anymore! This stupid little app churns out great ideas—and some pretty useless ones—faster than you can shake an iPhone. Just click the main display to generate random word combinations.

The idea behind Branestorm is well summarized by Linus Pauling, who said, "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." A great example is a business I recently heard of that sells baby products like diapers and sippy cups in vending machines. That's the simple premise of Branestorm... prompting you to think of new combinations of otherwise well-known ideas.

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Branestorm was built with jQTouch, an absolutely wonderful mobile development framework by David Kaneda. jQTouch is exactly the sort of solution that I've been hoping the software world would produce since I wrote my first book, Computers Stink. Thanks very much, David! We made a donation.

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The graphic for the main screen is from the portfolio website of Philip Glofcheskie. The remaining panels and slide switches were inspired from it, but mine. On your desktop (where you have Flash) check out his extraordinary BitKraft.com (see Work>.SWF>Kiosk) and this masterpiece of his that first drew me to his portfolio site.

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Jack Bellis is a software designer with Elsevier, a scientific and medical publisher and creates all sorts of stuff at JackBellis.com.
Farnsworth Television Co.
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Categories

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"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought." --Jonathan Swift
Select the categories that you want to use for each row of words.

1st Row

Bargains
Make Believe
Conveniences
Panaceas
Devices
Ages
Sizes
Geniuses
"Being on a tightrope is living; everything else is waiting." -- Karl Wallenda (not really about innovation, but pretty inspiring)

2nd Row

Alerts
Meals
Contests
Weapons
Healthcare
Space-saving
Nostalgia
Environmental
Penalties
Fortunes
Luxuries
Speeds
Phenomena
Metaphors

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza." --Dave Barry

3rd Row

Killers
Web20
Fitness
Recruiting
Edens
Prizes
Lures
Media
Tests
Testers
Bonuses
Sights
"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarised with the ideas from the beginning." --Max Planck
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Locks

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"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."
--Thomas A. Edison
Use these controls (or the slider switch on the upper left of the main screen) to 'freeze' a currently-displayed term or category.

1st Row

Lock Category
Lock Term

2nd Row

Lock Category
Lock Term

3rd Row

Lock Category
Lock Term
"An amazing invention - but who would ever want to use one?" Rutherford B. Hayes (in a call using Alexander Graham Bell's new telephone invention)
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Notes

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"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Attributed to Thomas Edison

Release History

Version 1.00 March 5, 2010

  1. Initial Release.

Fixes Needed

  1. -No open items-

Enhancement Ideas

Javascript

  1. Low: Change wording in graphic to "Activate... your custom terms"
  2. Low: Make Categories page items link to terms
  3. Low: Add button to enable/disable All Categories
  4. Low: Add link from log to All History
  5. Low: Dim/disable controls until startup message is hidden and branestorm is generated.

Mysteries

  1. High: Prevent rotating to landscape (evotech.net/blog/2007/07/web-development-for-the-iphone)
  2. Low: Invisible Javascript referrer error when clicking top Locks slider
  3. Low: Get terms from Twitter. Still trying to figure out Twitter API. The Twitter API documentation page specifies the URL format for the command (search.twitter.com/ trends/weekly.format) but need to figure out Javascript to return the results.
  4. Low: Post to Twitter. Should be easier than retrieving data.
  5. Low: Save to our web page. Need to figure out Perl to save. So far only got it to work from desktop, not iPhone.
  6. Low: Make controls vibrate or click to provide better feedback.
  7. Low: Double cube transition for data entry is probably more trouble than it's worth.

Category Ideas

  1. Top Twitter terms
  2. Entire Food version
"Only the game fish swims upstream, But the sensible fish swims down." --Ogden Nash
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Welcome to Branestorm!


Click anywhere in the big circle
to generate random
combinations of terms.


Explore the other buttons and switches to customize, control, or email your branestorms.

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How It Works...


The values you enter here are saved on your phone and retained until you clear your browser cache with Settings>Safari>Clear Cache.

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