I think I just found a great shirt idea, my next Halloween costume, or perhaps both. A crew t-shirt from the M.Y. Disco-Volante, the high-tech boat used by Emilio Largo for Operation Thunderball. They’re very classic, straight-forward, and sleek. Some examples:

The helpful crew lifting James Bond out of the water.

Another kind gesture… bringing champagne!

And perhaps what they’re best for: getting punched!

A recent television commercial jogged my memory about a desired device that I had thought about in the past. I have no idea what the commercial is for, but near the beginning of it a man gets out of bed in his futuristic home, and while he is doing his morning routine in the bathroom mirror, a weather forecast is playing in the mirror. Although I desire a weather forecast at other times, getting dressed is easily the most important time. In fact, there is a web site whose entire premise is that the weather dictates your clothing choices. Pure genius.

What I want is that futuristic man’s weather mirror, but in today’s world. I know it’s either a) out there already in some sort of weather geek’s catalog, or b) hackable using wireless technology and some sort of computer programs and device. Most simple home weather forecast devices on the market estimate the conditions based on the current conditions when you set it up, and then the changing temperature and barometric pressure. I want my device to be a much simpler device, much like the getting the weather from television. It’s figured out and distilled for me, and given to me in the simplest form possible.

All I want to do is wake up, go to my dresser, and see the following:

• The temperature and conditions right now
• The temperature and conditions at intervals later in the day
• The most minimal amount of data I need to survive: temp, conditions and wind
• Nothing scientific (no barometric pressure, moon phase, etc)
• No clock (who doesn’t know what time it is?)

It also might be handy to have a configuration program as well, so that I might be able to change what information I see on the device, or perhaps changing the intervals, or perhaps even setting specific times that I want the forecast for (like if I know I’m going out at 10pm, I would want to know what it will be like outside.)

One way to execute this idea might be creating a program that grabs the weather from the Internet, parses it, and spits it out over wireless to this small device. Perhaps this device is a PDA? Who knows?

Any ideas or examples or existing products out there, anyone?

(If it helps, I have an old Handspring Visor and a (very, very) old Apple Newton.)

Please create a feature which allows me to map out alternative routes for directions. In particular, I would like to:

• Filter out the use of freeways. I would like to use your mapping software to get directions for riding my bicycle or scooter (or perhaps even walking), which means no highways or freeways.
• Filter by speed limit. If I am riding a small scooter, I may not want to (or be able to) go over a particular speed. If I am walking or bicycling, I would like to take a route that does not have cars whizzing by at uncomfortable speeds.
• Select or deselect particular streets, or stretches of streets. There are plenty of reasons I might want to avoid particular streets or areas, such as road construction, scenic detours, bad neighborhoods, preferred routes/streets, etc.
• Save routes and route preferences. I prefer going one particular way different from how you suggest. If you could remember that, it would be awesome. I could see saving these “hacked” routes as particularly useful information, both for myself and others. I imagine seeing how other people get around to places might benefit me. (For example, I would like to save a list of “ways to get home from work”. Depending on traffic and “feel”, sometimes I take the freeway, sometimes I take one of several side street routes. Saving those alone would be great. Now if other people could see these, and I could see other people’s “ways to get home” from the same location/area, that would be amazing.)

Thank you for your time. Love, Ben.

In this space I will chronicle my many del.icio.us wishes and Lazyweb requests. Feel free to leave your own in the comments.

• Create a del.icio.us user recommendation script/engine. The end result would be a list of users (ala Audioscrobbler’s “musical neighbors”):

• The most closely matched people based on purely similar linkage. If someone has linked to 60.7% of the things I have linked to, I probably want to subscribe to that user.
• The most prolific linker based on similar linkage. I want to know, based on similar linkage, who linked it sooner more often. I want to find people who find new things and/or are on the front end of memes I am interested in.
• The most prolific linker based on popularity. Same idea as above, just for all del.icio.us. (Perhaps date of post compared to most recent post by another user could be a factor in some of these calculations?)

• Show me all the people who subscribe to my links
• Show me all the people who my subscriptions link to, and possibly even 3rd degree connections (perhaps only multiply-related subscriptions)

There are many lifestyle choices that have fairly established symbols that can help a person be identified. Democrats have a donkey, Republicans have an elephant, the gay community has the pink triangle (although it wasn’t necessarily chosen by them), straightedgers have their Xs, etc.

What graphical symbol would you use to represent being single? Is it a different symbol if you are choosing not to get married?

New personal LazyWeb idea: Movie Friendster. Combine the concepts of Friendster and the Baconizer, using Amazon Web Services to create a visual map of people through movie connections.