These are incomplete designs for software (or, occasionally, hardware) that I would implement if I had the time or the stamina. Not all of them are completely serious. (For even more half-baked ideas, and to publish your own, visit the halfbakery, www.halfbakery.com.)
Sound Track
Audio output, motion input.
The stone
Hardware: a touch-only interface.
Board clock
Hardware: a travelling clock.
Brief note on topology
A cube is not the most efficient network layout.
The hypercube game
Sudden death in the fourth dimension.
Visual Programming
What's wrong with it?
delay.com
Your electronic dead man's switch.
The URL market
Offering high-demand, low-supply resources without getting run over.
Mail reader
Loose ideas for a frontend for reading and answering e-mail.
Paint tool
Similarly: what I'd want in a paint tool.
John Chao: Math Stuff
A nebula of primes; the fibonacci numbers look more
like something to fly into in a science fiction trailer.
Nelson Minar's Projects I don't have time for
Nelson thinks about distributed systems, cryptography,
and small, neat things.
Elliott Evans' Brainstorm File
Short, technical, mostly computer-related inventions (but with a
wonderfully surreal first item.).
The whole subtree is well worth exploring.
Henry Baker's HTML version of the MIT hacker community's
HAKMEM
A labor of love, and it shows.
GRAFICA Obscura from
Paul Haeberli at SGI
An inspring collection of graphics hacks and ideas from a professional.
Luis Fernandes'
Collected Wisdom
Related to Hacking
Points to some humor and folklore classics.
The Invention Dimension at the MIT
Interesting articles (and great inventors' portraits)
from old and recent history,
if you can stand the distinct US-American bias and the inexplicable respect
towards Bill Gates.
Jaron Lanier's Video Feedback Waterbed
Ought to be invented if it didn't exist already.