decorative Wi-Fi access points

I have a business idea that someone needs to run with. This is not one that I plan to pursue, because my plate is full (running over, even), so I’m putting it out here for someone to take. Please do, because I would buy this.

Most houses have Wi-Fi now, and to get good coverage throughout the house you often need either an extender or a mesh network. (I just switched mine to an Amazon Eero mesh network.) The “problem” with all the solutions I’ve seen is that the hardware devices don’t look interesting. They’re plain and utilitarian. That’s not bad, per se, but it could be much better. I don’t care to see them around the house, although it’s not that big a deal to me. However, I’m married, so the WAF does need to be considered. (WAF = Wife Approval Factor.) My wife cares about the house being “presentable” and decorated. (Granted, I do too, but she does even more, so I often defer to her preferences, which seems to be common among men.)

So here’s the idea that improves the situation. Make Wi-Fi hardware points where you can snap decorative outer shells on them, which feature a pleasing design. By doing this, you can cater to multiple markets with the same base product. Here’s some ideas to help get you started:

  • fake plants — This may have the highest general WAF, so it definitely should be an option.
  • book-related — There are a lot of people who enjoy reading, or at least want to enjoy it if they had more free time. This could be a bookshelf insert like the one pictured, which is a street from the Harry Potter universe. You could also make bookends like the Argonath statues that came with the first deluxe DVD set of The Lord of the Rings. (I want that one, and my wife would probably tolerate it outside my home office.) Another idea is the Dr. Who TARDIS phonebooth.
  • movie-related — There are many options here, from figures to vehicles to buildings to logos. Of course there would be licensing to deal with, but a well-made Batman figure and/or the Batmobile would be worth it. Transformers figures (G1 style, preferably) would be awesome, too. (The WAF score sinks considerably with this one, but there’s a large audience of single guys who can decorate how they want. And Transformers figures definitely counted as decoration when I lived in the bachelor pad with college roommates.)
  • decorative frames with pithy inspiring quotes — People already buy this kind of thing. You could make it a frame with changeable inserts, so you could sell packs of more quotes. You might could even include a cheap subscription with new inserts arriving each month that match the season.
  • holiday decorations — You know if there was a way to make your Wi-Fi point look like a Christmas tree or an ornament instead of a chunk of boring plastic, people would buy this. These would sell like hotcakes during the Christmas shopping season (which gets longer every year). These could also have lights on them, since you already have power there.

I could go on, but you get the idea. There are MANY possibilities here for selling more, because if they all fit the same base units, people could buy multiple decorative pieces to change it out throughout the year. And when a new version of Wi-Fi comes out, make the base unit into the same shape so customers can use their current extensions. This encourages brand loyalty.

Hopefully this goes without saying, but make the actual hardware be quality. People will be paying more for this, so there will be expectations that it works well. If it looks impressive and works better than average, people will talk about it, which is free advertising.

To any entrepreneur willing to jump on this, the idea is free. If you’d be willing to send me a copy for review, I’d be glad to check it out. Have your people contact my people.

decorating with Super Mario Bros

The walls inside most people’s houses are typically solid colors or a repetitive wallpaper design.  Wouldn’t it be nice if they were more artsy / cool-looking / beautiful / shiny / awesome?  But what are your options?  If you’re a graphics artist, you could paint your own walls.  Or you could pay a professional to, but that would probably be really expensive.  However, quite possibly the best alternative are Blik restickable stickers for your wall.  (Note: I haven’t used them yet, but would like to acquire some for my game room / home office.)

I would like to get the New Super Mario Bros. stickers, although the original Super Mario Bros. would be awesome, too.  And since they’re movable and reusable, you can change it up for free if you ever get tired of the current pattern.

These are now on my Christmas wish list, so whoever wants to buy these for me, that would be great.   If I receive a lot, I’d just have to decorate the whole house with them.   Surely my wife wouldn’t mind!  I mean, Mario is awesome.  And she’s talked before about rooms needing to have a “theme” — well, this would give the room a definite theme!   And she’s said she wants more stuff on the walls, so this would be an easy way to take care of that and mark it off the honey-do list.  🙂

FYI, if you want to go really old-school, there are wall stickers for Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Centipede, and even Pong.

Also, at that first link above, there is a video of a Super Mario Sound Wall, where if you touch a coin or brick it makes the appropriate sound effects.  How awesome would that be?  That would be perfect for a game room!  Actually, that would be awesome for any room in the house!

I finally put up Christmas lights

My wife decided she wanted Christmas lights on the outside of the house this year.  She’s been bugging me for weeks to put some up, so I finally did.  But now that I did, she won’t talk to me.  Women are just so hard to please!

christmas-lights-on-house-wadded-up

a new jack o’lantern for Halloween

Once again it’s the Halloween season.   Well, not really a season, because it’s just one day of trick-or-treat, but I suppose some folks do lots of decorating for it.  It seems like the “spooky” decorating is becoming more rampant each year.  But I digress…

Are you going to go to the most sincere pumpkin patch to wait for the Great Pumpkin?  Each Halloween night, he rises out of the pumpkin patch to scare little children, er, I mean, to give them candy and presents.  That’s what I hear anyway.  I haven’t ever been to one of those sincere pumpkin patches.  Maybe I’m not sensitive enough to know if one is sincere.  Whatever…  Let’s get to the point of this story…  I’m digressing again…

One Halloween holiday tradition I’m trying to get started is putting a flaming pumpkin of poop on someone’s front porch.  I mentioned this a while back, but it has yet to catch on for some reason.  I know, creating a jack-o-lantern out of poop is not ideal, so here’s an update (consider it version 2.0).  Take a standard jack o’lantern (however you want to spell it), and cover it with poop.  Take it to a friend’s porch.  Then you set it on fire.  It’s a guaranteed good time!

Some of the staff here voted and nominated Mango-Man’s house as the first place to try out this new Halloween decoration.  I’m sure it’ll draw trick-or-treaters to his house, with all the bright fire on his pumpkin.  He’ll have to let us know how it turns out.  🙂