Tag: Entrepreneur

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.

Does poop contain gold?

The other day I was in a conversation that got random really fast. Someone started sharing some scientific trivia, and they said you could burn a bucket of cow manure and get some rare elements like gold. I was immediately skeptical and made that known. They went to get their book of random scientific stuff (not the actual title) and found the reference. It turns out that someone had taken cow urine and boiled it to produce something useful. At this point I’m still skeptical, but figure since it’s actually published in a book and not just some obscure blog, it’s worth a minute of research. The results were surprising (and not all related to the original article)…

Apparently some doctor in India believes that cow urine has healing powers and can supposedly cure 70 to 80 incurable diseases like diabetes. It’s also sold as “highly effective products for preventive medicine” in some countries. (So if you don’t get sick, it worked, and you should buy more!) However — and this is important — there is thus far no scientific proof about it healing anything. Some studies have shown that it can lead to significant side effects, including death. So I wouldn’t recommend it. But it is good to use as fertilizer to grow actually edible food…

During my research, I saw where one guy said, “I drink cow urine every day. That is why I do not have Covid right now.” That is faulty reasoning, and it could easily be countered by someone saying they do NOT drink cow urine at all, and thus they don’t have Covid. But then again, how many people who drink cow urine every day catch Covid? The number has to be really small, right? (Surely there are very few people who could even be in that group.)

Some doctor made a “wonder drug” of cow’s milk, cow’s urine, cow excrement (soaked in water), and butter, and they claimed it will cure “99 percent of diseases”. I’m no professional doctor, but I’m fairly certain that’s a load of crap (both literally and figuratively).

Back on point, there has been someone who claimed to have found gold in cow urine and dung. Perhaps if you want to investigate the microscopic level you could find some — I have heard that ocean water has gold in it, but it’s such tiny amounts that it’s not worth doing anything with.

Thanks to the internet’s amazing ability to lead you down rabbit trails you didn’t even know existed, I just learned that human poop does contain trace amounts of gold, silver, platinum, copper, and rare elements like palladium and vanadium that are used in cell phones and computers. So is your poop worth its weight in gold? Not quite. These particles are about 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair, and of course there are other non-valuable particles in there to sort through. (That job would stink!) It’s estimated that an American city with a population of 1 million sends down the drain about $13 million worth of precious metals each year. So maybe it’s worth finding some automated way to filter it. Actually, I bet this becomes a legitimate business someday, when someone figures out how to efficiently extract the valuable elements from all the worthless elements.

People have tried to figure out alchemy for years (converting a metal into gold), but perhaps this is the closest we’ll get.