I like this idea alot. I think a relatively cheap way to achieve this is buy pointing projectors at each of the walls and have a computer run some screen savers. I noticed that there are now large LCD screens at the mall, playing advertisement. I work in a windowless lab and wish we had a screen that displays a webcam image of the outside - basically a virtual window.

Cool, a "surround system for noise cancellation".

I read once that days are getting longer because the moon's gravity causes tides on earth. (Search Wikipedia for "Tidal acceleration"). So, utilizing rising and falling ocean levels for energy production would be implementing your suggestion in a way. I just read about "Tide mill" 's on Wikipedia and found that the Romans had ways to generate energy from tidal fluctuations.

lol, yea that should be useful to do !

your idea reminded me of a project i once thought about, a voice rejection device, .. the idea was about 4 nodes you put around a small area, those nodes will be able to reject any outside audio from getting inside that area, that could be useful in your case, but a bit scary maybe :P being not able to hear anything !!

I like the idea too. I worry that the face recognition technology isn't that well developed yet. I found a website a long time ago that would tell me which celebrity I look like. It was mostly a function of my pose, the lighting of the photo, etc.. In terms of implementation, some web hosts offer to run Python scripts, and I hear python is very powerful and with many available "toolboxes". So that's an option for the recognition engine. Or you could set up a webserver by yourself that runs MATLAB or something.

this sounds a lot of money ,,, i am ready to help !

I too have been in that "sound proof room". I think that one, like the radio studio, try to eliminate echo and absorb sound, that is why the triangular wedges were pointing toward the inside. I immagine the wedge is there to concentrate sonic energy and scatter it into the material inside the wedges, and most of all, prevent reflection (or echo). I think the Stealth Bomber jet has such deflecting panels for radar waves - so the waves are not reflected back to the radar station. What I want is a sheet of cleverly designed plexiglass that has wedges inside or a vacuum layer, or might be one slab with special bubbles unside that scatter vibration into the plane rather than perpenducilar to it (i.e., let sound through). Perhpas it can be a flexible foam-like and light-transparent sheet that blocks/scatters sound.

I could be wrong. and .. Maybe there's a different mechanism to supress sounds, other than trying to reflect them such that they cancel out.

I've been in an echo/sound -proof room at my university, and earlier in a recording room of a radio station.. It seemed to me that the size of the foam patterns on the "sound proof" wall were a function the wavelength you're trying to block. The radio station recording still had the filtered sound of construction in the distance. If you want to block the low frequency parts, I dont think it's possible with a "thin" sheet.

I heard of the idea that a phone can detect that is is on a desk vs in a pocket etc. I think detecting a class room or meeting envoronment would be interesting. Perhaps detect that there are only (monotonic) talking sounds. Given this, you would not need to input all your silent times into the calendar.

Why is no one praising Windows Mobile? I had a Win Mobile phone that did this. The ringing profile was called "automatic". Thank you so much, Mr. Gates !

Welcome to inventionspark Sini.. I liked the idea of cooled hats for construction workers!

wonderful idea especially for a person like me. It will help me a lot with my eye allergy against sunrays and hot weather. hitting two birds with one stone: protection aginst sunrays and ventillation at the same time.

Would binoculras do the job? Perhpas you want electronic binoculars with built in image processing and snapshot capability. I think such a device would be fantastic. It would be so easy to look at the skies and to take images. Basically, a point and shoot camera for astronomers.

I guess a solution would be a webpage that answeres all these questions. The people qualified to write it would be the ones loosing money if it exited. Perhaps they would make money ?!. I am not an expert, but I think these thigs change frequently and keeping an updated webpage would be tough work.

I noticed that dogs sniff around before they decide to take a "doit". The anti-dog smell does not have to be strong, jut something doe's don't like, like "wolf urine" for example!!

This is a cool idea! Why waste time when you are in a hurry.

that would be a great idea ! hmm ,Sam idea is good, putting a micro fan in top of each optic will be enough to through the dust a way too ..

The closest thing to zero gravity is diving under water or flying in the wind of a giant fan underneath.

I imagine alot of people have been brainstorming on a revolutionary application using ad-hoc networks. I like the One-Laptop-per-Child laptops, I think they can form wireless LANs with no central wireless switch or router.

That's a hard one to solve! Maybe there can be layers of transparent film (like the ones protecting the screen of your cell phone), that you can just take off one after the other whenever they become unclean. You can then "refill", and place a new batch every weekend.

Yeah me 2 ,, I was so surprised. But anyway, throwing sensors in a forest or anythin like that is not of big interest of them (they already mentioned that thing once). They want something that can make a revolution !

"In store pickup", I like it.. Computer stores often do that. You can pay online, and go to the store with the receipt to pick it up.

We were talking about your idea the other day, and remembered the movie "Twister".. yalla go reconfigure your adhoc network every millisecond, heheh About wireless sensor networs, I am recalling the ideas from the CSIDC we went to; one team wanted to spread sensors in a forest to detect gun-shot sounds to combat illeagal hunting. I wonder why people in that field say there are no applications for it.