Ric Richardson

Whats this? Imagine texting.... ....BUT WITH YOUR VOICE! Yes I'm dubbing it Voice ting ... as in texting but with your voice... what do you think? Ive put a form below so you can give me some feedback... It's really important to me so please make the effort. Here is how it works. You go to the Voicy messaging app like you would the standard text messaging app on your phone and you choose a recipient from your phone book but instead of typing a message you hold a little record button and speak your message. Then SEND. The  recipient  gets a message notification saying XXX has sent you a message and you can choose to play or cancel and play later. They see who sent the message then here your message and then can reply by... voice. How cool. When you get their response back you can hear the last few seconds of the  message  you first sent and then their response is played back to you, and the conversation goes on as needed... back and forth. In the example ...

Flying back from Fortescue last week I was thinking about a doco I saw on the Senior Australian of the year who is a blind gentleman. I have seen the audio support for windows that uses text-to-speech to help blind people know what is on the screen but it struck me as odd that the blind person has to sit in front of a screen that they obviously can't see... So I came up with... ... what if? What if each pixel on the screen was a pin head and the pins raised by a millimeter or two to separate black text from white background... the whole screen could become a braille space... amazingly the gentleman I saw was an amazingly fast touch typist so the input is not the issue... its the output and the feedback... it will be interesting to see where this project goes.

Traditional patent licensing is a pretty complicated and long winded affair.  Some big hearted souls even go through the cost, expense and work of a patent only to end up making it public domain… good for them but not really the point of getting patent protection. So what can be done to make money from your invention that fills the space between full commercial licenses and giving away licences. Here is my idea: Include a licence with the cost of purchasing a book. Wha? Yes, include the cost of a patent licence when you sell a book about your invention. Still confused?   Think about this. Besides the few dozen companies that may ultimately pay  a decent royalty for your invention there may be literally thousands of people who may want to use your idea for their own project. How do you give them a relatively cheap way to licence your patent AND give them all the info they need to understand and implement your patent? The answer is obvious when you think about i...

Searching is so proactive… every time you want to find something you have to initiate the search… what if relevant stuff was presented to you simply based on location? This idea is being worked on at an operating system level by one of the inventors we help but my idea is a lot simpler… what about a Wikipedia that showed you search results based on your location rather than a search term? Here is a for instance… I go into Byron and look in my location wiki… I can switch between a list of the nearest notes/ wiki pages I’ve written myself or pages by others but I can do things like… See the latest photos from locations near where I am standing… see the notes of the waiters name at my favourite restaurant just up the block. Or that the book shop around the corner is having a special on Clive Cussler books. What would it take to do something like this? A simple interface to Google Maps where a pin sts the location of your note or wiki page, a second list allows yo...

Guess what? I moved house last week, which became a treasure trove of problems to solve and invention opportunities. I haven’t had time yet to check if something like this has been done before, but short of a prior art search I’m pretty sure that the idea is pretty fresh. The basic idea is a two trolley system. The main trolley is like a traditional moving trolley but it has the ability to suspend the scoop tray at the bottom 2” higher. An additional single wheel trolley with the ability to swivel goes at the other end of the item being moved. I could have used this invention last week. Work page for this invention:  http://r2labswiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Furniture_and_large_object_trolley_moving_system

Update 31st August 2010: Research results so far into fireproof tire coverings and under chassis heat protection have been a bit depressing, but I am not giving up hope... since I wrote this a few fire-ees have approached me for help with their own inventions and I am bringing their experience to bare on the problem. I also at this stage would like to formally confirm that the results of these tests and any invention that comes out of it will be made available in the public domain to ensure that the technology is provided as cheaply and widely as possible if we are successful. This idea has been on the cards for some time after seeing the bushfires in southern Australia last year. One of the easiest things to do to stop a bush fire spreading is to attack it before it gets into the trees. This concept involves a protective blanket that protects the underside of a tractor and a trailing blanket of fire resistant material that is 30 feet wide and up to 100 feet long that ge...

Cruise control kits, (even add-on kits – see bottom of article) have been around for a while but most of these were designed for the good old days where you got on the highway and sat on 110k’s (or 70mph in the states) until you got to where you were going… … these days with traffic and speed zones that change all the time maybe more is needed… Thus this invention– a customizable and expandable SMART vehicle cruise control. [Click to enlarge] Its just like any other cruise control kit, except you select buttons to set the cruise control speed… Why? Why not use the old “adjust your speed and reset” type cruise control technique? Because that reset requires constant tweaking of the speed up and down on the set controls to dial in your desired speed. With this invention you see a 60 sign and you hit the 60 quick select button and your vehicle settles into that speed…. the box 3even has a tap button to turn on the backlit display so you aren't driving around with buttons...

Iv’e been an avid dirt bike rider since my pre teens… I love the countryside, love being in the bush, love riding but hate the noise of dirt bikes.. always have. But with the conservation conscious area I live in it has become a deal breaker to not have some kind of massive noise reduction system… I know the idea below looks daggy but hey it’s quiet… An alternative is the zero enduro electric bike… they seem to be getting much more powerful with each new model… http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/gallery.php

A home experiment I read a little while ago gave me the idea to try a simple home heating idea to combat the chill that creeps into the house where I live. The houses are designed for summer… open plan, elevated floors and lots of airflow, but in winter the cold is conversely effective in invading the house. Damp is also an issue as it rains year round here. The solution? Not much is needed. Just enough to dry out the air a bit and to get the rooms warm for the first 4-6 hours of the night before hitting the sack… so here goes What I came up with is 100 meters of matt black painted aluminium tubing with two hoses and a fan. The fan keeps the circulation and recirculation going of the air and the black tubes are laid out on the roof connected by automotive hoses in a closed loop system. Tests will show whether it is worth the effort but it is my hope that ill get 5-7 degrees Celsius or 15 degrees Fahrenheit of warmth out of the system. The only problem I see is that most other sy...

This project is really starting to get some legs. I’m still in the process of exploring what to patent but its getting real exciting that something like this could really eventuate. The basic idea is to put light weight rail bogeys under a truck in such a way as to allow the trucks own drive train and brakes to move and stop the truck. The next phase which I’m nearly through is getting the truck on and off the rails without using jacks or lifting systems… I came up with something pretty snazzy and will show you once its locked down and patented. Next after this I have been looking at electronic support systems for such a setup. Things like radar and laser devices for rail level crossings and animals on the track, rubber bogey wheels for quietening down traffic on railway tracks… and traffic management for all the trucks, commercial vehicles and cars that may want to be travelling the rails once this thing gets going… can you imagine it… …get on the rails in Sydney, get off at ...

Loogle is a web service that automatically builds shop sites for anyone on-the-fly. All you need is a  webcam and a browser and you are set to sell anything with a bar code (maybe even without a bar code in the future). Loogle sets up a customizable Amazon-ish type site for you automatically, registers it with search engines and its own product search engine, along with your zip code, so that people can FIND YOU EASILY.  Loogle – what’s in a name How Loogle came about Current development status Public Milestones Loogle – what’s in a name Local Google... Loogle. Ok its a bit obvious and may not be useable for legal reasons but it captures the general idea. Google is great for bringing the world to you but you live in a town somewhere... a place and have to pay the tax of shipping and delivery delay every time you tap into the worldwide marketplace... Loogle is about encouraging local people to let each other know what is handy, nearby to fill your need. ...

“Back in Dec of 2006 I was intrigued by a story about a bus that could run on rail way tracks . Ever since that day I've been chewing over how to make something that could retrofit existing trucks and vehicles… maybe there is a way?” The other night I was driving back from a meeting past truck after truck on the Pacific Highway heading south on their night run. Many of them driving within a few dozen feet of each other to benefit from the slip stream of the truck in front… efficient but deadly. I started toying with chaining trucks together which in turn led to a revisit of the idea I say the Japanese did 4 years ago. It’s been pretty busy around here but despite this and a couple of 3am nights there is a strong foundation of an idea for a system of rail cradles that attach to trucks just for the trip. There is definitely one or two patents here so please be patient with me to get them filed so I can give you more detail but maybe, just maybe this idea is goer. Pi...

Over the years I have been fascinated by the value of a countdown ticker for important goals and events. Calendars are good, but a countdown mechanism with an alarm system that escalates the event from normal to orange text to red text to red bold as the event draws closer seems a real powerful planning aid to me. I am aslo experimenting with resorting the list based on importance. For example a maintenance payment on an important patent would take precedence over a project that is 3 months overdue simply because of its priority. This kind of intelligence is what is being explored. Some of these ideas may be patentable but on the whole this project is about building an internal tool that may be useful to others so it will probably be published as public domain as it gets a bit more baked

TheyRule.net is an interesting experiment by Josh On in social network visualization where a database of public company board members in the US can be searched to find links between companies via a network of shared directors. This was one of my first introductions to social software back in the 90’s. This latest project I have begun working on is designed to take this basic idea but expand it so that links between public business figures (firstly in Australia but eventually worldwide) can be explored. There is also an adaptation on this which i am exploring to enable communities of professionals such as the proposed AusInnovators site to be searched in a similar way. As such this project may end up merging with the AusInnovators project.

I may only be an Inventor with a hand full of media centric inventions at the fringe of the media business, but I am also close to all the major technologies available to the newspaper business and have had some first hand exposure to people at the top of the newspaper business. Hopefully this gives me the credibility to make some pretty strong assertions regarding the future of the Newspaper business. And these are: Rupert Murdoch is right “content should be paid for”. Google needs to be stopped. A media owned and operated search engine is needed. Collaborative ubiquitous micropayment is key. A system that crosses all media, every newspaper and magazine. The newspaper businesses need to stop using web pages and hypertext links (extreme?). 1. Rupert Murdoch is right “Content should be paid for.” The modern news consumer is being trained by search engines that news is a commodity… that news is paid for by the adverts in its pages and therefore the customer shou...

Are you a voice note taker? Were you inspired as a child by the idea of recording your thoughts, ideas and daily events when you saw Captain Kirk recording his daily Captains Log on every other episode of Star Trek ? This invention was made for you. Every time a new voice recorder technology came out, its capability and features were compared with that ultimate benchmark. The closest thing I saw was Jott , a phone service that allows you to call an 800 number and dictate a note which is then sent to a transcription service and returned to you as email... Sounds simple enough... But the process is still too cumbersome. Your cell phone has to be in range, you have to wait for the connection and the greeting, and then you cant start and stop the recording as ideas come to you... you have to complete the message and move on... no breaks. Sadly, these kinds of limitations are often deal breakers for real world use. The fact that Caption Kirk could succinctly capture a days activity in 30...

751903589 I love Jott, the wonderfully useful voice to transcription to email service that has been gaining steam over the last year or so. But it has some serious missing capabilities that I really need and think a lot of other people need too. 1. The message length of 30 seconds is too short. 2. Having a mail recipient go to a web site to hear the original message is a big ask and in the end limits its usability. 3. Voice messages are in-the-moment things and even being slowed down to select who you want the message to go to is a big problem for me when all I want to do is capture the idea. These issues and problems are the see of a project I started working on called MP3VM.com . The idea behind MP3VM is simple. A very simple and fast voice message service that answers the phone with a minimal intro such as "Recording now..." that saves the message when you hang up or press 1 to an mp3 file that is sent to your email for you to forward or annotate as needed. Here are some ...

Later today, we are going to open the doors on our new upload site that will allow anybody with a PDF or consequitavly numbered JPEGs to publish in zkimmer format.... we hope you think it's cool. The site will be swapped over to http://zkimmer.com tomorrow afternoon PST. Come and try it out. Thanks for visiting.

New Heads up display concept , originally uploaded by ricricho . This is an artists impression of how the sunglass monitors would work. The image (in this case showing a google map) is projected onto the outside of the lense using an inverse polarization effect where only the wearer can see the image... note also that the alpha channel is adjustable so that the image can be set at different levels of transaprency... What do you think? I'd love to see your comments...

Sunglass monitor prototype , originally uploaded by ricricho . This image shows the initial design concept with the projector attached to an arm that sticks out a small distance from the frame. The arm retracts for storage and non use like an antenna of a cell phone. Tell me what you think.. the optics issues and miniaturization is being sorted out as we speak...