I'm Scott. I'm Russell. And I'm Leo. This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, the pitchin' kitchen, where three bug hunters, that's us, and a guest empty
their heads of startup and tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all
have them for free. Anything that we say is yours to keep. Russell, I believe you brought our guest
this week. Who do you have with us? I have the amazing, incredible Alex, the wannabe writer,
the awesome storyteller, musician, creative, waiting for her first book to come out because
I know it's going to be great. And I'm trying to subtly encourage her to release a book.
I was going to say, wannabe writer sounds kind of passive aggressive or just aggressive.
Do you subtly encourage everyone to write books?
She also does an amazing book review.
You should follow her on YouTube.
Alex, you can do your plug later.
No, no.
Alex, welcome to Spitball.
We're so glad to have you.
Thank you for that lovely intro, Russell.
Anytime, Alex.
This week, we are going to be playing a quick little game here that we're calling CES BS.
Do you guys know what CES is?
the consumer electronics show oh yeah in vegas exactly every january the first week of the year
there is a show that is a big electronics fair and all the tv manufacturers and wannabe big
name in startup industry all try to show off their wares it's sort of waned in popularity
in the last few years but i feel like the last year at least this year's was quite good again and
over the years there's been a lot of really weird stuff that's come out and so today i'm just going
to read you a headline from some CES between 2013 and now. I can give you the year if you think
that's helpful as a hint. And this is going to be a headline from an actual, you know, time.com,
abc.com, The Verge, et cetera, digital trends. And I'll read the headline and you tell me if
you think yes or no, is this a real thing that actually happened or was it fake? All right.
Start off, of course, as we always do with our guest, Alex. Kohler's smart toilet promises,
quote a fully immersive experience this is an intelligent toilet with built-in surround sound
speakers ambient mood lighting and amazon alexa voice controls was this a real thing that happened
or something that i made up uh i essentially think that's probably a real thing that's exactly right
it was 2019 kohler had a whole situation going on at their booth i guess if you make toilets like
what else do you do right but yeah that was a verge article guys i have been on that toilet
why was it an immersive experience
it was a little overwhelming how so you come for a very you know simple task and you leave and
you're like did i hit all the features like maybe i could have done the fan blower at the normal
speed or should i gone higher like there's literally fans i don't know uh go to the
My back was massaged.
I did my taxes.
It was incredible.
I was only in there for 40 minutes.
I don't know if I had enough time.
Full body experience.
Scott, brush your luscious locks with this smart hairbrush that knows more about your hair than you do.
I'm going to say that one's fake.
It's a real article from 2017.
Are you serious?
Digitaltrends.com.
Yeah, Withings and others.
What metrics is it possibly giving you?
I think it's like hair thickness and all kinds of stats.
It's not just how many times you had to brush it, but it like measures and analyzes your hair, I guess.
I don't know.
Probably gives you a curl pattern.
Right, I guess.
This is why we need more females on the show.
Yeah, curl pattern for sure.
That's exactly what that must do.
Russell.
Thank you.
This smart belt will automatically loosen when you eat too much.
No.
That can't be real.
But it's just somebody's thought of this.
Final answer?
It's not real.
Not real.
Time.com, 2015, real thing.
Amazing.
Yeah.
You don't have to start eating healthy because of this automatically loosening belt.
Sure enough.
All right.
One more trip through.
Alex, fork that vibrates when you eat too fast is ready to feed you.
Oh, my God.
I'm going to say that's not real.
it was called the happy fork it was legit in 2013 it's a fork with a small computer inside
it recorded your eating pattern and it vibrated when you ate too fast i don't know if it ever
came out this isn't necessarily whether the product made it to market this is just somebody
had a dream at ces uh i believe that means it's still 1 0 0 with alex in the lead um scott hands
on demo with sherman's new toilet paper robot and fart smell sensor at ces the sherman booth
What do you do with a fart smell sensor? I'm just going to say it's real.
It was real. 2020. Yes. GeekWire had that article. The roll bot was the Bluetooth enabled
robot that helped deliver fresh rolls of toilet paper when you unexpectedly run out. And the smell
sense combined a fart sensor with an LED display and it alerted you whether or not a bathroom is
safe to enter. Wait, I'm sorry. It gives you toilet paper when you run out? Is it like a
drone that flies yeah i think that was the demo yeah maybe for offices or something i don't know
lastly russell the sensor wake smell based alarm clock has a nagging bacon deficit you can wait to
the smell of hot chocolate peppermint and espresso but inexplicably not bacon i want one of those so
yes yeah i that's an amazing idea 2016 techhive.com that is legit if you're keeping track at home
every one of us got one out of two and all of those were real that's part of the joke
i wonder how well that smell sensor would work you just make it smell like smoke every morning
you just shoot out of bed yeah i don't know do you you must buy pods to like refill the
the smells i don't like a glade plug-in i guess oh yeah it makes sense that sounds like a Spitball
idea. Somebody should have pitched that on Spitball. That and the belt and the fork. Well,
it didn't make it to market in 2016 from what I can tell, but maybe you two could revive the
SensorWake brand. Wow. Who would have thought that there are so many Spitball ideas actually
out in the real world? Just crappy enough to be on this show. All right, Leo, what is an idea you
would love to create but just don't have time for okay i've got something really simple i don't even
know if we can get five or ten minutes of discussion out of this because it's so no-brainer
but maybe there's somewhere we can go when electronics have ports on them your usbc port
the female side the lightning port etc and they start to get old even usba ports they sort of
don't hold cables very well anymore you put in a cable and it kind of falls out on its own or it
flops around a little bit. You've got a wall outlet that's like 50 years old and it doesn't
really hold the vacuum anymore. Instead of replacing the female side, I don't know why
Monoprice, Amazon Basics, et cetera, don't sell a cable where the shielding, the housing around
the connector itself is two to 5% bigger. If I had a USB port that's starting to go a little
bit bad on my computer, why can't I get just a smidge oversized of a cable that can grab onto
that loose port and get another year or two out of it. That's the whole pitch of all the people
in the world. If I could get an extension cord that was three inches longer that I plug my vacuum
into, and then I plug that into the wall, but it's a little bit too big, maybe then it would
hold on better. Leo, I never would have guessed you want more variations of USBs or cables in
general. I want a USB-C size four, USB-C size five. It definitely needs to be like clearly
labeled so it sits out of my collection, you know? It's like the warning sign or something. Yeah,
I just, there's all kinds of like aging devices that I think we could get a little bit more time
out of. Everyone's had the experience of like the port that has to be at just the right angle so
that it connects right and it doesn't quite fit in just the right way. Like beef up the connector
a little bit. How would you, sizing, would you be like a variety of sizes and you just have to like
plug it in, get like one of those packs that you can get where there's a bunch of different sizes?
oh yeah maybe there's like a two three four and five percent too big hauling the same backs i
don't know yeah you i feel like even if it was just like regular and jumbo where it was three
percent bigger on all sides and that's it you know usb that's all you need jumbo usb so just
quite broken enough you have to wait a little bit if it doesn't fit yeah otherwise it's going to go
in the trash anyway the you know laptops ports aren't working right or whatever like you could
probably get a little bit more life out of it if we had something that could just sort of fit
snugly again like it was brand new wait so this is what's happening inside your computer port right
this isn't like the other way right it's not the usb cable itself i was picturing selling cables
it'd be the cheap way to go they're just a little bit too big of a cable and you just sort of like
force it in there in a way where it fit more snugly like it just came out of the box but
you know okay so i'm gonna one-up you on here leo take a us you have a usb cable you sell a
super small sticker like a shim that you put on top of the usb itself and so when you plug it in
it just has a extra half millimeter on there and you just get like a reel of these stickers that
you sure could that work on something that's like 110 standard us nema outlet maybe is that do i
have to worry about my stickers catching on fire i don't really know electricity that well
we're just fireproof stickers maybe if it's five volt use fireproof stickers make them out of
something that's the tagline for this one i don't know if we want to draw the customer's eye to hey
this is a fire risk that's interesting though because you're right if the resistance is too
high on the sticker it will catch fire much quicker than all right so this is the cable itself and
this is permanent right like why don't you just create like what is it uh they have plumbers buddy
you know the plumber's putty that you use to like yeah just like wrap it like come up with the
non-conductive and you shove it in there it dries and then it never comes out it's like you're done
with it yeah i guess like even like electrical tape and you just kind of wrap it a little bit
right glue kind of guy that's it we just you just glue is amazing for that it's non-conductive you
can put on everything it's forgiving you can peel it off if you made a mistake which you always do
when you hot glue. Don't they have like a
paste? Don't they have like a computer paste
that's non-conductive that you can just
just glue it in there? You guys
are you proposing something permanent? I don't want
to attach a cable permanently
to my computer when it's starting to get old. It's already
broken. So it's got a little pigtail.
Yeah, I guess.
I just wanted a normal cable but a little bigger
so I could use it like
it's a normal cable. Is that so much to ask?
Yeah, because you're just encouraging. You're
keeping the problem. But no, I guess
that makes sense. Then you can unplug it.
Maybe there's some way to make the reverse where it's kind of like a shim that sits permanently in the port itself. Yeah. I don't really know the exact mechanism that grabs onto a standard outlet in my house is like on the inside of it. You would need lots of different connectors and cables to fit all the different style of port, I guess.
Dude, this makes me think of, what are those mag chargers? Like, oh yeah, Mac has this,
like the MagSafe chargers. Yeah. Why don't you just have that? Wait, what are they? Like you
plug it in. MagSafe. Yeah, you plug it into your port. I don't know if they do this for every other
type of USB, but like maybe they just, you shove it in there, right? And it like meshes in there.
That's the thing. Yeah. Leo, explain it. Yeah. MacBooks have a charger that's a non-standard
proprietary thing where the cable itself has a magnet in it and it like attaches itself to the
port and then if you trip over the cable it breaks away cleanly without dragging your laptop off the
table um it's a great concept i've seen what kind of what you're talking about russell so like you
can get a little tiny it looks like those tiny like logitech usb receiver kind of things a little
slim usb thing that lives in the port permanently and then the cable that attaches with their own
magnet like thing yeah yeah you can get something like that too i guess maybe if that was two to
five percent too oh is that real that's a real thing i thought it was just that's a real thing
yeah yeah you can get you know mag safe knockoff that's universally compatible so it just kind of
lives permanently in a usbc port and then you have to use their cable it still wiggles though
right it's like a loose tooth you know maybe you don't want a loose tooth you gotta have the jumbo
you gotta put the jumbo in there right i am not a cad drawer but i do feel like i could take a
standard usb cable design and just drag it a little bit to be bigger and ship that off to
some manufacturer in china to say here's my blueprint here's my my design it's this but a
little big done lightning would be tricky because the pins the way they're laid out it'd have to be
like a little bit too wide but the pins would still line up in there but most of the current
charging cables. I think they have like a housing around them, like USB-A, the old style rectangle
USB ports. You just need to make that just like a little too big. Anyway, I don't want to belabor
the point, but you get it. I get it. Sounds like you've had this problem recently, Leo.
I see it a lot at work. Like someone will bring in a laptop from five years ago, six, seven,
eight years ago that just nothing stays in, right? And they've got duct tape holding cables to it
and stuff. It was me. Man, there's got to be a way to. If you're using duct tape at that point,
you might as well just replace whatever you're using.
Yeah.
Some college students are creatively on a budget, you know?
I'm wondering what else you can apply that to.
I was thinking originally when you pitched the idea,
like my vacuum, after it's been a few years,
the plug will come out of the wall way more regularly.
Totally.
And I was like, oh, maybe you have an extension cord out of the wall.
I feel like there are other areas that make sense.
like especially the other end right so rather than it being the port i have like a bunch of cables
where just the part that goes into the macbook or like into your phone or device is bent to all hell
you know sure i i don't know maybe this does exist but like just cutting that end off and
reapplying something new on there like then i apply my jumbo cable you know or like whatever
different fitting sizes i convert it to usbc or whatever like like i just want to be able to
wire strip and make that happen with i don't know in an easy way that's the trick the easy part you
can't do that buy a new connector on the end and cut it and attach it and stuff but sometimes it's
hard to get it up to spec because certain like thunderbolt cables have really specific requirements
as to exactly what kind of length and stuff they're allowed to have but most of the time yeah
you can just cut it and put a new end on it but oftentimes it's a few bucks for the connector and
you might as well just buy a new cable at that point russell i'm thinking about your vacuum yeah
that the ac outlet comes out of the wall i want to have some kind of device that you buy off the
shelf and it's just like a little round sticker or like one of those materials that sticks to
things but you can still peel it away really easily and have that surrounding the plug you
like attach that to a normal plug and so when you put it in the wall it just stays there much more
than it would have based on the grip of just the ac outlet command strip yeah but all around
removable it's not on the wall it's on the cable i guess you could do it to the wall why not just
make your that's like the cable put the sticker around the socket and then have it once it's
plugged in attached to the wall right actually the socket the socket's a good idea velcro like
the plate that goes on the wall. Oh, Velcro would be too.
Velcro's a good idea. I was picturing the Blu-Tack like stuff that you used to
in kindergarten to put up your bulletin board like papers on the wall and stuff. But
yeah, Velcro makes a lot of sense. We should put that on every outlet. I love that.
I bet this could apply to USBs too. It's just a little thinner, thinner version.
Do you think Apple would concede the industrial design of having Velcro on the bottom of every
phone that they make. I don't know. It seems like something the EU would have to force them to do.
Too soon, man. Apple and Velcro just sound like two opposite ends of the world. The universe,
you know? Alex, what is something that you would love to see in the world,
but that you don't have time to make? Okay. So I don't know if you guys have this problem,
But now that we are a way more globalized world, we have access to so much different kind of entertainment than we have previously, right?
So I have been watching a whole lot more TV shows, listening to music, variety shows, all sorts of things, movies that are not in English.
And while captions are great and translations are great, I have not, I can't remember how many times I have seen a show or watched a movie and then gone online and seen somebody whose native language is whatever language that the show was in and just told me that the captions are completely off.
Really?
They're a literal direct translation often.
But the thing that's missing that would make the show better is the context.
right is the the cultural context that is missing from the direct translation so i thought there
should be some app some product some something where we can employ a bunch of people who are
bilingual to do those translations but with the cultural context in it oh yeah yeah whoa that's
fantastic do you know duolingo's business model i think about this constantly it's so interesting
Duolingo will go to a web page and say, "Hey, web page person, we will translate your web page for you." They break the sentences up into pieces and that's what they're quizzing people on. They mix it up with their own content, but they are crowdsourcing a bunch of people doing this translation. Yeah. It's one of the services like if I want to have my web page in five different languages, I go to Duolingo, I pay the money, and then they have like hundreds of people all get quizzed on what's this sentence mean? What's that sentence mean? And they do kind of what they're doing.
you're talking about there, but it doesn't have the cultural context either, right? Unless you're
able to get paragraphs together, you could totally gamify it like they do. That would be really
interesting. I would love that job. Hey, you need to watch movies all day, but you also have to be
able to be fluent in Spanish and English and tell exactly what's happening here and make sure we're
doing this right. Yeah, totally. And I don't think it even needs to be limited to the language
aspect, right? So there's cultural context missing generationally. So you've got a Gen Xer who wants
to know what the millennials are talking about or the Gen Zs, where they have all this other lingo
and cultural context from just being who they are and when they were born.
Interesting. Generational translation too. I don't speak another language fluently enough
to do this, but if I was watching a show that had a lot of hip and trendy lingo,
I could translate it to old man talk. That's fun.
Z to boomer.
That's interesting.
All these different people, all age ranges across the world to do all of this translation.
And not just like English to Korean or English to Japanese, like talking like Japanese to Spanish.
All like all over, make it as global as we are currently.
Whoa.
Do you imagine this, the end product that all these users generate, is this something that's baked into Netflix itself as like another audio track to pick from?
Or is this like a thing that lives alongside the media in your own little app that you make?
So I think it could be either way.
I think if it is large enough, we could go to Netflix and say, I don't know how Netflix works really, but like you could go to Netflix and say, we have this product and we have these people who have done these translations for shows that they already have.
Yeah.
And then potentially like shows in the future.
We have any shows that they're creating that are coming out.
we could potentially have that coming out as they come out rather than waiting weeks or months to
get the translations done. I know there's also, there's so many people that actually do this
already for free. Like it's just part of what they like to do on the interwebs. Like there's
people who, so I guess to give you like an example is in the K-pop world, I don't know if any of you
are familiar with this. They have lots of idols do live, like basically live shows where they just
get on and talk to their fans. And that's all in their native language, usually in Korean.
Sometimes they're bilingual. And so they have some English sections to it, but most of the time
it's in Korean. And there are people who sit on Twitter, listen to the live and live caption,
live translate yeah and so if we can get that for like the live things but also like if people are
already doing that they're doing that for free out of their goodwill because they love the groups
that they're listening to other people who love those groups why couldn't we pay them to do that
totally this is so cool it's the same thing that drives wikipedia editors it's just like the
altruism of it yeah um do you guys remember like back in the day i don't know where i you created
like this memory that I have of like watching old TV shows on like MTV or something and they would
have little pop-ups and speech bubbles as you're watching the show to give more context or like
you know behind the scenes knowledge YouTube annotations kind of it was like literally speech
bubbles they would put into like really yeah yes that happened on Disney a lot it was like the like
fun fact edition of whatever TV show or movie. That's it. And I just feel like at the bottom
that they would just like pop up and be like, did you know so and so broke their foot while
filming this scene? Yes, Alex, exactly. Yes, I'm so glad. That's exactly what I'm imagining. But
so you could like, let's say you okay, like that take that concept. It exists. It's been validated.
It's real. You throw that on your phone, right? And so you time it like let's play like you press
play on your TV, you press play on your phone. Or if you're watching it on your browser, you put the
Chrome extension on there. Sure. Boom. Your phone is listening for the audio track and syncing
itself up. Yeah. There we go. Right. And you can kind of be doing that same thing. And you can pick
from different translators. I'm thinking more of like a crowdsource like kind of model where you
have, let's say, ads within the application. And the more people that view your version, let's say,
of context, the more money you generate, right?
So kind of like content creation for TV shows.
So now if you got like some guy that loves Friends so much,
and now you're watching Friends, and you pull up your phone,
and you can be reading, you know,
Friends guy 48's annotation notes while you're watching,
but it's got all these historic context,
or like behind the scenes stuff,
like links to interviews where they talk about this scene and you're just like re-watching the
shows that you're already watching but to an nth degree like now you're just so immersed in
friends culture or something like that or whatever show you're watching breaking bad scott like you
know or something like that we got all these different people that love the show so much
and want more content to consume about it, it's so real.
That's such a good idea.
Guests come with the best ideas sometimes, guys.
Like, holy cow.
You guys know the lyrics site genius.com?
Yes.
You can look up a song's lyrics or whatever, and then on the side,
they'll have user contributed like, hey, here's what these two stanzas are talking about.
This is a reference to another song that they wrote or whatever.
Oh, yeah.
Their original pitch as a startup back when they were trying to find their feet in startup world
was what if we had a layer of comment section on every web page on the internet? I thought that
was such a cool idea. So like you would fire up genius.com and then load up another page in their
iframe on their site, or you can have their Chrome extension or whatever. And then every
single web page that you're looking at, you press the genius button and then you get other people's
contributed comments on that content. You're proposing something like that. I love that idea.
And I was sad that it died.
I feel like there is a world for like Wikipedia, but for something that's happening now that I'm part of, like real-time Wikipedia.
Yeah.
Are you going for both just live or live and old content, let's say?
Well, I think it would be kind of cool to be able to – I definitely would like older current content, like scripted content.
But I think it would be kind of cool to run like simulcast of like having the translator there with you.
Sort of like a Discord.
Yeah.
Like live viewing where you can just like have these scheduled meetings with whoever thousands of people that show up because they love your commentary or they love your translations.
I think that would be a tool often as well.
Brings us together.
Entertainment, right?
Yeah.
A thousand percent.
One of the best parts of Reddit is like the, I just watched an episode of a show that I loved and now I'm going to go read everyone talking about it or movie that I just saw, right?
You could do that, but in real time.
That's amazing.
I love that idea.
I know that feeling.
It's rare, I guess for me.
It's like.
Sure.
I feel like there's so many like, so like that's the entertainment concept, right?
But I feel like there's so many other concepts like corporate training videos or safety videos that like, I mean, if you want to make this a full-time job, there's probably like hundreds of millions of corporate people that are like, do I have to go into Google Translate and do this?
Like, what plug-in can I plug into WordPress to make this my site Russian or something, right?
Translated.
Like, you can just outsource that with a network that's, you know, the bilingual network, right?
Yeah, we've strayed away a little bit from your original translation between languages and cultural context pitch, which I loved.
Sorry, I didn't mean to turn it into, like, we should all have a comment section on friends.
Sorry, yeah.
I think it's all linked together though, right?
So it's everyone enjoying,
if you stick to the entertainment side of it,
it's people across the world enjoying the same content, right?
Yeah.
So regardless of what language you speak
or what culture you understand, right?
We're going to get with this product
or with this translation,
we're going to get someone in the US
who is now understanding like,
oh, this is why they did this
in the specific scene of this K-drama I'm watching.
And same like you'll get someone from Russia that will now understand that as well.
Not just like the translated to their language, but also that understanding.
Ooh, you know, this reminds me, one of our guests, Sam Zou, a long time ago when we were living together,
he was saying how, I guess like a lot of Mandarin, there's a lot of idioms, right, that are spoken.
And same with English, right?
So like to do a direct translation of an idiom is kind of doesn't make sense.
Yes.
So like that's kind of what you're like when somebody says, I never forget this, don't
be the lone soldier in the army or something is what I was talking to Sam about this.
And it's a whole context.
There's a whole story behind that lone soldier that everybody knows the story of, right?
Kind of like an idiom.
How are you supposed to translate that into English, right?
You create like...
That would be perfect for your little blurb up there.
I love that.
Yeah.
And there's literal words that can't be translated into other languages.
So how do you translate a feeling, right?
And get it to be any semblance of what they're shooting for within the scene of whatever
show you're watching or whatever documentary you're watching, right?
Yeah.
I'm just curious, Alex, was there a specific example that created this idea with you?
No, I just watch a lot of K-dramas.
I guess the the what it stems from is there's been a couple k dramas I've watched recently where
I've like overall understood the plot and I've enjoyed the characters but I've left
like there's some nuances of the story where I feel like I shouldn't have understood something
a little bit better sure and like feeling sometimes feeling a little bit stupid for not
catching on to those nuances. And it's, I don't think it's because I don't understand the story.
I think it's because it's the language barrier or the culture context barrier. And if we can
figure out a way to break those down, I think that there's a better discussion on different
cultures with people across the world. And that I think ultimately, if we're like looking on a
global scale, it's not just entertainment wise that helps us understand people differently and
better. I'm willing to bet the top 100 potential fans of Latin America soap operas aren't even
aware of it. Right? Right. Totally. There's so much like stuff that I'm sure people would love
that they just have never had exposure to that this could totally link them to. Yeah, I think
it's a cool way to like, learn to I don't know, that just be kind of cool to be plugged into the
culture and understand that stuff at some point. Yeah. I think that like, a lot of people use
watching other language shows as a way to learn the language too so if they're like if you can
see or understand how people are phrasing the language because i think there's a very different
way of like duolingo teaches you vocabulary and sentence structure but doesn't always teach you
like what an actual conversation sounds like right you sound very stilted like you've been
out of the book just like in school when we were learning french or spanish you know that was not
like actual French or Spanish in the way that Spanish or French people would speak. It's just
very textbook, right? U.S. American textbook. So, using stories or film or music, music a little
less because you play with like the phrasings and lyrics a lot. But the other places, you're getting
an idea of what people actually sound like, how they actually have conversations. And then
adding that cultural context to it helps you understand why they're saying things that way
right oh man yes i honestly love this for just english to english um well i mean by that i was uh
yeah like i remember music genius i think leo if you this is it would give you facts oh no that's
the company yeah that's genius yeah it's the same company then as you're listening to the song it
gives you context clues yes to why like when you listen to rap it's like and have music genius up
it's in it's so much better because you start to understand that there's like oh he dropped that
lyric to actually make fun of eminem the nuances the original name for the company was rap genius
yeah rap genius okay yeah it that was that was awesome like you just realized they were a watt
combinator company yeah there's so much behind every bar that those the rappers use and you're
just like oh i am so disconnected from it but also it's like how much deeper like rap is already
really deep when you read the lyrics you find out how much more story there is behind it it's just
it's so much better like songs like like your favorite song becomes even more your favorite
it. It's just, I don't know, rap genius. That's it. English to English.
All right. So Scott, do you have an idea for us today?
I do. I have an idea that I've been thinking about all week and it is a survey slot machine.
So I've been working with a bunch of students who have been trying to collect data in their
university cafeteria and we found that it is quite hard to corner people or just to get people to
fill out surveys in general. I'm sure a lot of people know this. Without some form of incentive,
whether that's I will pay you for your time or I'll give you a gift card or I'll give you a
king-size Snickers or something, we had barely any budget to collect a lot of data for this.
And so that got us thinking, what if instead of giving out something to every person who did it,
there is like you have online forums where there's you could win a gift card or something.
But I want this in person right in front of them.
So when all these students are exiting the cafeteria and we need to ask them specifics about what they ate today, because that's the data we're trying to collect.
I want like an iPad that has all the information of the survey and they fill it out as they're walking by.
And there is a 5% chance that a $50 bill will pop out of it or something.
Or we'll just keep messing with the numbers on there until we find the right balance of prize to chance to win.
And that's it.
It's essentially an iPad taped to an ATM that sometimes spits out money.
Oh, man.
You're like a roulette.
Exactly.
Yeah, I don't know how legal this would be in terms of gambling law, but...
Interesting, yeah.
Who's your customer for that?
Are you trying to sell this to people in your predicament?
I feel like this could be a good way to collect data at random points from real people.
Like, you could put one of these on a street corner or something and be like,
hey, answer these four questions and you might win $50 or whatever.
just like rent the slot machine experience the giant box do you know what i mean with the lever
like bring them out like go to the store rent one and you're just like listen if you hit the
jackpot we got here's our prize pool right you just create the the sounds the lights the the
whole experience and dude i don't even care if i win or lose i just want to pull a freaking lever
at the cost of what five questions here's the thing though you wouldn't have to add in more
money into there you could just answer more questions and get more credits to pull that
giant lever arm damn if you really just love the experience maybe to get around gambling law it
doesn't actually ever win it's just about the experience that's simulator real casino for four
easy questions gambling simulator 2020 you know how many slot machine apps there are on like the
app store like really this is a real thing people spend hours of their life on their ipads just yikes
uh i mean you could take a picture if you win jackpot on the slot machine you know like i don't
know um okay here's another thing scott hypothetically you could turn this into a global
thing all right let's get real big with this so you have no it's the same app right and everybody
you throw like let's say a hundred dollars into the app the app allows you to run the surveys but
there is a national prize pool that you could win if you do this survey so you have your local survey
wins but then because you're using this app there is a chance that you could win like the $50,000
prize pool that all the people across all the nations that are doing surveys on this app are
able to win got it so you got a 10% chance of winning five dollars or something but you have a
0.0001% chance of winning 50,000 each time you play this and now you do like uh you generate
surveys now let's say and people are now generating like kind of like google what is it google does
this opinion rewards opinion rewards right and google pays you every single time you do it
they could just turn it into a gamble right i think people like gambling it's not gambling it's
just survey for a potential win right it's is that i don't know how legal that is if you're not
actually spending money what if when you had that every time you took a survey you like had a pool
and then you could choose to pay out or reinvest it into potentially like gaining more so like
let's say you do the surveys and every time you get like 50 cents or a dollar like something
something really small right but you can choose pay it out or reinvest and then the next survey
you take you get double that so a dollar or two dollars and then as you double it out and then
you have the opportunity to do that global scale as well where they take i don't know i guess i
don't know if maybe we would do you should do like double it and then add that to the pool that of
the like the grand prize so you're still getting like every time you get a dollar but every time
you double it you either you you put that dollar into the grand prize into like the grand prize
and then that cashes out or you can just pull your money and cash it out it's cool yeah i want to so
let me add a little context to this on here we had i always love hardware solutions for everything so
this is why i'm picturing this as a physical product and not an app although you could
probably get a lot more people doing that okay so a little context for this we have a bunch of
students and we're trying to figure we're trying to optimize a cafeteria flow in order to do that
we need to figure out the popularity of every food that's served in this cafeteria and we learn
that we can't just ask people which one they like the best because they change their minds all the
time and the best way to get hard data for this is to corner them either while they're eating or
right after the meal and say what did you eat today that's the only thing i need to know what
did you eat today and that is the truest data of what they like the best because it's what they
chose however it's hard to capture the people or get them willing to do that and so i want to set
up this ipad right outside of the entrances and exits of this building and have them just like
they don't log in they don't do anything they just like hit a button and hit enter they hit a picture
of their food and hit enter so here's what you do you set it up as a metal detector that you have to
walk through to exit and so in order to do something they have to do your survey don't even reward them
just keep them in the building until they answer the question what did you eat exactly here's what
i was gonna say you ever been in an airport bathroom and they have the little smiley face
frowny face nutrition you want that but like chicken nugget salad bar pasta french fries
here's my question for you though have you ever hit that button in the bathroom yeah no
have you yeah alex to say things were bad or good uh usually only good she hits the middle option
each time no but i yeah i just want a way to incentivize them to hit that button even if it
is the chicken nugget hit the green button or something and then there's a 10 chance of five
a little pop out or a snickers or something i think if you could train the students that
that could happen they would use it every day a little gashapon like the quarter machines that
have a little capsule with a snickers in it or some m&ms or something that's fun i like that
i'm thinking okay i went weird with this and i was like what if they automatically got a free spin
and as they're walking they're like oh my spin won to claim your prize fill out this survey
you know kind of go the other way out like create create the experience this sounds like one of
like the scammy like car salesman like yeah yeah you only get winners then right you're always
giving out a win and then but it doesn't as it that's too it's too icky for me in order to get
this thing we said you is free you have to give us all of your information yeah yeah i i want to
the hope was to make it is so you don't have to log in you don't have to do anything but maybe
people don't want survey data without all the metrics is that a requirement for like your
service like for my situation no we just needed to know some basic information we don't care who
ordered it or why they ordered it just what they had that day i think the trick would be to get
them to start doing it right so if you have the issue where no one's doing it but then you
implement this iPad or this reward system, you still have to get them to do it.
Pick the most popular person on campus and rig it so that they win the jackpot.
They'll tell everyone.
That's just marketing. That's just good marketing.
Viral.
I was thinking you make a bunch of these little kiosk stations and you manufacture them and then
rent them out to companies who want to collect data at certain points. Oh, our employees,
We need to get their opinion on this.
And they just don't do email surveys or people coming out of a gym or something or grocery store, whatever.
Rent it to corporations.
It really is the bathroom, smiley face, frowny face thing, but flexible enough to be any sort of like multiple choice question that you want to get.
So you know those machines at Sam's Club where you can get those free samples, but you have to scan your membership card?
Yeah.
Free ask.
What if we did that, except I don't know what we would use for like the scan.
If it's like maybe if it's at like a school, they could scan their ID because they already have one, right?
Yes.
And then it would grab all the information already.
And then also for like button you have them press on the screen and then it will give them the little treat or the sticker or the whatever, right?
That definitely limits it to like the schools or corporations with IDs.
But I think that's fantastic because that's the perfect application for this.
You need to figure out wherever the heck they're assembling those things in some factory and just get your own white labeled version of the free ask vending machine that you can put your own software on.
That's great.
That's incredible.
That's an incredible idea.
Like that's a vending machine replacement.
You imagine just that's a whole Spitball.
I'm going to save that next week.
Could you take a literal vending machine only instead of the keypad to select a thing?
you have your question and then it dispenses a random thing from there.
There's 100%. Yes, Alex.
There's some $5 bills in some of them, but there's also like a little fun size Snickers.
A bunch of empty ones. There's like an iPad and one corner of it.
Yeah, sure. One of them spins.
Genius. That is such a good idea.
That's easy hardware right there.
And you just fill it with a bunch of Oreos.
There's so many vending machines on like Facebook marketplace that you can grab for cheap.
Right. You add your own little Arduino to it or something.
You need to have like NeoPixel LEDs or something so they're all lighting up randomly and then it slowly settles on one.
Absolutely. And I love some of them are empty. Some of them are like crap. Some of them are five bucks. You've got the one that's like the Nintendo Switch or whatever.
I mean, like think about this, like at theme parks, right? Like get a free like button if you answer questions like you guys play Roller Coaster Tycoon.
like there's so many reasons why you would want to do a survey and i feel like the worst part
about the survey is not the survey itself but it's the the person that you have to deal with
on the other side of it right so by making it a robot you remove that whole human element where
hi i'm scott i'm russell and we're Spitball we want to survey your Spitball experience you know
it's just like sure is that what we sound like here's a quiet form we're gonna here's here's
two oreo here's a package of oreos or some goldfish if you just fill out these five pieces
of five questions boom drops from vending machines i'm on with my day like you remove
it's like okay and then you go one step further you put this in break rooms
right oh like people who are already on the hunt for a snack right and it's just a you know you
put it in like giant corporate offices or something obviously gotta be careful with the whole corporate
just privacy stuff but like oh every day like that that machine's gonna be empty every day
because people are just gonna fill out surveys and get free snacks like i think like a can of
coke what does that actually cost 25 cents like if you're selling survey information at like that's
true you know that that trade-off like i don't know like people would do that every day you'd
have to like you can scan your id badge or whatever to pull that information there's just
that's a good point like the snacks or the the prizes are truly cheap enough that you don't even
have to randomize it or have empty things you could just give like pick whatever you want from
our vending machine just answer these questions and it's yours yeah it depends on how valuable
the data is if you're looking for something that's like i'm on my way out i'm on my way to class i
just stayed at the college cafeteria and i yeah i'm gonna tell you that i'm getting chicken nuggets
I don't know if we didn't reward that, but...
That's the whole reason why we did the randomization for large prizes.
But yeah.
Right.
But if you're like talking, you know, the 10 question survey about your political whatever, then yeah.
The trick is stopping people in like theme parks and stuff from just taking it over and over and over and over again.
Yeah, you'd have to have like an ID badge.
You got to have some kind of unique identity.
You scan your magic band at Disney or whatever.
Yeah.
I mean, part of the scanning, right, is so that you can only do it once.
Once per survey.
When they change over the survey to a different one, then you can go again.
I think I'd be the guy that would do it every day, though.
I just, just to do it because I get free stuff.
Russell, you're last to go this week.
What do you got for us?
All right.
So I recently have been on a road trip.
I drove to Florida by myself, sent my wife and kid on the plane.
And it's great, but geez, is it boring to sit and look at a windshield for 21 hours?
Oh my God.
And you think to yourself, what am I doing with my life and all that stuff?
You know, a little bit of, I'd rather do something else.
Like I would love driving games while I'm driving.
And I think they already have like heads up display stuff on your windshield.
So you can see your GPS, your speedometer, whatever.
Put a control stick on my freaking steering wheel and allow me to play some game that keeps me in the lines, keeps me aware of my surroundings.
I have to look at each mirror to find Waldo, right?
Oh, Waldo's in mirror three.
It gives me some sort of game while I'm driving, and it does a lot of things, right?
I feel like there's a lot of safety elements to it.
Uh-huh.
You know?
It sounds like there's a lot of safety things.
There are a lot of safety elements to it, Russell, for sure.
There are a lot of safety elements.
I mean, I think, I don't know.
There's probably some statistics out there about, you know, sleepy driving, late night
driving or uh when you're doing road trips like all that stuff i think that you can create an
alert driving experience through heads up displays through entertainment through that
some sort of entertainment whether it's games or something else um okay through these like a heads
up display so i got two thoughts on this that's it uh okay one i think it was you that used to
take your phone and put it like face up on the dash and then you would have your should i not
say this no it's fine no i'm glad all right yes you know what i'm talking about it would just you
would put your gps on it or like google maps or ways or something and it would just like reflect
up onto the screen and then you could actually see it and while you're moving forward yeah yeah
but he just did it with by putting his phone up there and that was nice totally one i'm picturing
something like that but two could you also do a game where it's strictly audio so we're not
antagonizing a bunch of politicians yeah like zombies run you remember that it's run zombies
run or just zombies run that was entirely audio and it was like an exercise app so you put in
your headphones and you go running and then you run for a little while and say oh god the zombies
are coming rawr and you have to like try to move via gps around where they were listening to oh
man and they're getting louder if i go this way oh i gotta go the other way kind of thing go faster
it's like an augmented reality thing you can do that kind of thing for driving so like i'm playing
a game that's yeah go past that cop right no there's got to be like a a game that we could
build that is yeah i love it audio style even where you're maybe you're talking back at it
you're having a conversation with the game talking back yeah good like hey what song is this and you
You got to kind of verbally say, oh, you're playing a clip from this guy.
Or here's a clip from a famous movie or show that we know that you like because we have all of your info.
So like an Alexa for your car that does song quiz on repeat for 21 hours.
Sounds like a nightmare.
Yes.
In this, you know how Wordle became a thing and then there's like a sea of knockoff similar idea Wordle type things.
One of them, a coworker, actually, Sander, who was on the episode 13, I think it was, he turned me on recently to a wordle, but it is five guesses as to what song this is.
And it starts with just drums and then drums and bass and then drums and bass.
Right.
Yeah.
You could do that kind of game where it named that tune type thing.
Audio.
I like that.
I throw in audio clips of like scenes from movies or TV shows and try to guess.
Yeah.
If it's like something well-versed in, like try to guess the episode from the show.
Yeah.
Audio games while driving.
Yeah.
And as long as you, what was the quiz game we used to do?
HQ.
Yeah.
You just need like a super excited host or something that keeps you entertained while
you're going through.
It feels like they're in the car with you the whole way, but it's just a robot going
through the motions.
You fire up the large language model and now you've got personalized for your favorite
television show host trivia. Whoa, your own little trivia game there. You know, I thought about
gamifying traffic and I think this is part of it. Like if you're stuck in the same traffic jam,
how cool would it be to just like run a little game show while everybody's stuck in traffic?
Like we talked about a little bit with the CB radio one, but yeah, getting something that's
like nearby to you. I like that. That'd be interesting. Also, I thought about, you know,
how Waze and Google, they do a lot of like letting you know about incidents on the side of the road
or cops. Like I think there's like some play there. But then again, I feel like going back
to like what Scott, you were saying, like I put my phone, like that was what inspired this idea a
little bit is like I would put my phone in the dash and watch Netflix in mirrored fashion while
I be driving? I mean, it's allegedly you didn't actually do this. Allegedly. Allegedly. Yes.
I mean, after 12 hours of looking at the same white line over and over again, you're like,
huh? I mean, I'm listening to Netflix show right now. Might as well just throw it on my windshield
and see it in mirror. And honestly, I felt so. I mean, I'm sure there's probably data out there.
I felt like I was more alert as a result because it's just like, I don't know.
Because you're so scared you're going to crash because you're watching Netflix.
No, you're just like actually like not drifting.
I don't know.
Have you heard of, I feel like I'm in highway hypnosis a lot where you're just like looking
at the same line over and over again.
Like, I just feel like I take, I feel like if I'm not being entertained, I end up driving
faster and take out my boredom on the road.
Shit, maybe this is, I'm going to, like, then I end up.
speeding then i end up like all right i want to pass this car because it's so slow i get
i just am like constantly trying to accelerate and hit my destination or my journey rather than
just enjoying i'll just cruise control a little bit and something i feel like there's something
with the heads-up display what made gps allowed to be on that heads-up display can't i read a book
i don't know or or teleprompter i don't know maybe not a full book but like can i do something
and it doesn't have to be tiny in the corner it could be like right on the lines of where i don't
know like right on the lines of where i'm driving so that i'm actually like seeing a light or a car
i don't know this is is it that crazy is this that insane i think i i haven't driven 24 hours
to florida enough i guess the movies and book thing like where's waldo s i i feel like americans
The average person's got to be too stupid to handle that, right?
I guess you're right.
I guess I don't think of the lowest denominator, right?
The lowest common.
You got to imagine every other person on the road doing this,
reading their book while driving next to you.
It's scary.
Okay, okay.
The key would be to keep yourself engaged.
So if you are having a Taylor Swift marathon where you are performing her concert
while singing along with her.
Like you're going to be way more engaged and alert in that 21 hours
than if you were like listening to an audiobook
that has a really nice slow paced reader
who just kind of lulling you to sleep.
So maybe it's not necessarily about the visual aspect.
Maybe it's more about the interactive aspect.
That's a really good point.
I like the Taylor Swift thing too.
Like you're just, you're driving on your own.
You know this entire album verbatim.
You are the star of the show
and it's just putting on background clapping
or other concert noises or something, and you're just going through different songs,
and it keeps up with you with however you're doing it.
Is it?
That's fun.
AI responsive karaoke.
Yeah.
Like in Guitar Hero when you'd play really well, and the crowd would start getting more excited.
Yeah.
Okay, I'm going to go back to visual real quick.
So what if-
Yeah, do it.
We keep trying to steer it away to audio, but nope.
All right, all right, all right.
Imagine this.
Instead of it being a phone on your freaking windshield, it's a full AR experience, okay?
Now, you know, hear me out, hear me out.
You actually, it like detects like where cars are.
So like let's say this is full on safety, only for safety experience.
So now it's windshield 2.0.
It's, you're looking at your windshield and you actually see like car approaching on your right.
You have something in your blind spot to your left.
Like you have a full heads up display of driving experience, all safety because we're a little
long on the fun part.
But it makes sense.
It's like all your blind spot detectors, how far away you are from the car in front of
you.
Let's say there's a traffic report.
All that stuff is around your vision.
And also you got some lines, let's say visual lines that are computer generated to help
in like when you're driving in snow or when the lines aren't there very well or whatever else
stuff you just have your full heads up display in front of you as well detects a pothole and
turns it into a big boiling pot of lava that you got to steer around now we're talking right
throw some entertainment in there clever so like that might be because like if you think about how
dangerous the gps is the giant ass screen on your car nowadays that you have to turn right to look
at you move it up in front of you and you create a full blind spot avoidant experience so that you
as the driver are maybe that's how i should have pitched it the first time are fully aware of your
surroundings so you're talking about creating like uh like a augmented layer over what you're
actually already seeing yes this is like now i am yeah flick's in the center blindly driving
while watching a Netflix with maybe let's talk about the sideline. Okay. That's a much better.
The bad news is the NTSB won't let Tesla put like a camera instead of a rear view mirror. So I doubt
they're going to be cool with, you know, fully enclosing you in a 360 augmented experience,
but maybe in like 50 years. What if it was a visual projector? No, I guess, damn. So it is
just a regulation. You have to sell the product as an aftermarket kit that people can do whatever
they want with. Yes. And if they choose to put it in their car, then so be it. That's what I'm
selling. That's it. It's an aftermarket. It's not a manufacturer thing. You put a small sticker on
it that says, do not put this in your car and you're legally absolved of all problem.
It just happens. You project it on the glass and it happens to connect to your... It should help
people, right? If you do it right, like there's so many elements to the car that you're driving
that are like blind spot indicators and all that stuff.
Like, why do I have to turn my head?
The damn government is preventing us from being safe?
All right, here it goes.
How dare they?
They're keeping me from watching Netflix on my way to Florida.
You see, then the next BitBall episode when that goes live is,
we should hack one of those devices to put Netflix on it.
Dear listener, we hope that you enjoyed the Spitball experience while driving yourself down to Florida or wherever it is that you are driving right now.
Thank you for listening.
We hope you enjoyed yourself.
And thank you, Alex, for being here.
This was such a lovely time.
Yes.
Thanks for having me.
Oh, it was so great.
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