I'm Scott. I'm Russell. I'm Leo. This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, the Pitchin' Kitchen, where three lovable scamps, and usually a
plus one as well, empty their heads of startup and tech product ideas that we have stuck
up in here so you can all have them for free. Anything that we say is yours to keep. And
today we have a guest. Yep. This week's guest, this is my partner in creative chaos. And
please welcome my creatively insightful and endlessly supportive wife, CJ.
Yay. Welcome. Happy to be here.
Welcome. All right, Russell, what do you got? So recently I've been getting into Zoom transcriptions.
So I've been downloading Zooms, transcribing them, and I get to read how terrible I sound
on Zoom. Sorry, it's not that I sound terrible. It's that when I read the transcript, I cannot
believe anybody would listen to me. I don't know how anybody...
So let's start a podcast. I guess a podcast, my flow is just right for
it. But in a professional setting, I cannot believe how many ellipses Zoom had to just
transcribe for me. All I have to say is there needs to be a solution. And I've come up with
one to solve my problem. It's called Don't Sound Stupid.
Is this a tattoo that you get or something? Don't. Don't do it.
So basically, as you're talking in real time, it will notify you when you use um, like,
sound stupid. However, you set the app to make you sound as smart or dumb as you want,
I guess. Stupid. Sorry. I don't know if that's even politically correct, but just making
sure that you're... Sorry, not dumb. Stupid. To be clear, stupid.
I have a cousin who's dumb, so I can say it. Notification, I got a stupid alert. But that's
it. It's just telling you and that way you can self-correct in real time. You're like,
oh, I'm saying my light is flickering like crazy. And this kind of goes back to a previous
episode and we have a little notification light that appears, Scotty B, that appears
every time I sound stupid, right? This is awesome. I have so many thoughts on
this. Me too.
Well, OK, starting with just the app there, like if you have a meter that you're asking
or a slide bar for how smart or stupid you're going to be, what happens if you put it all
the way in stupid? Does it like shock you every time that you say a word over two syllables
or something? See, that's the monetization model, Scott.
You really can't solve your problems. It's the DLC.
You just start shocking yourself in the middle of the call.
Oh, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. So you can set it to sound dumb or stupid.
Are you saying that you're being notified every time you could sound smart, so it's
a reward system and or you're notified every time you sound stupid as like, hey, don't.
I didn't think about positive reinforcement in this. I only thought of just the stick,
not the carrot.
Yeah. Yeah. Losing money every time I sound stupid. I don't know. I hope that's never
a thing because every time you say it donates five dollars to Goodwill or something.
Oh, boy. So what are you imagining this software only on an existing phone or is this a hardware
product? I'm picturing a bracelet that zaps you like a shock collar, you know.
Dude, that would work. Like, you know, have my Apple Watch just vibrate every time I'm
sound like an idiot.
Amazon Alexa had a thing where you'd wear their fitness tracker. I think it's gone now.
Was it the halo? And you would wear it all day and then it would tell you like you were
really upset today. You were very angry sounding. Your tone wasn't very good in that meeting
or whatever. It would have like all day recording locally and it would tell you sentiment analysis.
So this is not unprecedented. And they didn't sell at all. So maybe you could buy all the
hardware and reflash it from.
Man, Amazon seems to have warehouses of failed hardware that they just can't get rid of.
Right. I think it was called the halo. And yeah, it was a somewhat similar idea, but
I don't think it was real time. You could have like a mood ring that knows. Yeah. The
hardware could be really easy for this to microphone, a simple bracelet that vibrates
Bluetooth to your phone.
I think you should you should just create an app that has like Google Alexa Apple integration.
So like it simply pings that. Oh, to your smart watch.
Every time they say like, yeah. So whatever device you already have, it's just an integration.
The microphone's got to be on all the time.
Even if it like. Unless you want to make hardware. I'm pro software because then it's like. Pro
hardware. Super simple. It's like a zoom add on. Like I just click a button that says,
all right, I download this app and it's called Don't Sound Stupid. And just lights up the
box around you, right? Or something every time you say or whatever.
I have been in zoom and Google Meet meetings where there's another participant that's just
a robot, like a third party transcription service that the person has paid a subscription
for. So it's not unprecedented to have some sort of, you know, feedback bot that's also
listening to what you're doing.
I wonder, I don't know how much the lag time is on a call that it would you'd be able to
notice this or not, but could you slow your own self, your feed into the universe down
by half a second and then have it automatically take out the ums live?
Scott. That's. Yes. Oh my God.
That's what I was. Yes.
It's like the broadcast television bleep button with 20 seconds off or whatever.
We'd have to do it so quick.
You have 12 allotted ums in three seconds that will divvy out. Point two five. We'll
fast forward you.
Live streamers would love this. They would never be canceled, right? If they say a bad
word or they say something stupid, like not more than stupid, just bad.
Like don't fail at life. We sell that. And any time that's like, OK, you said something
that's controversial. We just erase it. I don't know. But it never goes out into the
ether.
So this this idea is replacing like censorship.
It's self-censorship. You see your own brain.
Hey, it's just a foresight. It's like spell check, but for life in real time.
Whoa. I mean, if we're all it could be on zoom calls the rest of our lives.
Yeah. We are right. We don't have to see each other in person ever again.
Just spell check our life. What is reality, Scott?
I need a pun for this.
All right. I think we need this installed right away.
I need this now, please. Somebody like this is why we make this podcast.
I don't know, Russell. I still think if we did some form of hardware that would shock
someone every time they said the word around them, I would. And I knew that a person was
wearing that bracelet. I would just go right up next. I'm go all day long.
That's what I was picturing. It's like real time transcribing you. And every time you
actually say the word is when it gets recognition.
Yeah. Even just a little vibrate or something. Yeah, totally.
It doesn't have to be pain. It can just be a little like hum. Yeah.
A hum.
They have a device specifically for people with trichotillomania, which is where they
pull their hair out that like you program the action or whatever you're doing to recognize
when you're about to do something because it can be so mindless and it just vibrates.
All it does is interrupt your thought patterns. So I mean, if that can aid or cure that, like
I think that that would work well for making people less stupid.
Stupid sounding.
Hey, are you stupid? Do you want to stop? Don't be stupid.
What a great ad, though.
It writes itself.
The end. Give us money. I don't know, Russell. I think this is brilliant, though. This is
a great idea.
Oh, I have a quick story. I just had to chime in about the cringiness of hearing your own
voice. So a previous job, I did a ton of user interviews and often transcribed. So looking
through what I was saying, I had to re-listen to it. Somehow, by the grace of God, I downloaded
it to my iTunes library. And there was one point I was driving my car and had my phone
on shuffle. And I just had audio of myself stumbling through this user interview. I'm
like, what the fuck is going on? And it was just the most unhinged moment of my driving
career. It was horrible. It was not awesome. It's like, you know, customer service voice,
too. So I'm like, oh, my God, you sound dumb. You have your professional woman voice on.
It was just not good.
How does don't sound stupid dominate the world? How does it become the number one app on the
App Store?
Well, you got to make it cool. As you were talking, I was thinking, is there going to
be a stigma around people who are wearing the bracelet? Like, oh, really, you're enhancing
yourself? You have to buzz every time you say, um, sort of thing. So how do you make
it the limitless pill but hardware where people are jealous of it and want it?
Oh, well, don't don't make new hardware for it. Just embed it into whatever you're wearing.
If they're worried about that, just have it like as a part of Apple Watch or Fitbit or
Towing.
No.
Yeah, I mean, Apple Watch. Yes. Dude, it works great on a watch app, right? Just put on your
watch just instant.
Sure. The Apple Watch has enough hardware to make that happen. Now, I don't know about
battery, but yeah, it could probably exist today.
Only good for forums. The less stupid you sound, the longer battery life. That's what
Apple wants.
There's a carrot.
That's the negative feedback. What's the positive? You get an award. You get a scholarship. If
you don't sound stupid.
I've got it.
Diploma.
I've got it. You've got your challenges with other people. You make it social. You've got
like your leaderboards and you have your friends who are all competing to have.
I said the word like three times today. Beat that.
Exactly.
Oh, that's brilliant.
I had a run on sentence that went on for 58 words. So I lost 10 points.
I don't think people are into the whole like digital online competition scene anymore, though.
It's that moment past.
It seems so specific.
I thought all you Apple Watch people are like, this person just worked out.
It's a celebration together. It's not like a competition.
Close my rings.
That's like something you just like opt into. It's not. I don't know. Maybe some people
do use it to compete, but it's like, do you want to have notifications from this person?
It's like, yes, of course.
Well, then you can just gamify it for yourself. Like have your own leaderboard. You try to
one up your like count less than last week or whatever.
Maybe those that are competitive.
Yeah, definitely would want some analytics.
Gamify it is a great idea.
How do I make money on this?
How do I make money on this idea?
Isn't that part of your pitch?
Hey, somebody make this. Somebody make this app and then figure out how to make money
with it. All right. This is why we do this podcast.
You just have to sell it. What do you... I don't understand. You charge $2.99 a month
or whatever. What do you...
Oh, for a dollar? That's too much money. I can't pay $2 a month to sound smart.
To sound smart in your meeting and get that promotion? It pays for itself.
Wow, you know...
Asterisk, asterisk, not guaranteed.
I guess it doesn't solve the fact that you may be stupid. It just will make you sound
less stupid. Maybe that's what's next.
Well, at the end of the day, it can give you a summary like, hey, I noticed you use the
word great 12 times today. Maybe try a longer word like excellent or fantastic. You know,
it can like hint at the end of the day through your transcript, feed it through GPT form.
What are five tips you might have for me improving my vocabulary and rewording stuff and organizing
my thoughts?
Based on all of this data.
I say awesome and cool so much.
Or we just straight up do what everyone's accusing all the other cell phone and social
media companies. Just actually listen to what they're saying and then shoot them ads depending
on it.
Whoa.
I noticed your cousin was talking about the Denver Broncos. Here's some shoes. Yeah.
Oh, God.
That's the world domination model, Scotty.
World domination model.
Everything you say will be sent to third parties and we will make so much money.
That's awful.
It's free. It's so bad.
It's so dystopian.
Are you guys familiar with Grammarly?
Sure.
The like spell check plugin.
Yeah.
It's a similar like embedded interface across your Zoom calls, your Google chat, your teams,
whatever that was like.
That was the way you went about it versus mobile.
Because I think the setting most people would be in would probably be a Zoom call where
they want to sound not stupid.
Yes.
If you wanted to pivot out of the native space.
Solves the whole battery thing and mobile processing thing and stuff.
You just have it be an add on in your call.
That makes sense.
Or a browser extension or something.
Got a lot of options here, Russell.
Well, what if you could make other like, you know, you could quantify other people in your
meetings sounding stupider than you.
Show the metrics to your boss at the end of the year.
Leaderboard.
Hey, so my performance review.
That's the Russell twist I wanted.
That is the Russell twist I was waiting for.
So your business buys this and makes it mandatory in all of your calls and then turns the employees
against each other.
So initially it was like it was guilting yourself and now it's shaming your coworkers.
And I love that.
As an employee, I would quit immediately.
All right, Scott, what do you got?
All right.
This isn't really an idea.
This is just a half-baked thought that I am very excited about, but I don't know what
to do with this information.
So we had a EMC conference in our hometown.
People from all over the world are coming in to learn about EMC and electronics.
And during this conference in a seminar, some people from Boeing said, hey, you know, all
your like home IoT devices, anything that uses a microphone like your Google Home, your
Alexas or whatnot, all of them can hear at a much higher frequency than humans can.
Like they go up to the full spectrum of sound going through, not just what humans can hear.
And they just for fun threw an Alexa and a couple of Google Homes and some chambers and
figured out that like the optimal frequency for these is six gigahertz, which is just
crazy high.
It's well beyond what humans can say or hear.
So you could create some sort of device that could emit a sound at a frequency that all
IoT devices could hear, but no other human could.
And my first immediate thought is just messing with someone like I could go into their house
and then just constantly be playing noises on my phone to be like, purchase blah, blah,
blah, confirm order, and then just do that again and again and again.
But I feel like there's got to be a better use besides just pranking my friend here.
TV remotes are called clickers because for a long time, not a long time, some early models,
you'd press the button, it would make a really loud ultrasonic click.
And that was how the TV knew that you pressed a button.
It was a clicker.
Click, click, click, click, click.
Oh, just a different frequencies going through?
Yeah.
This one's power, this one's volume, whatever.
It was sending, I think they like struck a rod in the remote itself.
Oh, wow.
So could you use this as control of some kind?
Is there a time where like the ringtone that only teenagers can hear, is there a time where
you want to make a sound that only machines can hear?
I forgot about that one.
Yeah.
But it can still understand full human words at that frequency.
Oh.
Full commands.
I just got to project it at six gigahertz.
I see what you're saying.
You still have the frequency variations of a sentence structure.
It's just so high.
Okay.
So you could construct the sentence, Alexa, please turn on the lights or whatever.
Exactly.
And we could do that right now, just play it at that frequency and you have a valid
command to any Alexa or Google Home in the world right now.
It seems like a good way to do a burglary.
You'd say, please unlock the front door and you play it really loud out the window.
Just blast it outside their door.
All of a sudden you've walked up, you've pressed a button, you have a giant loud speaker playing
sound that they can't hear and then the door's all unlocked.
So this is the world domination version of this idea.
Usually they make voice recognition be required there.
Can you do it at all?
Maybe.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah.
Well, then you just use an AI, get that person's voice, get them to say four sentences and
play it back at that.
You play it over the tornado sirens in your area so that you can unlock all of the neighborhood
doors at once or start the car or whatever.
Subscribe to this podcast.
We're currently blasting that in the background right now at six gigahertz.
You all just subscribed.
So thank you all.
That's what we got to do, Scott.
We just got to drive down the street with our six gigahertz.
Scott says subscribe to Spitball podcast, which by the way, you guys should do that right now as you're listening.
So our target market is other podcasts that we're selling this to that they can play in their background.
Right.
I was just going to say the real core of your question is if you had the ability to make somebody else's smart speaker do something, what would you want it to do?
OK, you could, I think, make any device smart now, maybe like you create a piece of hardware and now it can talk to the Alexa through the house because it's firing on six gigahertz.
But then it's like, what's the difference between that and Wi-Fi?
Right.
But maybe it's stuff that doesn't make sense to put on Wi-Fi.
So you just make it smart through Alexa.
Does that make sense?
Like, all right, let's turn off.
I don't know.
Turn on the washing machine.
Right.
Or something.
I really like the idea of blasting it in huge speakers outside in the neighborhood, trying to unlock every door in the street to set off something in the street.
This is so chaotic.
You have to make a sound, and it's as if you have the ability to speak anything into someone's smart speaker.
If you could sell this to musicians and make the command be set volume to zero and play my album, and then you get 0.7 cents from Spotify.
That's brilliant.
Have a very specific album name or song name.
Yeah.
And then just blast it in the neighborhood, set volume to zero, play this on repeat.
We'll call this the unethical episode, but I love it.
Well, I mean, that's the best thing that you can do here, right?
You can do some pretty sketch stuff.
It's only shady stuff that you can do with this.
You pay for a local commercial, and you have your six gigahertz tone, and it broadcasts in everybody's house, and you have it set volume to zero.
Do something.
Set volume to zero.
Set volume to zero and play my album.
That's the only thing I can think of.
Subscribe to my podcast.
I'm not maliciously brained enough, I guess.
I can't think of other good uses for triggering someone else's.
It was like when I used to pick someone up from your business that you guys used to run, and I would sit outside and Chromecast Rick Astley.
How can I remotely do something like that?
I suppose you could just Rick Roll everybody.
You could just Rick Roll everybody.
There you go.
Easy.
We found it.
Rick Roll app.
It Rick Rolls everyone within like a...
We'll calculate the distance that a phone could spit out on that.
Any smart speaker in the area just starts playing.
It's the button.
And then you sell that app for $1.99.
Hardware version is just a bracelet that's always emitting that command forever.
And wherever you go, you just cause chaos of Rick Rolls around you.
It's like WWE wrestling walk-in music.
You set what song you want it to be, and it's constantly emitting that tone.
And every room you walk into, you get your theme song like you're stepping up to bat.
I'd buy that.
Dude, maybe that's the play too.
What if you just gave people, like musicians gave like little Hallmark cards, okay?
And they have to bring it to your Alexa, and you open it, and then it'll play the music.
Something like that.
Or, Scott, I think you did this.
You throw like a cricket microphone.
Oh, yeah, the little annoy-atrons that you hide somewhere.
Okay, this is the holiday cards, all right?
You know, when you open them, they play music.
Instead, it plays a six gigahertz sound tone.
And it just will randomly play some crazy song that you picked through the holiday card.
Boom.
Cotton-Eyed Joe forever.
Cotton-Eyed Joe.
You know, you get grandma, you know, grandma, open your card.
Happy birthday.
She opens the card.
All the smart speakers in the area light up.
Here's the thing, this is really easy to do.
That's too, that's scary.
One viral post.
How are you going to market this?
I think selling holiday cards would be dope.
They just play, they play Alexa songs.
And you don't even know how it knows.
That is magic.
Okay, little kids, you send them a card and they open it in front of the Alexa and all of a sudden it's playing a song.
You, the prankster, bought the card to prank someone.
And the prank is Alexa is playing a song really loud.
But then you would have to explain, oh, no, this was a prank I did for you and this is how it works.
And they're just going to be like, what the fuck is this?
Why are we listening to Cotton-Eyed Joe?
And you'd be like, get it?
And they'll be like, no.
Keep it the prankster.
You're not in the room.
You send this card to someone.
This card is forever on repeat sending out this command.
Like once, like your Annoy-O-Tron.
Once every 10 minutes it says, play Cotton-Eyed Joe.
And no matter what these people do, as long as that card remains in the house, which no one would suspect, you're going to get Cotton-Eyed Joe every 10 minutes.
That is so cruel.
Oh, wow.
That is cruel.
And they would never think it's the card.
They would never.
This is one of those things that will go viral, work for a week, and then they do fixes for it.
But how is it going to go viral?
It's going to be so hard to explain.
You don't have to explain it.
It's just this magic little coin cell thing.
This little speaker will make you make your Google Home play Cotton-Eyed Joe.
I stand by that.
That's going to be so hard.
It's just like a magic card.
You say, this is a magical card.
You don't have to know how it works.
It's just you put it next to your Alexa and it starts to play a song.
The prank is it plays music.
I don't know, man.
It doesn't have to play music.
There's a lot of like, what, sound bites or something.
You can play anything on the Alexa app, right?
You're right.
Turn off your lights.
Oh, my God.
It'll just be like a poltergeist card.
You forever think your house is haunted if this is in there.
It's just a fire alarm.
Oh.
Nest, test my alarm.
Just constantly.
All right.
Well, this got really cruel really quick.
Anyway, listening, you know, think of a better idea.
Pivot to Halloween decoration.
You bring this thing home and it's haunted.
Ooh.
Disguise it as a Bible.
Is this illegal?
Is the Annoy-a-tron legal?
I don't know.
I think it's fine.
It's a speaker and a button cell battery.
Are crickets illegal?
So true, Russell.
I'm always saying that.
All right, Leo.
What you got?
All right.
So one of my pastimes is editing a wonderful collaborative resource called
Open Street Map.
I don't know if you guys know what Open Street Map is.
It's like Google Maps, Apple Maps, whatever.
Go to OpenStreetMap.org.
It's a web interface or an app of a map.
But there's a big edit button in the top corner.
You press edit and it's like Wikipedia.
Everyone contributes to this thing, right?
I have fun drawing sidewalks and writing polygons and naming parks and stuff
when I want something therapeutic to do on there.
But it's tedious and there's a bunch of missing buildings in our town that we
live in.
There's missing sidewalks and stuff.
And it feels silly to very slowly draw them over time.
I want a piece of hardware that's kind of like the Google Maps backpacks and
Street View cars that goes around and detects nearby parks, nearby sidewalks.
It looks at what's around it and does some object recognition and just gives
me a database at the end of my hour walk or drive.
I'll put it on the dash and says, we think that we saw this road over here,
that sidewalk over there.
There was a building over here.
Would you like to add that to the map?
What's it called?
Is this corner correct?
Yes, it is.
Great.
I saw a door over here.
That wasn't marked on the map yet.
Do you want to add it?
OK.
I mean, the hardware is just like a 360 camera on a tripod, right?
Exactly.
And you're just walking around recording something, right?
And a computer.
Yeah.
Wear it as a backpack, put it on the front of your bike or something.
And put it on your car roof?
Sure.
Or on the hood or something.
That's what Google and Apple and Amazon all do.
I don't know if you've seen Amazon Vans.
They all have these wacky cameras on the top.
They're making mapping data better.
I wish that we could commoditize that and give it to the people instead of letting these
companies keep it to themselves.
But this is an open source way that lets the public do it for themselves.
Sure.
It reminds me a little bit of your crypto hotspot thing, the LoRa radio.
Oh, Helium.
Helium.
It's like the Helium network where you have a bunch of different little receiver guys
and they're all looking at what's around them and contributing to a public good.
I have a great spin off of where this started.
That is what I thought you were saying initially.
What if it was an accessibility twist?
So making sure people could access a park or could properly get down the street not
knowing if there was messed up sidewalk, steps, whatever.
Spin off, spin off.
I went through a rollerblading phase during COVID and I was like, I would love to rollerblade
outside.
And the only real option was a basketball court because our sidewalks were so bumpy.
So I wonder if it could recognize smooth enough paths to identify where you can roller skate
without killing yourself.
Open street map has tags for what kind of surface is this?
Is there an incline?
10 degree, 20 degree, all that stuff.
There's a natural home for the data, but a lot of it's missing right now.
So people like you could go in there and say, yes, this is a ramp and that is stairs and
this is that.
The reason that I've been playing with open street map recently is at the place that I
work, we are supporting an incoming person who is fully blind.
We edited open street map data, pulled the data and turned it into a 3D printable map
of our campus so that this person would know where all the buildings were.
And it was exactly that accessibility thing.
We've marked all the entrances, made sure the sidewalks were all right, and then made
an STL and I have my like printed map.
And now the student could say, oh, Lubbers Hall is over near whatever hall.
OK, got it.
Yeah, that is so cool.
Yeah, it's a really fun project for accessibility, but I had to go through and edit all the sidewalks
and missing entrances and stuff manually.
Right.
And it's nice.
It's therapeutic.
It's something that I kind of get sucked into, but it's tedious and seems like it should
be automatable or at least partly automatable, you know.
And then I see the Amazon truck collecting data on top.
Why is that?
I'll do it.
So I want one of those, please.
Yes.
Thank you.
Let's go back to this roller skating thing, though, because I think people need to know
where to roller skate, but also like long people that long I don't logboard, but people
that longboard.
Yeah, because it's not like whether or not it's a sidewalk like the surface has got
to be just right.
And it's like maybe we encourage people because like always Google Maps is always out of date.
Right.
They only let their trucks go through every once in a while.
So now you incentivize people.
You throw this on Pokemon goers.
All right.
And now they're walking around Pokemon going and making some pokey coin, you know, with
the.
It's funny you say that Pokemon go pulls its map from OpenStreetMap.
Well, there we go.
And you add a building and OpenStreetMap shows up in the game.
Yeah.
See, and now you just need the data to go back.
They're pulling from OpenStreetMap, but Pokemoners need to be able to mark whatever you need
to gamify it better.
Yeah, you get you sell Pokemon hats with 360 cameras on it.
And now you got people just walking around collecting, you know, and then right.
So you have OpenStreetMap or whatever.
Pokey go selling the roller blade map, selling the longboard map, selling like the latest
and greatest street views.
I mean, why not?
Like, why is it so hard?
Let's just do that.
Who's going to pay for roller blade maps, though?
I think that's.
I would.
I was deep in it.
Does OpenStreetMap, whatever it's called, do they have an idea of where things may be
inaccurate or would it be more of I'm sending a request to fix something that is inaccurate?
Because I was thinking if it was the former, it could be a ping of like wherever geolocation
you're close to this.
Hey, is this accurate?
Kind of like when you leave somewhere, Google's like, you're popular.
How was blah, blah, blah, leave a review.
I could see it working well that way versus having to have hardware and such.
That's how you make money.
Totally.
You could maybe people could ask for an updated map ahead of time and pay, hey, somebody go
out there for five bucks, walk around the 360 camera, please, for whatever reason, I
have a need for it, whether it's Pokemon Go, whether it's accessibility, whether it's somebody
else.
Bounties, baby bets.
OK, that's a throwback.
That's great.
OK.
Did you ever get like, did you ever get like pinged whenever you arrived at your destination
from Google back in the day to take a picture of this restaurant?
No.
Like I would get, yeah, all the time whenever I arrived at my destination, they'd be like,
can you take answer some questions and take a picture of the outside of this place?
And I'm like, OK, sure.
I mean, that's I don't know whatever happened to that.
But that I maybe you guys hadn't had that happen to you.
Maybe Google's just in love with me.
Yeah, that's exactly I was saying.
Like if they need clarification, they could just request it.
Whoever was actually in that area.
Leo, I wonder if you could go the nonprofit route and make it like, hey, we're going to
sell hardware or this idea to municipalities to be like, we are going to get every sidewalk,
every street, everything in your town on the map and searchable so you can have better
businesses or better business to your local businesses.
And then you go reach out to the community and be like, look, we need prizes to incentivize
people to do this.
Would you donate a free meal, a golf lesson?
I don't know, whatever.
Free massage downtown or something in order to incentivize people as a contest to who
can get the most points in this map collecting.
Yeah, absolutely.
Crowdsourcing.
That's how it is now.
It's just there's no incentive is incentivization or anything.
Yeah.
Five oh one, two, three.
Dude, that's like a big deal.
People take this very seriously.
There's a conference every year.
There's like a whole wiki on the rules for how to tag something as grass versus a park
versus a grassland versus a whatever, you know, like it's very intense.
That's awesome.
That is really cool.
So is it free for everybody?
Like, yeah, it's just, yeah.
Openstreetmap.org.
I encourage everyone on the podcast to make one edit.
It's so cool.
Everybody listening.
Sponsor us.
That's right.
Not just for accessibility stuff, but it's just a nice resource that a bunch of like
Tesla's for a while pulled from it.
Like I said, Pokemon go a bunch of projects just use this as a base layer of data because
it's got most things that you'd need.
Right.
The bummer is when people take the data and they add their own secret sauce to it and
they don't like contribute back up to the main project, you know, but it's out there.
I don't know if real time object recognition has gotten to the point where you can just
like point a camera at a street and it'll tell you where it is and how long it is and
what it's made of and stuff.
But that's my dream.
Maybe another five years.
We'll get the data now and they can figure it out later.
All right.
It's like freezing yourself.
We'll figure it out.
Probably in the future someday.
This is a physical product.
And if anyone is familiar with happy lamps, happy lights.
Yes.
Totally.
Has anyone had one?
Yes.
Okay, cool.
Russell.
I didn't know this.
I got one because I was sad in the wintertime and I was like trying to embed this as a part
of my routine and get less sad and used it briefly on and on, but was super turned off
by it because for there to be benefits, it's recommended to sit six inches away from this
bright, bright light as well as using it for like 15 to 20 minutes a day, which is hard,
especially if you're already sad or depressed or just going just, you know, or just generally
speaking, it's hard to do anything for 20 minutes.
So my thought is this actually does work when you use it well, which I have done before,
like gotten to a good habit of using it.
But I think there could be a much easier way to like use it more passively and to not feel
like you're just sitting in front of a really bright light for no reason.
So I think that could be as simple as like a vanity mirror or light to do your makeup
because that's something you're already taking a lot of time to do hair, makeup, brush your
teeth, whatever in the morning.
Not even if you're using it for 20 minutes straight, but if that's your literal vanity
bathroom light around your mirror, what have you, boom, you're doing it multiple times
a day.
It's natural.
Or workplace addition, ring lights or any sort of supportive lights around Zoom calls,
stuff like that.
Turn on the happy lights.
Yeah.
You got to be sitting there with lights or camera, just embedding that as a part of your
daily workflow.
Love it.
Genius.
So I'd love to think of other physical ways that could be embedded into things I've already
sitting out for.
I have hue lights in my office that change color temperature from like bluish in the
morning to orangish in the evening.
It seems like the kind of thing that you could just build into a regular light bulb and let
it kind of be optional.
You know, like you press a switch on your smart home, whatever, or you turn the light
on and off twice and it switches from happy light mode to normal mode.
You could have every bulb in your house be a happy light for an hour, right?
Why not?
Is there a reason that shouldn't be the case?
Yeah.
Is there prolonged exposure problems?
Yeah.
I don't know if happy lights actually are just blue versus red and like are centric to like
being able to sleep well and having the rhythms.
I think that it's a separate thing, so I'd have to research that.
But in general, yeah, that would be dope to just offer it in the form of a light bulb
into like your workspace.
I used, not like a happy, I had an alarm clock, right?
Because I couldn't.
It was the physical, like I can wake up in the summer really well at 6am, 7am because
there's sun coming through the window, right?
And I think in the wintertime it's like killer.
So I bought this dumb little box thing and it would slowly creep up to a color and then
wake you up in a more natural way.
I have that too.
Right?
Right.
So I'm guessing that's, that was, but it didn't really hit the spot.
I think that's what you're saying, right?
And so then I bought a happy light.
You did the wake up light to a happy light.
That's right.
I bought a happy light.
So it's like a little box.
It's an LED and I would literally put it on top of my face and lay down on my couch for
10 minutes.
Still, it's like not the same as when eight or nine o'clock in the wintertime rolls around
and I can look at the dim gray clouds for five minutes.
I'm like, I feel something, right?
I think it's a circadian rhythm thing or like there is something literally in your brain
that changes based.
I remember reading this like based on UV light, like melatonin, something changes.
I think that's why.
And so, man, I totally think this needs to happen.
So I feel like hyping up the idea a bit because it's like, I need this.
I take vitamin D. I take whatever.
I need it too.
I take whatever I can to like, I leave.
I now I leave and I left in February this year to escape the gloom.
So, the Midwest winter.
Yeah.
Happy lights don't literally have UV though, do they?
That's not like a tanning bed.
No.
I just looked it up.
They do not have UV.
So then what makes it different than like a blue light?
I know what you're talking about.
I just don't know how they work.
Why is there no UV?
Isn't that the key ingredient in like sunlight?
The mixture?
I think it would be bad to sit six inches away from that though.
So whatever they're replicating it with, it seems like that could just be like an LED
strip or something that you could just put around your monitor or whatever.
Yeah.
Like what is the actual light bulb?
I've never taken the time to research what that is.
Okay.
I just looked it up.
UV rays typically emits 10,000 lux.
That's a lot.
Which is, yeah, 10 times brighter than a normal LED light.
Different spectrum of color temperature, specifically designed to filter out UV rays.
Good.
Okay.
So it's just really, really bright and a little bit different blue.
It's just a bright special color light.
So if that's the case, do you need this in your face?
That's what the instruction said.
Where are you putting this light?
Yeah, but would it still work if I just made a sweater or an undershirt or something with
all LEDs pointed right at my skin that turned on for like 20 minutes a day?
That was quite a departure, but I'm here for it.
I love it.
And it's a reversible jacket so that everyone around you can be happy too.
It's like inverse.
A happy blanket.
Yeah.
Then it wakes you up in the morning too.
A happy blanket.
Hell yeah.
Heaven forbid you're under the blankets when it flips on.
The Snuggie for joy.
A joy Snuggie.
You wake up and there's Christmas lights all around you.
You're just kind of glowing underneath.
Well, okay.
Here's another light technology I don't know a lot about, but I've heard of.
It's like this red light therapy that supposedly is like anti-aging and good for your skin
and shit.
And like a Kardashian type audience is very invested in this new technology, but it's
like a wearable Iron Man looking mask.
Oh.
It's always about the face.
Perhaps.
I was going to say, we could just change the frequency of the Snuggie.
I haven't shown two different types of LEDs.
You get both for the price of one.
So if I choose blue light, it makes me happy, but red light makes me beautiful and I have
to pick.
That's what you're telling me.
Put both lights in.
Can't be both.
What about both?
Can't be both.
Both at the same time.
So, is there a difference?
Okay.
Is there a difference between this happy light and did you guys ever see this video of like
children standing around a light in like Norway or in Greenland where every day at school
they put on swimsuits with like UV goggles and stand around a purple light because there's
no sun for like.
Because they don't get sun.
It's like literally like a gym activity where they stand around a light, a UV light.
That's so sad.
That's apocalyptic.
I mean.
All right, kids, it's time to stare at the orb.
They love it.
I could use that though.
Like, let's take that and bring it to America.
Okay.
You stand.
Bring it to the Midwest.
The Midwest.
Yeah.
Please.
What do they have that we, I mean, let's bring it home.
I don't know anything about this light, but I think that's what we got to do.
Okay.
So, you know how you want to put it in your everyday life, right?
Incorporate this special UV light, the commute.
Boom.
Replace every car light with natural sun.
I was on board.
Only replace the high vehicle.
Every car on the road had the sun.
Just you're driving, you're getting the UV lights.
You know how people love getting headlights in their face.
Are you saying an interior car light?
Because that could almost make sense to me.
If you're talking about headlights, I'm a little lost.
Okay.
Interior dome lights.
Sorry.
What did I say?
Headliners?
What are those things that.
You just said lights.
Okay.
Yes.
Interior lights.
Okay.
It's the red.
Break lights.
No, that's for beauty.
Let's tell Musk, throw it on your taillights.
Changes the world.
He makes everybody happier.
I like the idea that it's your reverse lights, the white ones.
You throw it in reverse and the power of the sun just blasting out the back of your car.
No, I think the commute is where I need the most joy.
So, I need.
I mean, not that I have one.
But.
Your idea was having it around the mirror, your beauty station.
I mean, how is that that different than around your windshield, right?
You could have it all around there pointed at you.
It doesn't have to be 10,000 bucks.
Especially if we could make these like the LED strips that are so popular.
Yeah.
I was initially thinking like just a vanity light.
But yeah, the more applications, the better.
And if it's just a piece of tape.
It's a good idea.
Just an LED strip.
I'll put it around my monitor right here.
And you look good in your Zoom calls.
Let them decide.
If you just, okay, if you just brand it in the right like wellness space, white people will buy that.
Boom.
Like right now it's cold plunging.
It's going to be a UV pole soon.
Sauna.
A UV pole.
You just got to get Huberman on this.
Then we're good.
Little Joe Rogue, you know.
Done.
Maybe.
Wim Hof.
Oh yeah.
We're coming for you, Joe.
Podcast empire.
Any day now.
I'm going on record to say I'm not.
Joe's coming on this podcast.
He's got some ideas, I'm sure.
Oh, I'm sure he does.
That's you, Joe.
Feel free to write us, Joe.
We know you're a listener.
Thank you, Joe, for listening.
And thank you everyone else for listening as well.
We hope you enjoyed yourself.
Well, thank you, Caroline, for joining us tonight.
Anytime.
I've got lots more.
Tag me in.
Our website is Spitball.show.
We'd love to hear from you, especially you, Joe.
Email us feedback, comments, ideas, at podcast at Spitball.show.
Follow us on social media.
We're at the Spitball show on X.
And follow podcast at Spitball.show on the Fetaverse, which is Mastodon.
Our subreddit is r slash Spitball show.
Our intro/outro music is swingers by Bonkers Beat Club.
Please, if you wouldn't mind, if you're listening on a podcast app,
would you fire up that app and just if there's a button to press or rate or
follow or add or subscribe, we would love to have it.
Leave us a review on Apple podcast if you wouldn't mind.
That is the best way for people to find the show.
New episode is out next month.
We will see you then.
Hey, Alexa, subscribe to Spitball.
Can you say that again in six gigahertz, Scott?