On our recent weekend in Zurich, I saw teacups doubling as lampshades and open books hanging as mobiles from string threaded through holes bored through the pages. Both made me think how everyday objects can be given other contexts and uses which, conversely, makes their own essence more noticeable. I wondered if this might be a way of bringing some of those buried mementos and artefacts to life? Would it work, for example, to create a mobile with some of one’s keepsakes?

As I contemplated the display of digital versions of posters and pictures, my mind wandered to other aspects of digitisation such as the creation of objects with 3d printers. The slippage between real and digital will become increasingly easy and prevalent. Consequently the world of the future will need ways to easily, quickly and reliably differentiate between what is original and what is copy – an ORI mark system. Detailed forensic investigation will always be an option to get an absolute answer, but people will need a more immediate mechanism to help them navigate an increasingly mixed reality world.

Sometimes it’s just hard to imagine the size of things when they are written about in the newspapers – or even when they are shown in pictures. A recent TV programme about glaciers and icebergs showed a huge glacier front many kilometres long and very high, but it was impossible to grasp its scale until the research vessel came in shot at the foot of this monster. Of course the place we do fully grasp the size of is our home and its environs. So maybe some innovative software company could create an app which would enable you to select an object or geographic place and have it inserted into a picture of your house. With appropriate accompanying sounds, the insertion of the Grand Canyon into the back garden (and surrounding land for many miles each way) would be both dramatic and instructive.

The UK movement to encourage employers to provide a living wage, as opposed to a minimum wage, is a commendable initiative. Perhaps it would gain more momentum if those in power could spend a week with a family on the minimum wage – or even on the living wage! A longer term strategy might be to have school leavers undertake the same experience.

To add a bit of frisson to a sharing platter, provide a tot of different kinds of sherry with each of the major elements of the dish.

After failing to record at least four ideas over recent months I’m making a determined effort to catch up. Here’s the first of the four.

Dress: Casual with one Change: A twist on organising a fancy dress party might be to specify a dress code which suggests that guests turn up in their normal attire but bring with them a change of clothes. Then, at some point during the party, have people change and parade in their alternative garb.

Doing Spin in the gym during the Olympics made me wonder how gyms could capitalise on the raised interest in sport. Most gyms don’t have the facilities or staff to let people try out all the various different Olympic sports. However, perhaps there’d be some mileage in devising exercise routines that map onto the physical demands and skills of specific sports. For things like cycling, it would be easy to simulate actual olympic events such as the road race that Wiggins won, by building climbs, flats and breakaways into a Spin session and talking the participants through the session as though they were doing the race. A video of the road race unfolding in front of them on a video screen would make it even more realistic. Rowing machines and swimming pools could be used in similar ways. For other sports a little more imagination would be needed, but the way that Aerobics classes have been adapted in recent years to become Body Pump, Zumba, etc., shows just what is possible.

The four year Olympic cycle is something else that might motivate people. Gyms could offer programmes that seek to build people up to a peak at the time of the next Olympics, perhaps with mini peaks for the odd “European Championships”, or “World Championships” thrown in the intervening years.

Links between Gyms and local clubs that actually do the sports concerned could also be established with mutually beneficial results – more customers for the Gyms and more people doing the sports. The Gyms could provide club members with the regimes to build the strength and body control required by a particular sport; and the clubs would provide opportunities for gym members who want to try out a particular sport for real.

These ideas can be used freely, but an acknowledgement would be appreciated and, if you make any money from them, I would hope for a contribution.

In the early 1980’s, when I was researching email, I was introduced to the concept of mailbox structures by Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz. They described structuring as tailoring the computer-based communication process around a particular group or application. This concept was explored in great depth by John Bowers and John Churcher in the Cosmos project in the late 1980’s. However, I’ve lost touch with the topic. It would be fun to explore what, if anything, has been done with the concept since then.

Every now and again an idea pops into my head which interests and excites me. Often its while I’m in the shower and I spend 10 minutes or so exploring it in my head and getting enthusiastic about it. But then real life intervenes and the thought – and enthusiasm – is gone. Some of the ideas are more practical than others that’s for sure, but perhaps all deserve more considered thought, and even action, if only I had the time and energy. Its frustrating to have most of them sink without trace once the moment passes. So this is a space in which new, raw, ideas can be recorded straight away, and perhaps revisited at a later date.

I welcome any and all comments about whether the ideas are good or useless, or suggesting ways in which the idea can be extended in a new direction.