In football, after every play, there’s a seemingly interminable period until the next play starts, during which they show replays and talk about what they just saw. The delay is even longer for plays involving flags, and perhaps just long enough:

They could set up a SMS number and show it on screen after every flag, asking the viewers to tell them whether or not they agreed with the referee’s call, charging 25 cents or more per vote. Then after a short while they could display the results on screen.

If there isn’t enough time to gather and calculate the results before the next play, they could just post random numbers that almost always favor the referee, encouraging those that disagree to vote the next time. It doesn’t matter if it’s accurate, and it might be better if it’s inaccurate.

Easy money.

Are you like the old me, tired of the cluttered mess of cables in your closet, or worse yet in your car or on the bus? Try the new dpk CableHolderThing™ 5000™*!

Here’s how it works. Just slip one end of a cable under one of the patent-pending elastic cords along the side, and wrap the rest of the cable around. Put the other end under another elastic cord and presto! It’s a new you! Got transformers? Plop ‘em inside the box after wrapping the cords around the outside. (Note: Transformers may cause cable tangling.)

I know what you’re asking yourself: Me, do I deserve to live a life without tangled cables? Of course you do. So here’s what you need:

• 6″ diameter round paper mache box — the taller, the more cables it can hold
• about a yard of 1/8″ thick elastic cord per 5 inches of useful box height (i.e. excluding lid)
• package of hook-and-eyes (I used 16)
• needle and thread
• a pen or a pencil
• measuring tape (sewing, not construction)
• a pin or thumbtack
• glue

Wrap the measuring tape around the bottom of the box. Divide up the hooks for the top and the bottom. Mark where the bottom set of hooks will go, at about 1/4″ from the bottom. For the top hooks: if your box has a lid and you want to use it, put it on (on the box not on you), and make your marks 1/4″ below the lid; otherwise: mark 1/4″ below the top of the box. For best results, mark the top and bottom hooks in a zig-zag pattern. Optional, but recommended step: poke a hole on either side of each mark, spaced however wide the holes in the hooks are.

Sew the hooks evenly around the side of the box — half on top, half on the bottom. I ran the thread around each hook 5 times. Apply glue to the threads on the inside of the box if you can’t make a good knot in there (it’s tough on the bottom). Tie a knot in the elastic and, while holding it stretched pretty taught, run it up and down through the hooks, twice (there should be room in the hooks). Tie off the end and cut. Enjoy!

* This offer not available in stores. See store for details.

Seems to me that most people want to stretch more frequently and/or regularly. I know I do. So, how about this: A website where you can sign up and enter your IM contact information (Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, etc) along with a schedule. The code on the servers sends out a reminder, along with a link. When you go to the link, you’re rewarded in some way (perhaps with a joke, or something similar), and it also makes a log entry for your personal use. The site could have suggested stretches and schedules that you could select instead of entering your own.

The rewards would need to have no value, of course, because otherwise the system would be abused for profit (It might still be abused, but who cares if someone fakes a stretching record?). Jokes are the first thing that come to mind, but I guess it could be almost anything with no value.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a website without ads, so you’d have ads for local occupational therapists and related professionals.

These may already exist, but I was not able to find them with Google (perhaps that itself means it doesn’t exist).

• Interior pet door – Great for people who have pets that sleep with them, and still want their privacy. It would be installed by carefully cutting a rectangular hole on the opposite side from the hinges, saving the panels so they can be attached to the door itself once it is in place, for aesthetics (if desired).
• Cat activated faucet – Our cats love running water. My cat in particular loves to beg for us to turn on the bathroom sink for her. It would be excellent if there were a way for a cat to turn on the faucet, using their weight on the rim of the bowl. It could be designed with a timer and a sensor (in the overflow drain) to keep it from overflowing if the sink is clogged.

These two devices, combined, would have allowed my cat to get her own water this morning, at 5:00AM. Ugh.