Stay Curious My Friends

Last week I ran around the Saratoga National Battlefield Park and it was amazing! I’m a history nut so I’m pretty easy to please but this park was particularly well done. The signs explaining what went on were well done, some included maps, some had voice overviews, and they even had a few rangers to answer questions at some of the locations along the route. Still, I wanted more information and I think a lot more people would be interested and visit the parks if more information was provided. I’d love to see an iPhone/iPad app for the national park service that provided history information via text, voice, pictures, and video of all the parks in the USA. Not only for historical locations, but also natural locations.

Just imagine how amazing it would be at the Saratoga park to whip out your iPhone or iPad on stop #4 and listen/read to as much information about the battle in that spot. Or to see a timeline of the battle, and maps, and animated movements of the forces at this important battle. Or at stop #10 to learn about the family that lived in that farm, what happened before the battle and after. The ranger could answer a lot of my questions but this could be even better.

And this could also work at natural parks, information on hikes, maps, information on trees/animals/birds etc. Even social features like a listing of people looking for someone to run a trail with on x date etc.

I’d love for the iPhone/iPad to one day be able to use their camera to view a location and draw fortification lines and structures virtually. How awesome would it be to hold up your iPhone along a ridge, and virtual fortifications and trenches show up to show where the Americans or British dug in to fight. Or if this could be done in Europe being able to hold up to Hardian’s Wall locations and see what the wall was thought to look like, or even soldiers moving around. I can’t wait for augmented reality!

I am annoyed at my gym, for the second time in the last weeks there have been too many people and all the equipment has been in use (from all the people who work out in January and then give up, super annoying). And an idea came to me while I made the cold walk home without getting to run…

It would be nice if a gym could show you in real time what % of equipment by type was being used. And then also give a historic map per month of peak times, so you could see when a gym’s treadmills were 90% full or above and plan around that.

So you would need a device to go on the equipment that somehow detected if it was in use, and then something to send that over the network (they would net internet or using cell data). And then you would have to take all that in and make it useful via the web.

Business model? Hmm, I think the core model would be to sell it to the gyms and build something so they can show this information on their homepage easily. And charge the gym a monthly fee for this service. So they can help people show when to come, or maybe even allow them to offer reservations during peak times. So for people coming off work they could reserve a treadmill at 5.30 in a special area just for that.

Secondary business models? Maybe a combined page that people could use to search for a gym, by looking for the least busy and who supports this functionality. And you could earn fees for referring to different gyms possibly.