A Couple of Ideas

I'm still working on the ever continuing Android tutorials but I thought I'd write something different right now. I wanted to write down a couple of ideas I had on future projects I would take on (more below).

Why am I sharing my ideas?

In a world where information can easily spread, one would wonder why you would want to share your idea or concept. Why would you want to share something brilliant you came up with? For me, ideas are useless. It remains in your head unless you execute upon it. It doesn't help anyone until you make something out of it.

My friend Karl has a good article pondering on it in his blog DaftCoder. There are also insightful comments by others. (I'm the "ghost" commenter).

Some interesting ideas on projects

With that said, I wanted to share my ideas. There are probably similar stuff already out there but I wanted to do it personally. I want to learn some interesting topics in these projects. Most of the ideas aren't fleshed out. There are no mock-ups, designs or tests yet. Simply they are ideas in my head.

(Game) Pinoy Henyo (Philippine Genius?)

Popularized by the longest running show in the Philippines (Eat Bulaga), Pinoy Henyo is a game show wherein a pair of contestants try to guess a word. One person has the word on his head and tries to guess it by asking questions answerable by only yes, no and maybe. The other person simply answers with yes, no or maybe.

There was already an Android app that was created out of this (non-official). It's been taken down from the market understandably due to copyright concerns. There's a "renamed" or alternate version out.

Topics/Features or Why: Obviously, I won't actually do the exact same thing as I don't want to be associated with it nor do I want to damage the brand. I actually thought it would be cool to have something similar but with multiplayer.

It would be great to play this with other people remotely (think Skype games). These are some of the ideas I randomly came up with. Using the camera API to generate avatars. Multiplayer over wifi and bluetooth. The host of the show comments while both players are playing. Game modes would be chat or video.

Links: Official site of the segment.

Ultimate Trivia Game

This came up while I was working on the tutorial. I would want it to evolve into a trivia game. I think trivia games are cool although not as exciting as other forms of word games. Why Ultimate? Well, that sounds great. I could still work on ideas to transform the game into something a lot more fun but still simple.

I realized I could add a lot of interesting features. Some features like the leader board would be great in terms of learning how to implement it/create my own instead of using something like OpenFeint.

Features: Categories for questions, Avatar creation using camera, multiplayer "versus" mode, algorithm for not repeating questions, leader board

Update: I just had an idea. Why not incorporate other genre elements into this game? How about adding RPG elements like "leveling up" or having abilities (Freezing time, adding time, disrupting an opponent in versus mode?)

(Game) Wheel of Misfortune

No, not a clone of wheel of fortune but rather more of a tech demo in a way. Once avatars are created (notice I had a ton of ideas when I thought about avatar creations) you spin a wheel and a torture of sorts would happen to your in-game character.  This is not brutal gory actions but more similar to something out of a cartoon. I got inspired by Little Big Planet's initial vision for sackboy animations. This would be interesting to put on top of a game.

Also, see video above on 1:35 and 1:40 for examples.

(Communication) Themeable and Encrypted Messenger

This idea came out of a need. The theming functionality is because the plain SMS messenger on Android (Gingerbread) can't be customized to have a "black on white" theme. Why black on white? White is too bright when you're texting in a dark room (a room in midnight for example) but white is useful for outdoors or most general purpose texting.

It would be great to have a black and white themes be able to easily switch back and forth similar to the Any.do Todo application in Android.

The encryption is something interesting. As with more and more news coming out that private information can easily be hacked or obtained, there would be a need to add encryption to make sure you keep your privacy. I realize this is a tall task of course as encryption is a whole huge topic in itself. I plan to add something simple like adding a user "lock/pin/password" that would be used as a key to be able to read messages. It could even be extended to have custom passwords for certain contacts (woah james bond?) but that would leave it with it's own headache of remembering passwords.

The encryption came out of a previous idea of making my own password manager. You already keep tons of usernames and passwords for different services and it's hard to keep up. Solutions like 1password, lastpass and keepass exist to help you out. Why not make your own? You could leave out features you don't use. You could put your own spin, etc, etc. Of course most of the established solutions are already really advanced and useful if you don't want to mess around with code.

(Modding) Automated Light Adjustment

This idea is something out of the ordinary for me. I don't usually have an interest with modding hardware or similar. This is actually a solution I want to build for my room. My room is far from window so I don't have the advantage of the regular sunlight schedule (bright in the day, dark in the night).

I've heard about the Adruino board before. It's an open-source customizable platform for electronics. In terms of functionality it's very simple, I have a couple of LED lights that turn on depending on the time of day simulating day-time. More lights turn on depending on the time of day. More advanced features would be maybe something like if it detects you're nearby (using a phone perhaps or using a remote application) it would automatically turn on and off (save on energy too).

This is a really tall task and would involve a lot of reading and messing around. I don't know yet if it's entirely possible or if I have the time to work on it. I haven't done anything similar in the past. I'll have to put more research before I dive in.

Links: Adruino Home Page, Canadian Store for parts, Android page on Adruino, not entirely sure

Final Thoughts

Those were a lot. Again, most of them are in the "I thought of something interesting" phase and may or may not be worked on for a lot of reasons. Those ideas could also be transformed into something different. If there was already similar projects, I'll update this post if I have the chance to try them.