Demo Day


If Peter Thiel is to believed ~ and he's a very believable guy ~ then every worthwhile idea has to be a solution to some problem.

Much of my past experience being with various forms of transport, I'm not altogether convinced. Many of the most useful technologies like lasers and microwaves came by happenstance. Meanwhile pioneers of steam locomotives, helicopters and the motor-car did not necessarily view their prototypes as useful so much as entertaining.

For example, the popular reaction to the car was that, whilst it looked fun it cost the Earth (it has literally since) and was not needed in view of the fact we all had a horse. Similarly, one of the original manufacturers of the helicopter in the US admitted freely that he'd no idea of quite how people would use it. In fact the first use anyone found for his machines was to disperse the frost from cherry orchards in California.

Nonetheless, problems provide for focus and so at the kitchen table this morning on a pad (a paper one) I listed five possible applications of block-locks and problems they addressed, including those experienced by others. Aside from this I wanted one which was uniquely mine, and as Peter Thiel also said, solve your own problem and chances are you've done so for any number of others.

Well I do the bulk of my work (and spend much of my leisure time) on a laptop, which is not going to be displaced by more mobile devices any time soon. What I least like about it is the constant requirement for a password to open its desktop... in whose absence however most of us would be anxious to some extent.

We discussed only yesterday the progress we were making in manifesting galleries of faces on phones, and how we might double up on the set of nine used in the classical layout. Well what if we took it to the other extreme and capitalised on the sheer size and definition of gaming, laptop and personal computers?

What if we were simply to exploit an innate ability to recognise a face among a crowd? 

Give it a go, but do so on a PC or laptop and enter the browser's full screen view prior:

https://bloxlox.com/test.html

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