Future Solutions: Preamble
Could you help me develop technology that would benefit you or someone you know? Would you work as hard as I do, or possibly harder?
In this new series of posts I’m going to present proposals for technology I think should exist. These won’t be mere ideas, as I explain below, but proposals that are complete enough to prompt discussion. My hope is that they reach people affected by the problems, and who want to find solutions.
Why Read Further? Why Gary?
In any business, the greatest leverage I can provide is in R&D. I’m familiar with sales, accounting, marketing, support, HR, etc., and I’ve written employee manuals about business operations, but I’m far better at R&D than at anything else. I’m just wired for it. Always have been. Consider it a birth defect.
Yes, I’ve written patents that were granted, as you can see in my LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-bartos/ Over the years I’ve written some provisional patents that have been abandoned (or soon will be abandoned) for one reason or another. Usually the problem is lack of cash.
One of those abandoned provisionals may be cited more than the patent grants. Hah!
My career has focused on machine vision, an application of image processing. I wrote the original draft of the article about machine vision on Wikipedia, and I’d like to go back and fix it. One day.
More recently I’ve shifted focus to assistive technology, but I still consult in machine vision.
I’ve written prototype and product code in C++, Swift, MATLAB, C#, C, Visual Basic, Perl, HTML, CSS, SQL, and so on. There’s a good chance some product you’ve owned or used was in some way inspected by a vision system I developed or co-developed. (Lots of engineers, technicians, and factory workers have given their brains and hands to making products!)
Prototypes and products I’ve developed or co-developed have been deployed on PCs, Macs, smart glasses, embedded devices, and contraptions I’ve cobbled together using whatever is lying around. Duct tape and I are good friends. My collection of optics keeps growing, especially if I can keep it out of sight of my wife.
On StackOverflow I’ve posted enough, if irregularly, to be one of the top posters for tags (topics) relevant to my expertise.
My company, Echobatix, has an app in the App Store.
My family and I have a Corgi, which I feel compelled to mention out of context.
It’s Sunday and I’ve already posted on Reddit, had a chat with someone from India (hello!), taken notes on software development work in progress, and so on. It’s a day of the week ending in -y, so I’m designing and making stuff.
All that is meant to provide context, not to brag. I have a problem, and maybe you can help.
Life is short, and it bothers me that a number of beneficial technologies that could exist, don’t exist.
Wanna help?
So Many Proposals, So Little Time
Like lots of folks in research & development, I keep notebooks of problems and potential solutions.
The Tao of Startups by James LaLonde, Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan, and books by other authors encourage entrepreneurs to keep a journal of business ideas and potential products.
If you’re an inventor, it hurts to see designs and prototypes for helpful technology go undeveloped, or underdeveloped. Saleable technology requires the right business partner(s). It can take months to make connections, pitch your idea at startup events, and find THE people most enthusiastic about your proposed solution. That’s just the start.
Maybe a way to jump start the process is to present the solutions first, and then see who considers the relevant problems worth solving.
Medium has a limit on the lengths of posts non-subscribers can read, so I’ll continue in the next post:
Also check out the List of Proposals:
