Does light attract fish, or scare them away?

I know lighting is known to scare walleyes.

I just think that in a lot of types of water, you'd see nothing. Also the movement of a lure is all over the place. At best you'd just see this constant shaking. It's not a smooth movement at any point. Imho your camera would need to be 5-6 feet behind the lure (to see a 90 degree slice of water), and at best would be used in the clearest waters.

I fish, and I'd never use it. A radar is a lot more interesting for depth/fish density. And the rate at which lures are lost, even $30 would never fly.

you're right about the movement and that a radar is more effective. Perhaps fins would help the shaking, maybe a gyroscope, and it's really not about effectiveness, it's more about how easy this is to sell.

I'm not poo-pooing anyone's suggestions, just saying that if you saw this in a store, wouldn't you be like, "damn! wish I'd thought of that."

Ya I don't disagree with that angle. But overall a lot of people do read reviews. The eventual product reviews would be tremendously negative. But perhaps tha wouldn't matter once you've sold your initial X units.

I have in idea for a physical invention, related to the diet industry, that I think could be huge. In addition to real uses, I think it could also make a lot of money as a gag gift - ala the Shake Weight - which I'm convinced is 90% bought as a gag gift.

I want to mention it here. But it's such a simple idea I'd like to protect myself first. How do I do that w/o spending $5k for a patent lawyer? Does 2p2 count as a "publication"? I tend to doubt it.

Believe in yourself, and get the patent.

That is not what publication means with respect to patents. In fact public publication would make getting a patent impossible because it would be used as prior art when someone wanted to expunge your patent.

You can discuss the idea freely here since it is not the idea itself that is patented. If the device is so simple that discussing the idea is the same as discussing the innovation you seek to patent then it might be best not to but you also run into the issue that if it is that obvious then you might not be able to get protection for it either.

If you really believe in the idea and don't want to pay you can do it yourself. A patent application is something I consider borderline but I think someone who is reasonably bright can file one without legal assistance.

Post-its would be a great example of something that's incredibly simple but still patentable. I wouldn't want to go around talking about post-its before I patented them.

I am not 100% certain but I don't believe Post-It Notes were patented. The special adhesive was what was patented. I could be wrong but without a decent internet connection I can researched it at the moment.

infrared perhaps?

as far as stability, I think if the camera is equipped with fins and ~12in. up the line I think it would be pretty steady. would obv have to do some tests.

I am new to this tread but I have been reading through and love all of your guys honesty and willingness to help though breaking down the idea. So here is my submission to this tread:

My idea deals with doing research and writing research paper and making that an easier process for students. As a student I always am switching between programs looking at quotes, reading though online sources and databases trying to get the one line of information that I need to support my papers claims. My software would be one that runs in the background of your word document and while you type it would recognize key words and search websites and any databases to find sites that contain what you are typing in the document so once it comes time to cite it, the source along side the quote would be ready for you to click on the program would make the work cited pages and insert the quote in your paper.

That's a really interesting idea. Like how word has a grammar correction function. Once you have completed a sentence, it googles that entire sentence for exact matches and then you have your source?

it would be able to do that as well. so lets say if you wanted to find a quote that was similar to what you wrote in your own words it would be able to find that and give you source options. but mainly it would analyse what you are typing to find sources that relate to your point

My idea is worthless, and here is your proof:

I built up a job-portal prototype. The feedback has been underwhelming all across the board:

www.soloresume.com

The reasoning and how it works is explained on the home page. Yeah, I wrote it out of my own job-hunting frustrations.

Quick overview:

* You create one resume and many employers can look at your resume
* Quality of Employers is first and foremost: No Schools, MLMs, or Spammers
* Employers have the ability to vote on interviewees. If someone is good, they should have extra opportunity to get a job.

What would you be searching?

Most legitimate sources don't allow you to search or access for free.

the user would not really be searching anything it would be the application that would run in the background and pulling up sources that relate to what you have written so far. And as a college student a majority of my sources that are online have come through free sites and the free access pages of major publications. Another add on that I would like to have in this software would be integration to online databases that universities have, so once a user is connected to the database it would use that connection to also look up in the internal network.

Ever consider why there are so many services and websites about personal finance/investing and so many services for lawyers and small businesses, but so few websites on how to do things for free and services for poor people?

Your market is students and poor students don't make a great market for anything except cheap beer and cheapest pizza possible. And when you do sell one copy of your software, the rest of the dorm will make a copy and use it for free.

The other issue is quality of your product. You are describing natural language processing and this is a billion dollar problem that thousands of Phds and startups are trying to figure out. A friend of mine is a university professor and he just got seed money for his startup working on these issues. He has top notch credentials and he has been working on this issue for as long as I can remember (10 years+). And even after 10 years, my impression is that he hasn't produced much... his approach works only on the simplest semi-structured searches or brakes completely. My guess is that your product will suck in the sources it gives you because this is much more complicated than it seems.

LOL. Apple, Starbucks, Facebook, Groupon, Abercrombie, etc. all seem to do alright in the student market.

So now you're admitting it's a good idea, but the execution will be hard? Well no ****, sherlock.

smdesai, imo the time you would have to spend checking that the source selected fits your essay would be greater than the time taken to find your own source. Assuming that the writer has taken time to read up on the subject of their essay.

There is also the issue that writing papers the way he describes is a ****ty way to write a paper. I'm not sure how many people actually do it that way.

The software would assist the writer in finding quotes from different places and give quotes for what relates to your topic so the writer would be able to have a better array of quotes to support their claims. The program would not write papers for you it would assist in the writing of the papers as most papers require outside sources.

isn't that backwards? Like, I don't write a paper, then look for sources. I look at credible sources for what I should write, then use those sources to write the paper.

This.

Most people read primary sources then a handful of secondary sources so that they have a good understanding of the material and of what other people think. Then they give the material some thought and come up with an interesting position to advance. Read more secondary sources that are related to what you want to write about. Then you start writing.

I have no idea how anyone could write a paper by first speculating about claims and then finding sources for them. How do you know that there is any secondary material to support your claim? How did you even form the claim? The only way you could have formed it is from the primary material and your own thought so why would you want to take an original contribution to the subject and then go and find someone else who said it first thus diminishing the value of what you've done?

I also strongly disagree that writing papers with sources that are available for free on the intenet is even remotely acceptable in university. Combine that with the way you write papers and I'd be concerned about academic performance.

When I wrote my thesis in college there was not a single 1 of over 50 preliminary sources that were available free on the internet.