Just remembered that I’ve been meaning to look into this for a while: the hidden language of stamps (more in this blogpost and this NYTimes article). The placement of stamps on letters (upside down, diagonal etc) all have individual meanings. I wonder what the equivalent will be in the digital world. Is there a way we can send emails which have ‘hidden’ meanings which are in plain sight?

From the NYTimes article:

And while the struggle to cope with longing is at least as old as language itself, the placement of stamps to send messages had its heyday during the 1890’s in England with the popularity of postcards, said Roy Nuhn, a researcher who has studied the history of stamp placement.

Though more affordable and attractive than letters, postcards left text exposed to any nosy intermediary, so people found other ways to get their point across, said Mr. Nuhn, 68, who added that he took interest in the topic while he was serving in the military during the Korean War and noticed other soldiers receiving letters with angled stamps. 

One of the best things I learned in my design degree is the value of carrying a notebook/sketchbook with me all the time. I used to always think ‘oh, this is a brilliant idea, I’ll remember this’, but in reality, I didn’t. And there’s something nice about reading back notes and making new connections between old ideas. And sometimes surprise yourself. 

I loved when Steven Johnson in his book Where Good Ideas Come From wrote about the value of a notebook, especially how you have to have a lot of knowledge before you can consciously connect the dots and how important it is you write everything down. 

Anyway, long intro to the purpose of this post: I have been collecting a bunch of ideas for new businesses, most of which I sadly won’t have the time/focus/energy to execute. And seeing that ideas are the easy part, and execution the hard bit, I thought I’d open source/give away/throw them against a wall and see which ones stick. If you like any of these, please make it happen (and tell me about it)!

Idea 1: a Kickstarter for community projects. Wouldn’t it be great if you could micro-invest in projects that improve the quality of your own community? E.g. invest in the local library, in a day care centre, in a street party, in a youth project. Since it’s your local community, you’d immediately be able to see the impact.