Apple iTunes movie rental on the horizon

So, this is 1/2 tech wish and 1/2 apple rumor (sorry for the rumor half). Rumor part: Apple to offer movie downloads as RENTALs You can read a Wall Street Journal article about it (HERE). Now, the good WISH part: WISH 1: Please, please, please let us pay $20 a month for unlimited rentals. Be the digital netflix and everyone will love it. If I have to pay 1.99 per rental (and especially if it's more) I'll use it occassionally, and apple would maybe make $100 off me during the year. BUT - if I could pay $20 a month for unlimited rentals, I'd sign up right away and apple would have $240 of my cash. No problem. WISH 2: Sync this to the freakin iPhone and iPodTouch. If I rent a movie, let me do it wirelessly via my iPhone too. Particularly if I'm paying 1.99 per rental (which is just a price I've made up - btw), I want iTunes to remember that I rented it on my desktop, and let me also download it to my handheld device/whatever without paying for it again (and vice versa). If you make iTunes remember where I stopped watching it on my machine, and then let me download it to my iPhone while I'm at the coffee shop & it remembers where I left off - well, hell, you'd almost have my faith in Apple won back over again.

Facebook segregation

Every social group is defined as much by who it Excludes as it is by who it Includes. And all of us know that we have multiple social circles that we are connected to, but might not want all of them to mix. Facebook needs to allow me to segregate my friends. I have work friends, family friends, "I knew you a long time ago" friends, and current friend friends - all looking at the same account. And I'm getting the same level of updates from all of them! Please, Facebook - you keep saying it is coming. Please stop spending all your time trying to monetize your site by focusing too much on business pages, and focus a little bit again on your users for our benefit. My only other option at this point - is to create separate accounts for work and family/friends. This isn't ideal for many reasons - but it's the best option at the moment. Facebook - get your act together. Make your site model this aspect of real life social circles. Let me segregate my friends. NOTE: I chose "segregate" because it is a strong word. You could call this feature "sorting" "arranging" "labeling" "organizing" "personalizing" etc.

del.icio.us my Favorite Pictures

What I Want is to be able to save photos I like to a del.icio.us style bookmarking utility, that saves the link to the photos I like online, and is available from any computer with an internet connection. Why? I find cool pictures online all the time. Flickr, photoblogs, news sites, art sites, they're everywhere! So what do I do? Right now I have to create a folder on my desktop that I can drag pictures into, and use them as screensavers or desktop backgrounds. On my mac, the background changes every minute to display a new photo. If I could save these photos online, I could subscribe to an RSS feed of them to use as screensavers, desktop backgrounds (maybe), etc. Maybe my cell phone could update the background once an hour with a new image from my list. Plus, this would hopefully avoid copyright infringement, because it would only be saving the path to the photo - not the actual photo itself. As for HOW to save the exact photo - maybe right clicking would give a "save to..." option, or perhaps there could be an actual folder on my desktop that I could drag the photo into and it would send the info to my online photoRSS account. etc. etc., I'm sure there are plenty of good easy ways to make this happen.

Wireless Battery Charging

It's coming soon.  But just to paint a picture of what I'm hoping for...

Imagine your ipod has a plain black iPod shaped "pad" that it can be laid flat on - just like when you set it down on a desk or table.  Ok - now imagine that the iPod battery recharges through a proximity transfer of energy from this pad (which would obviously need to be plugged into an outlet).  Now no more wires & plugs to connect / disconnect.

If the iPod connects to the computer wirelessly to transfer data - then no more need for a connector!   

You can see something sort-of like this (prototyped for a car) on cnet here:

http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-31323.html

In-line links

Everyone's been there: you're reading a paragraph on a website and
it's SO full of underlined words (links) that you find it difficult
to just read the text.

You should be able to toggle those on/off.

Banner Ads

So everyone agrees that banner ads are annoying. And yes, I agree with everyone. BUT (and hear me out please) - wouldn't it be cool if you could click / slideshow through banner ads like photos in flickr?!

So here's the scenario: I'm on a site that I like. Google is serving up banners related to the content that I like. But I don't care about the product in the banner. I MIGHT like something else though. Maybe I'm interested in finding a sale. Or perhaps I feel lucky (and bored). I click on a "next" arrow (or something similar) at the bottom of the banner ad box, and in slides a new ad.

Ideally, these would be quick loading, and simple. Let me scan quickly and do a cursory yes/no decision. I'd me MUCH more likely to click through if I sorted through 10 ads and suddenly thought "oh, I like that one." Plus it might become a lazy / curious way to travel between sites (and find deals)...

First off...

Often, I wish there were things, things that don't exist yet. Most of them could, just no one has put them together yet. Since I won't do much to make them happen, I'm going to start putting the ideas down here. Please feel free to steal. Just let me know how it works out. And if you make millions - maybe throw me a bone (no obligation - and you probably won't make millions off my ideas. but just in case :).