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I would bet you probably come up with a really good idea about once a week, and that's being conservative.

The trick is just to store them in some always-accessible note taking app (e.g. Evernote, OneNote, Apple's Notes app) as soon as they come to you (i.e. in the middle of a totally unrelated lecture), and accumulate them over a long period of time (talking years here).

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OP here. This idea was from looking at this map. https://www.wearedorothy.com/collections/music/products/u-s-...

It’s beautiful, and reminds me of an idea that I had ... hint ... hint.

I live in Melbourne, Australia. Idle Googling led me to the discovery that someone had rated – as in on Maps, with stars – a tram stop. A municipal function, a concrete slab, a place you must necessarily and unavoidably go if you want a tram. Rated. People! Crazy.

So I want a map that, at the level of ‘Melbourne’, aggregates the Google review for everything in view and gives the entire city a score. Then as I zoom in, eventually to the tram stop, I see the ratings of individual things.

Ultimately I suppose you’d be able to zoom out to the world and see its Google review score.

That would probably just end up being a map of economic conditions in any given section of town. The seedy parts will be lower rated overall (even if there's a highly rated ethnic food joint or whatever), while the swanky parts will have nicer things. That's my guess, although I think you should still do it, because I might be totally wrong. And interesting patterns might still appear even if I'm right.

Even if it is just a map of economic conditions, that's a useful thing to have.

I could imagine it being a great way to find "diamonds in the rough" too where certain places are much higher rated than the places around them.

If it's based only on Google reviews I think it'll be static. For example, the taco Bell in my hometown has 4.5 stars on Google because it's one of the only restaurants in the area.

> Ultimately I suppose you’d be able to zoom out to the world and see its Google review score.

“Music, a mode of creative expression consisting of sound and silence expressed through time, was given a 6.8 out of 10 rating in an review published Monday on Pitchfork Media, a well-known music-criticism website.” [1]

[1] https://entertainment.theonion.com/pitchfork-gives-music-6-8...

> Ultimately I suppose you’d be able to zoom out to the world and see its Google review score.

Mostly harmless?

Huh, it looks like the author of that older map might not have realized that "Pennsylvania 6-5000" is about the telephone number of a hotel in New York City (whose telephone exchange was named after Pennsylvania Station, which was named after the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was named after the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_6-5000_(song)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEnnsylvania_6-5000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Pennsylvania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Station_(1910%E2%...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Railroad

"Washington Bullets" isn't about Washington state either, which seems like a thing he'd be likely to know, so maybe he wasn't trying to be that strict.

The map was designed to make money, not to be a historical record.

I'm amused that in the blowup of New York State, Canajoharie is called out.

I lived in upstate New York for about 15 years and would not have been able to identify the town -- until a few years ago when They Might Be Giants wrote a song with that title.

http://tmbw.net/wiki/Canajoharie

This is also the reason the well known 1940 swing song of the same name recorded by the Glen Miller band - after the phone number of the Pennsylvania hotel on 8th Ave whose ballroom they regularly played.

And Wyoming, the state, is named for Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Valley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming

Also, you need practice, write 5 ideas a day. Doesn't matter what ideas, things might exist or not exist. After a while, you will have a pile of garbage with some really good jewels between them.

PS. It was mentioned in the book, I don't recall which one.

James Altucher's "Choose Yourself" mentions 10 a day, but I don't think it was original.

The real "trick" is to be able to execute on any one of those. Whenever people see some cool project they instantly go "wish I had thought of that", but 99% of the time it's overcoming all the implementation challenges which is the hard part, not coming up with the idea.

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