The problem is that I don't know what to do. How do you come up with your cool ideas?
cool like this: http://venturecrapital.us/index.html or cool like this: http://lal.com/home
Your future boss may just want to see some little tool that gets his company a little buzz. He's probably not expecting you to solve a huge problem.
Query their api and make the desktop background change to an si swimsuit model when certain datapoints are triggered. :)
Take it easy, there is no pressure on you! :)
Once you've acquired a short list of verified "cool" ideas, start digging into each one. Which one is the best, at least in your opinion? Which one can be expanded, extended, or modified?
Use the list of cool ideas to find more cool ideas; and from these atoms of cool, assemble your own cool molecule of coolness.
Once you've iterated this process and come up with something amazing, get to work.
Seriously - like most other talents (sports, music, writing etc.) it all comes down to doing a lot of it repeatedly.
Start by carrying a notepad, and noting down anything that pops into your head that could conceivably be an idea - no matter how crap it might seem at first. Keep doing this day by day, and eventually you'll hit upon one that grabs your fancy. Don't stop there though - always keep adding :)
Something cool could also mean helping out an opensource project, if you have time. Just my 2 cents.
Any tips are most welcome. :)
1. http://pythonmentors.com/ This will solve the mentor-ship problem you have. Folks in the core and around who are mentors will listen to your problems and can help you on the way. Although they are very nice with newbies, please make sure that you try to be as clear and professional in your approach/questions as possible.
2. http://openhatch.org/ This website gives you small, medium and tough level of bugs in most of the prominent opensource projects.
Hope this helps.
I have also read that "cool"/unique/brilliant ideas very often are the result of cross-pollination of unusual sets of interests. In other words, if you have two or more interests that don't typically go together, this tends to lead to new insights/approaches that no one else could come up with. So if you are feeling stuck, maybe you should seek out a new hobby/interest, something that seems counter-intuitive to your normal interests if at all possible. My sons have been gradually dragging me into gaming. I was a full-time mom for a long time. I like my kids. They know me well and know how to frame things to make a game sound do-able and appealing to me. They also do a lot of hand-holding. (I used to think video games were the work of the devil or some such. I was not thrilled that my sons were so into games. Now they are corrupting me. This will likely lead to great things. :-P)
Best of luck.