Meta Fund

1. What one sentence best describes your idea?A program that automatically donates to other organizations based on your preferences.
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3. Describe your idea in more depth. 
4. A person could set it up so that they could donate to one central place and it automatically donates to causes they believe in. Also, if they are unsure what cause they should support, it could ask them questions like "how much do you care about unborn children?" or "would you rather help local people?" to narrow down paces where they would like to donate to.  It could help them with their tax deductible donations. It could even help remind them when the should donate, or prod them into donating more to their causes.
   Maybe have features like organizations having a donate button on the bottom of websites that puts that organization into your meta fund.
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6. What problem or issue does your idea address?
   
7. It is difficult to remember to donate. It is hard to research where to donate. Giving isn't as convent as it should be.
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9. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?People who want donating to be more convent. People who feel they should donate more. Non-profit organizations would get more donations.
   What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
   
10. Research how a program like this could work in the law, finding a team or organization to set this up.
11. 
    Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?The optimal outcome would be having lots of people using this service, and lots of organizations benefiting. It could be measure by how much money goes through this service, and the number of people and organizations using it.

Discussion Overview

This sounds kinda like my idea for one of my current projects.  I did away with all the social stuff and got straight to the point, addresing the most popular arguments.  I think if something already popular did it, they wouldn't have to rely on social features to get this thing going

1. What one sentence best describes your idea?A community created online overview of an issue, kinda like a cheat sheet for debates.
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3. Describe your idea in more depth. 
4. A wiki like overview of the most common arguments for each side of an issue. Each argument has a link for the most common rebuttals to that argument, and each rebuttal has a link most common rebuttals to that... etc.
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6. What problem or issue does your idea address?
   
7. People usually have a very basic understanding of an issue. It takes a lot of dedication and hard word to get even beyond a basic understanding. With this point-rebuttal hierarchy, even beginners can have a decent grasp of the state of an issue.
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9. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?People who don't have hours to commit to learning everything about an issue. They would be able to have an advanced understanding without spending too much time.
   What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
   
10. Research the best ways this could operate. Get a bunch of web programmers together .
11. 
    Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?The optimal outcome would be having really large discussions, lots of people viewing them, and people referencing the discussions.
    If you'd like to recommend a specific organization, or the ideal type of organization, to execute your plan, please do so here. 
    The Wikimedia Foundation.

Parallel voice

1. What one sentence best describes your idea?A country wide polling entity, separate from the government,  that gets the views of what the people think of their governments actions.
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3. Describe your idea in more depth. 
4. An entity, separate for the government, finds effective methods of polling people to find out what they really think about the government's actions and how it works. A focus will need to but put on making sure the entity is not seen as an outsider that would mess with the results for their own agenda, and also for making sure people from the outside don't see the results as being tampered with for the country's agenda.
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6. What problem or issue does your idea address?
   
7. It may help stop people from being judged by their county's actions.
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9. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?Everybody who doesn't support their countries actions still gets some voice. It would also help provide people who what to make the world a better place with valuable data.
   What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
   
10. Research the best ways to operate a project like this. Find people or groups from each country who would be able to oversee and operate a project like this.
11. 
    Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?The optimal outcome would be having the data on every country to find out want the average citizen thinks of their country and the world.

Wavering donation

1. What one sentence best describes your idea?A credit card that charges you extra for things you know you shouldn't be buying and sends the extra to the charities of your choice.
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3. Describe your idea in more depth. 
4. When you make a major life decision, like choosing to adopt a certain diet, you don't just make that decision once. Every time you go to the store you have to make the decision not to pick up things you know you shouldn't. It would be easier to make the right decision if there was an additional incentive. There could be a credit card that automatically detects when you are purchasing the wrong products and automatically charges you a percentage of that item's costs and donates that to charity. This kind of thing could also be set up for automatically offsetting carbons, or just automatically donating a percentage of all the money you spend.
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6. What problem or issue does your idea address?
   
7. It is far too convenient to break your dedication on a certain diet. It could be easier to oftest your carbons, ect.
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9. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?People who want to be better people would benefit most. There would be less barriers keeping them from being the kind of consumer they want to be.
   What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
   
10. Study the laws and how it could work with this, Make a database of junk food, and other types of products.
11. 
    Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?Get as many people successfully using the cards as possible. Measured by how many people are using the card and having success stories.

Democratically Controlled Homeless Shelter

1. What one sentence best describes your idea?A homeless shelter where the tenants are in control of the rules, who is in charge, and what to do with outside help.
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3. Describe your idea in more depth. 
4. When people want to help other people, they usually don't have a complete understanding of what their problems are and where these problems came from. With a democratic homeless shelter, the homeless could try to fix whatever problems they have themselves. They could vote on how it's operated, what to do with the money, the rules, and who is in charge of what, and what tasks volunteers could do to help.
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6. What problem or issue does your idea address?
   
7. For whatever reason, many homeless people don't receive the help that others desire for them. This shelter would homeless people the power to help themselves. They would be able to think critically and act on ways to help themselves. Also, volunteers are always second guessing what types of help the most, this way they can be told directly by the recipient of their help.
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9. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?People who are homeless would benefit the most because they would have more control over their lives and perhaps get on their feet. Volunteers for homeless shelters would also benefit, because the could hep where they know they are wanted.
   What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
   
10. Use the money to refurbish a few building in different areas (or build new ones) and set them up for a structure like this; set each of them up with a different initial organizational type and find out which ones work best; find homeless people would would want to try this out.
    
11. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it? 
    The optimal outcome would be for as many homeless people as possible to get back on their feet and out of the shelter. It would be measured by the number of people that successfully leave the shelter.

10 to the 100 idea network

I decided to start with an idea inspired by the concept of 10 to the 100.  I think an idea like this might go over pretty good in the voting portion of the competition.

What one sentence best describes your idea? A network for people to contribute, discuss, give/receive feedback, and modify ideas to change the world, and maybe find others to help.

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2. Describe your idea in more depth.The problem with for profit ideas is that people hold on to them and guard them -for fear of getting stolen- so much, that it is detrimental to the idea. But, if the idea's objective is to change the world for the better, then you want the idea to be heard. There is a need for a social, community website where people can contribute, discuss, and modify ideas on how to change the world. People could come up with the concept and be able to hammer out the details together, and perhaps find help from other members of the community, for the idea to become a project. But, it should't end there. After an idea becomes a project, there should be a log of how the progress of the project is coming along, what hardships the participants encounter, what successes they achieve. It would be great for people with similar idea to learn for their mistakes and alter their idea based on the results of other projects.
   
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4. What problem or issue does your idea address?There is no real network of people to receive feedback and find like minded who may want to help them in their cause to change the world for the better. There isn't an easy way to get feedback on your ideas. There isn't a easy way to find causes you may want to support.
   
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6. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?People who want to change the world would benefit. They may be able to find the help and focus they need to better help others.
   
7. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?Get a team of programmers, designers, and marketers/business people together to build a community website for it. Find an event coordination team to host in person events.
   
   
8. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?There is a large number of people constantly using the site have several ongoing project on the site, and hopefully a few successful outcomes with projects born from the site.

Thinking about an Idea on how to make the world a better place... a day?

So yesterday I found out that Google put of this "competition" website project 10 to the 100.  People submit ideas on how to make the word a better place and then people vote on them to see which ones receive funding.

On a similar note, I also am very inspired by Squidi's Three Hundred Mechanics project.  Where squidi would come up with an idea for a game a day.

I was thinking, maybe I could combine the two...

So, from now till October 20th, I intend to come up with a new idea to change the word a day, and perhaps submit it to Google.

I don't usually try to think up ideas that are beyond my resources (I really hate waiting for someone else's permission before I can "do the right thing").  But I guess that should change, cause sometimes changing gears like that is a good thing for the brain.

I choose to focus on...

I was thinking about how much I should focus on my civil discussion tools / website. I was thinking it would be best to port them to drupal. There's also my facebook application, which is already a success, but I don't spend too much time working on it. ( I should probably post about each of these projects soon)

I believe I will spend more time on facebook and general social networking sphere.

Here are the reasons I thought that would be a good idea.

• It appears I can think more outside box in terms of connecting people with the Internet then most.
  
• I might be able to make money off of it to use for living/donating/investing/larger projects.
  
• I can subtlety make the world a better place (doing it subtly is one of the most effective ways, in my opinion)
  
• I could deal with some of the current problems I have with the Internet directly
  
• I can do it almost all by myself... Finding help is a lot harder then I thought it would be.
  
• It's chances for failure are less.
  

I believe will first rebuild my facebook application, and make it nice and stuff.  That will be my primary project for the next couple of months.  

Although, my long term focus is something a little different... I'll post something everytime I feel I've gotten a little closer.