Product development

I rather like this wee graph that I found on Blue Matter here, not for the way it shows the adoption of new services and technology has speeded up.

But because it lists the trappings of 21st century civilisation, and show's how the western world has spent a century developing these things, making them affordable to the massed, ubiquitous and available.

So in third world countries, for the poor populations, for all the abuse and exploitation that goes on by the west and by their own corrupt leaders, we can take them from the top left corner to the bottom right.

No need to re-invent the wheel.

Is the touchscreen smartphone the pinnacle of human civilsation? The iPhone, is that it? The moment when every member of the human race can have a touchscreen smartphone and the infrastructure is in place to support it, that's the peak of the machine-age.

**UPDATE**
Eep, I forgot about the multi-touch touchscreen smart phone, when that's ubiquitous, then we've won.

Website idea No.127

Its like an electronic component price comparison database which has the parts, prices and descriptions of everything in RS Components, Maplin, Farnell, CPC, Digi-Key, etc. You just type in the part number for anything, or the description and it tells you the equivalent part number and price from all the other suppliers.

It shows where two suppliers sell exactly the same product, or similar products and you can gauge which supplier best suits the quantities you need.

Could be a straight-forward SQL implementation, probly MySQL, with tons of information. RS alone carries 100,000 products. Would need to be just UK based to start with.

I wonder if you could get a grant or something from the UK's industry government thingi.

Once its established you could charge a levy to all the main suppliers to be carried, and maybe a lower levy or free to smaller suppliers.